FROM a meditation on the Ascension of Jesus Christ from an Old English poem, Christ I, posted by Eleanor Parker at the wonderful blog on medieval England, Clerk of Oxford:

Then suddenly a loud clamour
was heard on high: a throng of heaven’s angels,
a brightly shining band, heralds of glory,
came in a company. Our king passed
through the temple roof while they gazed,
they who remained behind the dear one still
in that meeting-place, the chosen thegns.
They saw the Lord ascend on high,
God’s Son from the ground.
Their minds were sorrowful,
hot at heart, mourning in spirit,
because they would no longer see
the dear one beneath the heavens. The celestial heralds
raised up a song, praised the Prince,
extolled the Source of life, rejoiced in the light
which shone from the Saviour’s head.
They saw two bright angels
beautifully gleaming with adornments around the First-begotten,
the glory of kings.

In a post on the Ascension hymn ‘Aeterne rex altissime’, by the Franciscan friar William Herebert,” Parker writes:.

The imagery in this hymn is cosmic, majestic, mythic: angels quake, the heavens open, and a god who wore human flesh manifests a power beyond any that created things could ever attain (‘mythte that never shaft ne fond’). It’s impressive stuff. Ascension Day seems to be one of those feasts which the modern imagination struggles to deal with: preachers get embarrassed (I heard a few this week!), and feel the need to start their sermons with an apologetic disclaimer to demonstrate how modern and sophisticated they are: ‘well, of course we know that heaven isn’t ‘up in the sky’, and so of course we (unlike childish people in the olden days) know it’s silly to talk about Jesus going up. It makes him sound like a rocket, haha!’

This seems to me pretty unimaginative (and, as always, unfair to people in the ‘olden days’, by which they usually mean the bad old Middle Ages). It’s a bit sad, really, for a preacher to have so little poetry in their [sic] soul that when they think of the heavens they can only think ‘rocket, haha!’ As if the skies offer no other objects of mystery and wonder, no images and themes to feed the imagination. Are the starry heights and thunderous clouds of this hymn, for instance, really any less potent symbols of power and majesty for us than they were for William Herebert or the ninth-century author? Here last night, after a week of heat, the clouds amassed for a summer storm, and broke in a sudden torrent of drenching rain which was breathtaking in its force. However modern and sophisticated you imagine yourself to be, at such moments you’re still subject to the power of the heavens. And as for the stars – well, if you stop feeling wonder at the stars I can’t really imagine what would amaze you…

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