The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I think for a good many people the time that has passed now since the death of Pope Paul [August 6, 1978], has been a time for some real reflecting on some of the changes that have taken place in the Church over the past 10 or 15 years. Certainly none of these have been essential changes. We still celebrate the same basic articles of faith that Catholics have celebrated for 2000 years... But there is no doubt but what there have been shifts in attitude, in emphasis, that have given in some cases, quite a different flavor to the quality of our faith.

And I think the Pope's funeral ceremony itself is about as good an example as can be found of at least one such shift. What a change we saw in the quality of that ritual. It was virtually free of any hint of mourning, or despair, there was not at all any sense of tragedy. The Pope's funeral, as is the funeral of any Catholic, was a joyful thing, it was a liturgical celebration of new life, the opening ceremony, in a way, of the resurrection that is yet to come. And that does represent a shift in attitude... not necessarily a shift to anything new, but a shift back, a return to an earlier, healthier, and more Christian way of viewing death. A return to seeing death as the end of one way of life, and the beginning of another, but no more than that, certainly not as an end to life itself. For a believer, death is a stage of growth, a process by which the person is opened up to a fuller, more effective participation in human nature. There is a sense of continuity, not so much a matter of living till we die, and then starting over in some sort of shadow world, but rather a matter of living through the experience of death, and continuing in to a fullness, a completeness to ourselves as individuals, and to our relationship with God and with other human beings.

I said that this represents a return to an earlier attitude. And that is true, really. We find this positive attitude toward human immortality reflected in the earliest thinking of the Church... in the earliest art of the Church, found in the catacombs, and in some of the most basic, central, articles of faith, of the creed, doctrines which have remained unchanged for 2000 years, and will remain so forever.

I suppose the first promise, the first sign of true human immortality was the resurrection of Christ Himself. His resurrection was no mere spiritual renewal, His appearances no momentary visions of some pure spirit taking human form. It was really Him, in the flesh. At His birth, Christ had become human, and to be human means to be physical, forever, for eternity. Christ's body, as is true of any human body was no mere accidental addition to his soul. It was Him, it was, and is, a part of what He is as a human being.

But somehow, what happens to Christ is to easily removed in our imagination from what happens to us. Christ after all was God, and we are not. How can we expect His lot to be ours? And so almost as if to even more dramatically and convincingly drive home His teaching on the personal, fully human immortality of each one of us, Christ again chose to use Mary, as He had chosen before, to be a model, an example not only for the rest of the Church, but of the rest of the Church. He granted to her, before the normal course of time, the fullest participation in immortality. He took her physically, body and soul out of the world of time, and brought her physically, body and soul into the company of the Father. It is this that we celebrate today on this feast of the Assumption of Mary. The fact that Christ returned her to physical existence in immortality, before her time. And that is the emphasis... before her time. The only thing unusual about the Assumption of Mary, the only thing that separates her continued physical existence after death from our own, is that her's happened earlier than normal. For our part, we will have to do some waiting for the fullness of our immortality. We will be restored to a full and perfect human condition, not individually, as we die, but collectively, as a Church, as a people. God's first call, after all, is given to a people, not to a series of isolated individuals. And when mankind is ready to respond as a people, when human society has been made perfect in faith and in love, when we reach together that point which we call for lack of something more descriptive, the end of the world, then we shall each of us, in company with the whole Church, the whole body of believers, be restored to the fullness of human immortality.

So more than simply a miraculous reward for her own virtue, Mary's life, in this as in everything, was a paradigm, a sign of the Church's own growth. She is given to us not simply for our edification, but for our imitation. Mary is not simply an example for the Church, she is a member of it, and through her, Christ describes us.

We live in an age which seems, in a great many ways to have lost sight of the sacredness of the body. Or perhaps better to say, an age which has lost sight of the divinely integral bond between body and soul. In fact even using those two words, as though they stood for two separate things, is misleading. A human being is not two things, he is just one, a human being, one creature which is at the same time physical and non-physical. And anything we might do to deny that integrity, to emphasize or glorify the one at the expense of the other, is inherently destructive. And yet in so many ways we do just that. We pamper, and nurture, and care for our bodies, give in to every demand they make of us, sometimes at great spiritual expense. Never in the history of mankind has medicine been able to bring to bear such sophisticated and complex tools for the healing of the body. We literally flee from even the idea of pain, of physical discomfort and disintegration, as though that's all there was to life. Its commonplace for hospitals to go to obscenely exacerbated lengths to maintain bodily function, seemingly losing sight completely of the fact that there is more than a body tied to all those tubes and bottles and pumps. There is a human being there, who deserves better treatment than that. And if this particular form of physicalness fails, as it certainly will, it doesn't really matter all that much. There is so much more to come.

But certainly, our greater failing in the respect due to human integrity is not in an inordinate care for the body. Quite the opposite. By far our greater failing is in the horribly destructive and abusive things we do to human bodies. We kill them. On highways, on battlefields, in abortion clinics. We starve them, we batter them with a thousand drugs, we cheapen and abuse them in a selfish, pornographic sensuality.

We cannot love and respect, and honor a person, unless we love and respect and honor the body of that person. No one of us is separable from our flesh. Mary teaches us that today. From the moment of our conception, God intended that each of us grace His presence body and soul, physically and spiritually.

So. The next time you pass a mirror, or even as a substitute for your mental prayer one day, stop in front of a mirror, and look at yourself. See what a divinely beautiful creature you are. Look at the people sitting around you, and reflect on how divinely beautiful they are. After all, the first meaning in Scripture for the word grace, is literally graciousness, charm, attractiveness, beauty.

Realize that just what you see in that mirror is called by God to one day grace His presence. We each of us, just as was Mary whom God called full of grace, we each of us are called to conduct ourselves in a physical world, with care, and with dignity and with respect. We must grant it to others, and we must demand it for ourselves. Because of the Assumption of Mary, we know that we are immortal creatures, fully and forever human.

Readings: Revelations 11:19, 12:1-6, 10; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56. The homily was preached on Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, August 15, 1978.