I used to think that when Jesus rose from the dead, he spent forty days hanging out with the disciples. Then someone asked "You don't think he took a room in town, do you?" Resurrection means that Jesus, body and soul, is in heaven. His rising and going to heaven happen at the same time.
For several weeks after Easter, however, the Risen Jesus appeared off and on to the disciples. It's as if he were making sure that they were ready to carry on his work without his visible presence. I had always thought of this in terms of making sure that they had learned enough of what he wanted them to teach. He promised the Holy Spirit to help them learn.
I had forgotten about love. Through these Resurrection appearances Jesus was weaning the disciples away from him. It just occurred to me today that maybe he himself also needed to be weaned away from them, that he wanted these weeks for himself as well. These were men and women that he had loved so much that maybe he too wanted some more time with them, doing the things that they used to do during his lifetime, dinners and a picnic on the shore.
The Holy Spirit, then, was most of all a love-gift. What we call the Ascension was the last time they would see Jesus and hear him, but through the Spirit Jesus would be able to live in love with them forever.
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