“For when the holy women in the gospel history had announced to the disciples that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, that the body was not in the sepulchre, and that angels bore witness that the Lord was alive, their words seemed to the apostles and disciples as idle tales; and surely this uncertainty would in nowise be allowed by the Spirit of Truth to exist in the hearts of his preachers, unless their trembling anxiety and inquiring hesitation had laid the foundation of our faith. It was for our perturbations and our dangers that provision was being made in the case of the apostles; we, in them, were being instructed against the calumnies of the impious, and against the triumphs of the world’s wisdom; we have been taught by their seeing, we have heard by their hearing. Let us give thanks to the Divine Providence, and to that necessary tardiness of our holy fathers. Doubts were felt by them, that no doubts might be felt by us. “Those days, dearly beloved, between the Resurrection and the Ascension did not pass away in an inactive course; but in them great and sacred truths were confirmed, great mysteries were revealed. To the Magdalene He said, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father;’ that is, ‘I will not have thee come to Me corporeally, to recognize Me by the sensations of the flesh; I am putting thee off to something loftier, I am preparing thee for something greater. When I shall have ascended to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and more truly, being about to apprehend what thou touchest not, and to believe what thou seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the majesty of the Father, He began in an ineffable manner to be more present in His Divinity. And a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it was, when, in the presence of that holy multitude, the nature of manhood was ascending above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic ranks, and to be elevated above the high seats of the archangels; and not to let any degree of loftiness be a limit to its advancement, until it should be received to sit down with the Eternal Father, and associated in the throne with His glory, to Whose nature it is united in the Son. Since then Christ’s Ascension is our advancement, and whither the glory of the Head is gone before, thither is it the hope of the body to be summoned, let us, dearly beloved, exult with befitting joys and devout thanksgiving. For to-day have we not only been confirmed in the possession of Paradise, but in Christ we have penetrated to the heights of Heaven, having won through the unspeakable grace of Christ nobler gifts than we had lost through the wiles of the devil.