An All-Too-Moveable Feast

We American Catholics are now in the post-Easter Season of the Bollixed Holy Days. One of them—occurring right around now—is the feast of Jesus's Ascension into Heaven, which, according to the New Testament's Acts of the Apostles, took place after He had spent “forty days” with His disciples following His resurrection from the dead, “being seen … and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” In longstanding Christian tradition, those forty days have meant, in both the Eastern and Western Christian churches, that the Feast of the Ascension is to be celebrated on the Thursday of the sixth week after Easter. So it has been in the Christian world since at least the late fourth century. Hence “Ascension Thursday,” the unofficial name for the day in English-speaking countries. And in the worldwide Latin church, Ascension Thursday is a “holy day of obligation,” meaning that Catholics must attend Mass on the day or risk grave sin.