The Creed says of Christ and we confess  ”…and He ascended into heaven…”    It remains an important confession because its meaning has been so altered over time, altered as oddly as Salvador Dali’s famous 1958 portrayal of the event, entitled, “The Ascension of Christ.”  [pictured here.] 

Dali says that his “inspiration” for this painting came from a “cosmic dream” that he had in 1950.  That was eight years before he completed the painting.  In this dream he saw the nucleus of an atom which, he says,  represents the unifying spirit of Christ. 

I haven’t the slightest idea what a “cosmic dream” is and surely wouldn’t consider it to be divinely inspired like those of Jacob or Joseph in the Old Testament or like the foster-father of our Lord in the New.  But,  putting the best construction on Dali’s statement, one might interpret it to mean what St. Paul meant when, in Colossians 1:17, he says that “…in Him [Christ] all things hold together…”  He is, in that sense, the “unifying principle” of the entire universe, visible and invisible.   Christ, the Head of the Church [Col. 1:18] holding every created thing together.  Christ  ‘reconciling the whole world” unto His Father through His death and resurrection [Col.1:20] for the the sin which hurled humanity into the darkness of His absence [Col.1:13] and then ascending into Heaven from where He ‘holds all things together.’  

I’d like to think that Salvador Dali had this in mind when he painted “The Ascension of Christ.”  Of course, for Dali —like for so many other artists— there is often a more personal dimension to their paintings.  Where’s the personal in this painting?  Look at it again.  Do you know who is weeping above Christ?  It’s Gala.  Who is Gala?  That was the name that Dali gave his wife, a Russian divorcee named Elena Diakanova, a woman he had lived with for five years before marrying her in a civil ceremony, finally receiving a special dispensation from the Pope to be married to a divorcee in 1958, the year he completed painting ”The Ascension of Christ.”   Could it  be that Dali is saying that the ascending Christ had reconciled ‘all things’ to God the Father,  including he and Gala, the ‘love of his life.’ 

Whether this was Dali’s intent or not, I don’t know.  I would hope so, though there’s good reason to believe that he was quite caught up in mysticism as well and that he and his wife entertained some distinctly un-Christian ideas later in life.

Whatever, I prefer the other painting of the Ascension which is presented here.   It’s a 1520 painting by the late Renaissance artist Garofalo (1481-1559) who, in his last years, became blind.  How precious the memories of his paintings must have been to him…and what a blessing this painting and the more than  twenty-five others of Christ and His work have meant for millions who, in the words of the hymn writer Bede:    

You see Him now ascending high,   Up to the portals of the sky. Alleluia!                  

Hereafter Jesus you shall see,   Returning in great majesty! 

Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!