the
moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud
that veiled Him from her eyes.

All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of the
ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There we are
viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view it in a
short while. When the meaning of the ascension became plain, when under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able to view her Son as
"the One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," when she
was able to think of the human nature that God had taken from her as
permanently enthroned in heaven,--then would all this be to her creative
of intense joy. We, seeing so clearly what the ascension essentially
meant, can think of it as a mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord
passed away from sight the passing would for the moment be one last stab
of the sword through this so-often wounded heart.

There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel messengers
press the lesson that the life before them is a life of eager contest,
of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the clouds of heaven, but
they were reminded that there would be a reappearance, a coming-again in
the clouds of heaven, and in the meantime there was much to do, work
that would require their self-expenditure even unto death. Back must
they go to Jerusalem and there await the opening of the next act of the
drama of the Kingdom of God.

As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the slowly
shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us the nature
of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning of His
Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed from a pure
Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the tomb on the
resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the Galilean hill to the
very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates lift and admit the
Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our nature, what is enthroned
at the Right Hand of God is man, forever united to God. And when we ask,
"What is the purpose of this?" The answer is that it is the continual
purpose of the incarnation, the purpose of mediatorship between the
created and the uncreated, between God and man. The constant purpose of
the incarnation is mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end.
Our Lord's work was not finished, though there are those who appear to
believe that it was finished, wh