Reflection on the Ascension

Jesus Ascended on a Cloud—The Mind-Blowing Secret No One Talks About | The Jimmy Akin Podcast
Jimmy Akin | 11 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgMt8lh0914

Jesus went to a place that is above the sphere of the Fix Stars (the latter probably one light day up, could be two light days) and like the Earth, unlike anything from Fix stars to Ocean streams, immobile.

That place has the same coordinates up there as Jerusalem here.

The voyage between upper atmosphere and that place would be intermediates where He was using immortality and therefore invulnerability.

"our knowledge ... is different from theirs"

Two people can have different degrees of knowledge of a topic. But a duly specified question, they cannot have different knowledge.

If two people think:

• exh A, Empyrean Heaven is above the fix stars, which are a sphere somewhere above that of Saturn (or of Pluto)
• exh B, fix stars or simply stars aren't in a sphere, like a shell, they are in a possibly somewhat spheric volume, with distances like 100,000 light years

then, at least one, possibly both, of the exhibits is doing sth else than knowing.

That one of them is (mostly) in the past doesn't change this.

3:49 Archimedes, two light years?

Is the subtitling automatic and automatically correcting "light days"?

I'd actually say, the space up to the fix stars is two light days across.

I looked up the Sand Reckoner. It seems Archimedes thought the distance up to the fix stars as being 10,000 times the radius of the earth, or in other words, the sphere of the fix stars has a diameter that's 10,000 times the diameter of the Earth.

A light day is 25,902,600,252 km, two light days are 51,805,200,504 km.

However, divide that by 10,000, you get 5,180,520 km. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km, c. 407 times shorter in one of the three dimensions.

Wait, I was not counting his universe beyond the sphere of the fix stars.

4:34 Wait.

Radiance seems to indicate the sphere of the fix stars or the Empyrean Heaven just beyond is 10 light days up, not just 1.

Ascension to Pentecost, He arrives in Heaven and sends the Holy Ghost, Who, being immaterial, has no travel time.

If my "one light day" had been correct (it could still be correct for creation week, just no longer for Ascension), then He would have ascended 1/10 the speed of light.

However, since Hebrews 1:3 calls Him the radiance, that would indicate He ascended the exact speed of light. Meaning the travel distance was 10 light days.

5:27 You are aware Hubble's "discovery" builds on accepting things like Sirius being 8 light years away, which builds on accepting the parallax measure of 0.35 sth arc seconds as a parallactic indirect view of Earths own supposed movement in the distance of 2 Astronomic Units?

In other words, if Galileo was wrong, so was Hubble.

6:55 "Spiritual realm rather than a physical one."

Jesus still has the same body He rose in. It's a physical body, that could eat fish and show forth the wounds, since it's the same body He was born and died in. Ave Verum Corpus natum would make no sense on some Evangelical theory of Jesus now having an "entirely spiritual resurrection body" ... which I think was condemned in the IV Lateran council, the explanatory creed Firmiter credimus.

Given Jesus has a physical body, He has physical dimensions. Given He has physical dimensions, they are in a physical place.

And as we also believe Mary is up there (see last or upcoming August 15th), physically risen, there are right now at least two human living bodies that obviously need physical dimensions around them.

So, as a Catholic, I definitely wouldn't go to "Spiritual realm rather than a physical one." I heard one of the Vatican II "Popes" held such an opinion, I'm not invoking him either as a saint in Heaven, nor as an authority on Earth.

7:21 These bodies are extended in three dimensions.

If you read up the Eucharist in the Summa, on an Altar, Christ's body is present under the dimensions of bread and wine.

The own dimensions are present with Him, but not touching the surrounding space. However, there is a place where He is present in His own dimensions, that being Heaven.

9:33 "this humanity meanwhile hides him from the eyes of men"

Not from the eyes of Mary.

9:58 "which was pictured as being up from an earthly perspective"

What was the worst word in that sentence, especially as to time form or tense?

I'd say, "which is up" (and leave "from an earthly perspective" understood).

Seriously, what God communicated then cannot be improved on. Not from new revelation. Not from new science.