Catholics recently celebrated Ascension Day to remember Jesus’ final meeting with the Apostles before he left Earth to be at the right hand of his father.

“The Ascension is a beautiful mystery of our faith,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York said in a recent tweet. “Today I want to share a fourth lesson with you that we can learn from it.” 

His tweet included a short video in which Dolan revealed four practical lessons associated with the Ascension. The fourth one is where the Apostles prayed for the gift of the Holy Spirit, an effort that was rewarded on the Pentecost, which is coming up Sunday.

Ascension Day, or the Feast of the Ascension, is an annual observance that takes place 40 days after Easter. The day marks the event in which Jesus, on the 40th day after his Resurrection, led his disciples to the Mount of Olives. Once there, he ascended into heaven, marking his permanent departure from Earth, The Pillar reported. This year, Ascension Day took place on Thursday, though many dioceses across the United States celebrated on Sunday in conjunction with a change in the Church. 

Dioceses across the country observe Ascension Day on the actual 40th day after Easter, a Thursday, or the following Sunday. In certain U.S. states like Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and others, Catholics celebrate on Thursday. However, in the rest of the U.S., the feast is celebrated on Sunday, and attending Mass on Thursday is not obligatory. The different days of celebration are associated with a November 1998 action in which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved a plan to allow individual ecclesiastical provinces to move the liturgical observance from Thursday to Sunday, provided it received the approval of two-thirds of the voting bishops, The Pillar report said.

Ascension Day is celebrated with a Mass, processions, hymns, prayer, and more. Around the world, the faithful have localized the celebration. For example, the faithful seek luck in bird songs during sunrise in Sweden, the Welsh faithful abstain from work, the Portuguese keep wheat in the house to represent prosperity, and Indonesia has declared the day a public holiday, National Today said in a report. 

"With the Ascension, something new and beautiful happened: Jesus brought our humanity into heaven, that is, in God," Pope Francis said in a tweet put out on Sunday. "That humanity that he had assumed on earth did not remain here. It ascended into God and there it will remain forever.”