What do you do after witnessing a miracle?

            Do you pick up the phone or jump onto Facebook to tell all your friends? Do you sit down and take detailed notes on the experience, to be able to study the new phenomenon? Or, do you contact the National Enquirer or some reality TV show and ask them to make you an exclusive offer for the rights to your story?

            If you’re one of the apostles of Jesus Christ, what you do is start praying. That’s what we read in Acts 1:14: “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer ....”

            These people have just witnessed the ascension of Jesus. Imagine what a wonder that must have been! Jesus had been hinting to them all along that things were going to end in some spectacular way, but they had no idea it was going to be like this.

            We don’t know exactly what it is those early believers witnessed at the Ascension. They described it as their Lord rising up into the air on his way to heaven. It’s an understanding of the universe that locates heaven somewhere “up there,” above the clouds, quite different from our own, “out there” understanding of outer space. More likely, what they experienced was something so wondrous, it can’t fully be put into words. They described it the best way they knew how.

            From a spiritual point of view, we can still imagine what a thrill it must have been to see their Lord and Master — whom they’d already seen miraculously return from the grave — enter into heaven before their very eyes.

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