#10 Ascension from the Mount of Olives

Acts 1:9-13 The Ascension of Jesus

⁹ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

¹⁰ They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ¹¹ “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

¹² Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. ¹³ When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. 

Jesus was the first to rise from the dead.  Ascension and assumption are different.  Thomas Aquinas explains in Summa Theologica Volume 7 pages 647, 649 and 650 that Jesus in his resurrected body ascended into heaven by his own power.  On the contrary, when a holy person is assumed into heaven, it is by the power of God, and not by their own power.

The assumption of a holy person is preceded after their death by resurrection.  God honours the holy on some rare occasions by not leaving their bodies here on earth after death to undergo the corruption of the grave.

Therefore, Jesus’ ascension was unique.  Christ died, was buried and after three days he rose from the dead.  He appeared to his disciples over a period of 40 days.  Then the apostles witnessed his ascension from the Mount of Olives.

With assumption the person dies naturally and is buried in a cave.  From the burial cave the body is resurrected and then immediately taken up as a person alive into heaven.

Church of Eleona

Eleona is Greek for olive grove.  Church of Eleona or church of the olive grove is associated mainly with the site of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven.

Originally a church was built in the 4^th century under the direction of Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena to mark the site of the Ascension of Jesus.  It was called the Church of the Disciples.  The church was built over a cave where Jesus is supposed to have taught his disciples according to the Acts of John.  This church was destroyed by the Persians in 614 AD.

The Crusaders built another church on these ruins linking this church with the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in the cave.  This church fell down.  In the 19^th century another church was built and the foundations of the 4^th century church and the cave were found. 

It is now the Roman Catholic Church of the Pater Noster (which means Lord’s Prayer) and Carmelite monastery on the Mount of Olives.