Assumption of Mary

I have been looking forward to the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary for a while. I’ve circled it on my calendar, dwelled on the mystery which it reveals and planned on fine drink for the feast. And what a feast it is! The Blessed Virgin is the exemplar follower of Christ, the pride of humanity and the greatest single created being in the universe. Her assumption, following Christ’s ascension, is a foreshadowing of all the saints of Christ’s Mystical Body. As a Protestant I never understood the idea behind Catholic feast days, veneration of the saints, and devotions to Mary. My question was not necessarily about its “intrinsic evil,” but more along the lines of “why bother?” For me, as a Protestant, Christ was the center and he alone. Everything else got in the way. Christ is the one mediator, not St. Thomas, St. Therese of Lisieux, certainly not the so called “Blessed Virgin Mary.” These stood in the way of Christ, hid him from view and shadowed his majesty as the King of Everlasting Glory. Or at least, so I thought. 

LEAVE NO TRACE

There are many holy relics of the saints. The heads, hands, arms, feet and blood of countless saints are scattered all over the Old World. St. Peter was buried underneath Vatican Hill over which, you guessed it, St. Peter’s Basilica was erected in the 4th century. St. John the Baptist was buried in Damascus, now interred in the Umayyad Mosque, which was converted from a Christian Basilica. The relics of St. James are in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, and St. Thomas is buried, as the Indian priest at the parish in Edisto Beach told me, in southeastern India in the city of Chennai. St. Francis’ is of Assisi, St. Martin’s of Tours, St. Denis’ of Saint-Denis. Just look up any cathedral in Europe and you are sure to find that it was built upon the the grave of the patron namesake. Who wouldn’t want a claim on the bones of St. Benedict or St. Anthony of Padua or the martyred body of St. Sebastian? The lance that pierced the side of Christ was believed to be found in a cave church at Antioch during the First Crusade, and there is enough pieces of the cross scattered around Europe—as someone joked somewhere—to reconstruct Noah’s Ark. As silly as it may sound to Protestants, these relics are important things to all faithful Catholics, and they have always been so. But it may be better served to get into this line of reasoning at a later time.

It is quite a peculiar thing, then, to note that there is no cathedral, basilica, or shrine of the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox or Anglican persuasion that is built over top the relics of the Virgin Mary. There is a Church of the Dormition (sleep), similar to that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord, but not over her body. No one claims her relics. No one—not even a finger or a lock of hair.

Now, I need not persuade anyone of the Catholic Church’s fondness of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You cannot go to any major city in the whole of western civilization and not find a St. Mary’s Church or ignore the fact that a bazillion Hail Marys have been recited since the 13th century. Mary is here to stay. So it must go without saying that not claiming the bones of so holy a saint, the Exemplar Saint in fact, would have been a gross oversight. That would have been an oversight of Maginot-Line–Munich-Agreement–Off-to-invade-Russia–Forgetting-to-lock-the-door-in-the-Siege-of-Constantinople–Sinking-of-the-Titanic proportions. And yes, the door was truly left unlocked. We are left to ask: “Why no relics?”

The Catholic Church teaches and believes to be revealed by God that our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” Whether she died, fell asleep, or that the apostles were stolen away by a whirlwind to her funeral is not what is important. The reality is that Mary, a humble Jewish woman born to Joachim and Anne in the 1st century B.C., was not to decay in a grave, but to be caught up immediately with her Lord and Son. The startling reality of this most beautiful dogma has ramifications for all the People of God.

ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST

During the reign of Caesar Augustus, in a small village in a far away outpost of the Roman Empire, the most amazing conversation was held by the two most unlikely beings—an angel of the highest rank and a teenage virgin of no esteem. The angel was of course Gabriel and the virgin was Mary. The archangel announces to Mary the divine plan: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you... you will conceive in your womb and bear a son... and he will be the Son of the Most High.” Mary responds and commences the redemption of all mankind: “Let it be done with me according to your word.” At that moment, as the Creed proclaims, “For us men and for our salvation, [the Son] came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” John announces this to us at the beginning of his Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” God, who seemed so distant, so far away, so aloof, has come to us.

Every human being craves for what is impossible to satisfy here on earth. We crave for the infinite. We crave for knowledge of everything, the ability to sense and feel one with anyone and anything, the bliss of perfect happiness, to be fully understood, freedom from constraint and sickness, and, most of all, eternal life. Like Adam, we want to be like God. We want to be gods. That desire is not evil. It was given to us all. We are Imago Dei. We are the supreme material creation in the universe. We have infinite souls that desire the infinite. And that thirst cannot be satisfied without an infinite solution. God is the the only solution to our divine inclinations. “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

The Catholic Church is built on the reality of the Incarnation of the Jesus Christ. The nature of the Church and the sacraments flow from this joining of God and Man. In the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, a famous phrase in the Exsultet reads: “O Felix Culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.” Translated: “O happy fault that merited so great a Redeemer!” St. Augustine states that “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” Through Adam’s sin greater joy will be had. What man had and lost—Original Justice and incorruptibility—is now surpassed by the coming of Christ. Adam wanted divinity and fell because he wanted it apart from God. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul, probably quoting early church liturgy, triumphantly states:

Though he was in the form of God,
Jesus did not count equality with God
something to be grasped at.

Rather, he emptied himself,
and took the form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of men.

He was known to be of human estate,
and it was thus that he humbled himself,
obediently accepting even death,
death on a cross!

