At Mass yesterday, after the singing of Mark’s Gospel, the Paschal Candle was quietly extinguished. Christ has ascended into Heaven, and the flame in the Sanctuary, which through the forty days since Easter had symbolized the presence of the Resurrected Lord upon this earth, itself “ascends.”
We would now be on our own — were it not that Christ remains throughout the Church He gave us, in the Sacrifice of the Mass, until His coming again.
This is the teaching, from the highest source, and it must never be confused or toyed with.
What the Bible teaches seems irrelevant to your average Catholic devotee, that Christ is present by the Spirit after the ascension, constituting the church by an indwelling, not by a rite. Take it or leave it, but that is the plain teaching from the highest source, and it must never be confused or toyed with if we are to remain faithful to the sources. Hence Protestantism.
And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
-- John 14:16ff.
