Each year I am dazzled anew by what Paul Claudel calls ‘the atmosphere of glory’ that is the Ascension. Perhaps I am prejudiced, as the Ascension once marked the end of a long trial of ill-health when I was allowed to make my solemn vows and final monastic profession.

It was the odder as in the past I had so often been ill on that day. So much so that I wondered if lying on one's back were not, after all, the best way of looking up at the sky and, paradoxically enough, of following our ascending Lord to glory.

A very ancient ascensiontide hymn remarks that it was

‘after being spat upon, after being scourged,
after the cross, that he rose to the Father's throne'.

The beginning of the Ascension is the way of the cross. “We climb Calvary and mount the cross before we ascend to the Father. But the best way of ascending is to be in him, who is the way, who said, 'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me'. The way must also be in us.