Because of this,
God highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
above every other name,

So that at Jesus’ name
every knee must bend
in the heavens, on the earth,
and under the earth,
and every tongue proclaim
to the glory of God the Father:
JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!

In our hopelessness God condescended to us. He lowered himself to lift us up. The Creator of the universe, the immaterial, infinite and immutable being took on human flesh. The Creator and creation unite in the person of Jesus Christ. All his divinity, in its infinity, affects his entire creation. The things of God are now given to the things of men. Matter is sanctified. No longer is God so distant. He has become one of us. God now dwells among nature by taking on the flesh of a young Jewish woman.

The desire for the infinite is no longer a shadow and a dream but the light of true reality. God SHARES his divinity with humanity. St. Athanasius of Alexandria in his work On the Incarnation famously states that “God became man so that men might become gods!” He being God, lowers himself to become man. What he was, which is God, he retains, and what he was not, which is human, he assumes. The Nicene Creed proclaims that Jesus is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (of the same substance) with the Father.” Jesus shares God’s divinity and now by virtue of his assumed humanity, shares with us the blessedness of the divine. This is why we are a new creature. We are destined for the infinite, for the eternal beatitude.

The Church has always recognized the union of Jesus and Mary. What affects Jesus, in turn affects Mary. The Council of Ephesus recognized this when they concluded that Mary was rightly called the Theotokos—Mother of God, and not the Christotokos—Mother of Christ. She is connected to the person of Jesus, who is both God and Man, not just his human nature. Mary bore one person, not a human nature loosely connected to the Son of God. But Mary’s role is more than just the one who bore Jesus. For, if we dwell on that fact alone, how could we not realize that it would change the course of history forever?

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”

Familiar words to everyone. “Mary, full of grace.” Mary was indeed full of grace, for our Blessed Mother was to play an important role in the redemption of mankind. Through Eve, all of humanity fell from grace, but through the Blessed Virgin, we rise to newness of life everlasting. She bore the infinite in her womb. She participated in the redemption of the world through her obedience to God. Every step of the way, Mary freely chose to follow God, to raise the child Jesus, to hide his words and actions in her heart, to suffer with him through his Passion to the point of his death and to remain ever devoted, body and soul, to her Son and Savior. There is no one who knows our Lord like Mary, no one who is so intimately united to him both physically—his Mother—and spiritually—“Full of grace, the Lord is with you!” Our Mother was united to her Son in all things. She shows us what a follower of Jesus Christ looks like. She was the first and greatest follower of Jesus.

When, in the mysterious hours of the night, to which no man is a witness, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, rose from the dead, everything changed forever. By his death he brought an end to all death. “The Risen Lord has victoriously filled death with the only substance and intelligibility it can have: himself.” God triumphs in all things, even in death. “If I make my bed in sheol, you are there.” Death is defeated for mankind forever. “Oh death, where is your sting?” “The things are heaven are now wed with those of earth.” Jesus rose victorious from the grave for death could not contain him. The Catechism states: “The Father's power ‘raised up’ Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son's humanity, including his body, into the Trinity.” A human is seated at the right hand of the Father. A man is part of the glory of the Triune God.

At his Ascension, Christ triumphantly entered his proper dwelling, in full victory, possessing all glory and power and to live in reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit forever and ever. His ascension, though, is not for him alone. He condescended to lift us up. At baptism we are grafted into the Body of Christ, tending to perfection by his grace. It is not a metaphorical body, it is a real body, with Christ as the real head. And like a body, it is one. The ascension of Jesus of Nazareth is our hope:

You have raised us up with him:
     where he, the head, has preceded us in glory,
     there we, the body are called in hope.

In a sermon on Ascension Day, Augustine states:

“Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.”

THE ASSUMPTION

Unlike all other humans, Jesus’ humanity stems only from his mother. He was more like her, than any other son was like his mother. In the Paradiso of Dante's Divine Comedy, St. Bernard tells us to "see the face that is most like Christ's."  She completely shares her humanity with him, and so, in turn he completely shares his incorruptibility with her. Since she said “may it be done” she has shared in his destiny. She followed him back to Jerusalem in search of her twelve-year-old son to find him in the temple, she followed him along the Via Dolorosa bearing his cross, and suffered with him at the sight of his crucifixion. Mary cannot be separated from her son, and her Son would not have it any other way. She is forever united to Jesus Christ. Building on the tradition of the church, St John Damascene teaches us:

“It was necessary that she who had preserved her virginity
inviolate in childbirth should also have her body kept free
from all corruption after death;

It was necessary that she
who had carried the Creator as a child on her breast
should dwell in the tabernacles of God.

It was necessary that the bride espoused by the Father
should make her home in the bridal chambers of heaven.

It was necessary that she who had gazed on her crucified Son
and been pierced in the heart by the sword of sorrow
which she had escaped in giving him birth,
should contemplate him seated with the Father.

It was necessary that the Mother of God
should share the possessions of her Son,
and be venerated by every creature
as the Mother and handmaid of God.”

Mary is our hope. She shows us what is in store for us. She united herself to her Son and was elevated as the Queen of Heaven. She does not cloud the majesty of Christ, she magnifies it. “She is there to sit in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.” Her Assumption is our hope. “It shows us,” said Pope Benedict XVI, “in a brilliant way, our destiny and that of humanity and of history. In Mary, in fact, we contemplate that reality of glory to which each one of us and the entire church is called.”

__________________

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Amen.