The Mystery of the Ascension and the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar

At the end of Mark’s Gospel, we read: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mk 16:19 RSV-2CE).¹ The mystery of the Ascension, along with Christ’s session (or sitting at God’s right hand) has become theologically uninteresting, if not completely irrelevant, to many a practicing Christian.

“The doctrine of the ascension has become an enigma, if not an embarrassment,” writes Douglas Farrow. “The corresponding liturgical feast, once one of the church’s great feasts, is poorly celebrated. The Rogation Days that preceded it have disappeared and, whether marked on Thursday or on Sunday, Ascension pales beside Pentecost.”² In a different context, Robert P. Imbelli describes the feast of the Ascension as, by now, an “orphan feast,” and laments how the Ascension is commonly thought of in terms of “absence”; the Ascension simply marks Christ’s “sabbatical” until he “comes again.”³

The Paschal Mystery in common catechetical parlance typically denotes Christ’s Passion, death, and Resurrection. For many, it is not at all obvious that the Ascension is missing from this series, which goes to show the contemporary neglect of this mystery. According to Sacrosanctum Concilium, the liturgy is meant to celebrate Christ’s redeeming task that is accomplished by the Paschal Mystery, which includes “His blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and the glorious ascension.”⁴ The present article will uncover the extent to which the totality of the Paschal Mystery—which includes the Ascension—is mediated liturgically through the rite known as the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, which can be found in the Roman Missal of 1962.

Perhaps one of the most controversial legacies of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate was his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum,⁵ which liberalized the use of the preconciliar liturgical books and established them as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite. Unfortunately, the document and its reception have done little to quell liturgical polemics and tensions. Indeed, such a situation is lamentable, especially if it inhibits a theological examination of parts of the Church’s liturgical heritage.

Despite the post-conciliar removal of the rite of the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar from the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the rite has not ceased to retain a contemporary relevance, for believers and theologians alike. What is most significant to point out here is that, since Summorum Pontificum this particular rite has, de facto, received a more regular presence in the liturgical life of the Church. Moreover, the Church has also given additional space to the Prayers in contemporary liturgical rubrics, as it has done with the new liturgy for the Personal Ordinariates for former Anglicans.⁶

The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, therefore, are not a historical artifact. To the contrary, its current practice by Catholic ordained and faithful indicates, among other things, that its status as a locus theologicus cannot be completely ignored. Departing from the premise that the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar remain part of the liturgical heritage and practice of Christian worship, this article endeavors to explore the theological significance of this rite. The intention of the article is not to suggest ways by which the Prayers can be incorporated into the Ordinary Form. In this sense, the article is not programmatic. Nor is the article a technical study of the historical developments and mechanics of the rite.⁷ Rather, I will attempt to offer a theological reflection on the rite in itself, and argue that it is a privileged locus for mediating a mystery that remains relatively peripheral in the liturgical consciences of practicing Christians: namely the Ascension of our Lord.

I will proceed in three steps: first, by discussing the Ascension and its role in the economy of salvation and its theological significance for Christian life and worship; next, by addressing the way in which the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, as a rite, liturgically mediate the...