Ascension Day
Easter as a specific annual festival was celebrated, almost from the beginning, for a period of fifty days. This is attested by writers in the second century. The church marked this period by standing for prayer and by a prohibition of any fasting. It was like a fifty day Sunday. The first week of this Easter period had assumed some importance by the fourth century. The closing of the fifty days of celebration was marked with a feast by the end of the third century. There are various references to the observance of the Day of Pentecost from the early fourth century. By that time, any connection with the Jewish festival of Pentecost, as a celebration of the wheat harvest, had been lost. Later in the fourth century, Egeria tells of the celebrations in Jerusalem to mark the end of the Easter festivities. The account from the Acts of the Apostles of the day of Pentecost was read in the morning, and in the afternoon everyone went to the Mount of Olives, where the story of the ascension was read.
Although Jerusalem clearly celebrated Pentecost and Ascension on the same day, other churches were already beginning to observe them after the pattern in Acts, that is, observing the Ascension on the fortieth day after Easter and Pentecost on the fiftieth. It is not clear exactly when Pentecost became the special feast of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and of the missionary task of the church, but there are references to those elements from the end of the fourth century. Also by then Pentecost was being recognized as a time for the baptism of those unable to attend the Easter baptisms. Attempts by bishops to confine baptisms to these two days became increasingly difficult with the growing prevalence of infant baptism in local churches.
Although the church has followed the pattern of the Acts of the Apostles in its formation of the Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost, the rest of the New Testament is much less inclined to distinguish the events from Easter itself either in time or in significance. In John’s Gospel there is no suggestion of an ascension separate from the resurrection, and the outpouring of the Spirit is a feature of the evening of the day of the resurrection (John 20:22). Paul makes no distinction between the resurrection of Jesus and his exaltation to heaven (e.g. Philippians 2:8,9), and no trace of such a distinction is to be found in the Letter to the Hebrews. It is not surprising, however, that the church has found Luke’s chronology to be a useful way of giving specific focus to the conclusion of the celebration of Easter.
For Liturgical Use
The early church wanted to savour the festival of Easter, and made it last for fifty days. That encouraged them to follow Luke’s account of events, in which the lordship of Christ is proclaimed by the description of his ascension in glory to reign over all things. The message of the Ascension is the exaltation of Christ.
Sentence, Prayers and Readings as in A New Zealand Prayer Book - He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, page 601-602.