LAY DOMINICANS Central Province USA

This is a very interesting question which requires much thought, even after we have the answer!  Pope Benedict XVI has supplied us with the answer.  He writes, "The meaning of Christ's Ascension expresses our belief that in Christ the humanity that we all share has entered into the inner life of God in a new and hitherto unheard-of-way.  It means that man has found an everlasting place in God...We go to heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into Him."  Heaven is a person:  "Jesus Himself is what we call 'heaven'"  Ponder on this a while.

The second reading of the 'Office of Readings' for Ascension, a sermon by St. Augustine, further elucidates this.  "For just as He remained with us after His Ascension, so we too are already in heaven with Him...Out of compassion for us He descended from heaven, and although He ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in Him by grace...the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head."

Read further in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", sections 2794 &2795.

Amen.  

When you are considering a mystical topic, you often have to be more 'platonic' than 'aristotelian'.  Mystics (which we are all supposed to be striving to be) tend to be more poetical than prosian.  You must run with your imagination, suspending judgment, using what is popularly called 'the right side of the brain'. 

Consider the 2nd reading for Tuesday, seventh week of Easter, by St. Basil in a treatise On the Holy Spirit:  "Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven...we aquire a likeness to God;  indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations - we become God."