Good morning:
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. So on this feast it might be fitting to
reflect on her life and her message for us.
Our tradition teaches that after her earthly life was
over, Mary was assumed bodily into heaven.
Tradition says that after her death her body disappeared,
in fact some early Christian writings say that Mary died and was buried in a
site near Gethsemane, and, in fact, there is a Greek Orthodox Church near
Gethsemane where it is claimed Mary’s body was placed. A more modern tradition
is that Mary spent the last part of her life in Ephesus in Turkey, and died
there.
In any event, the process of her death and assumption was
known as “the Dormation of Mary” which conveys the idea of “the sleep of Mary,”
the idea that Mary fell asleep; that she died.
But in the early 1950s when Pius XII officially
proclaimed the doctrine of the Assumption, he stated only that “after her
earthly life was over” she was assumed into heaven, leaving open the
possibility that Mary was never required to suffer death. And we could easily
understand that the Woman who bore the Christ-child not only was immaculately
concerted – that is without original sin – but could easily have been spared
physical death by her Heavenly Father.
There is a lot that can be said about our Holy Mother,
and a lot of interpretation from Scripture gives rise to numerous other ideas
about her. Take our First Reading today in which is described “a woman clothed
with the sun.” The woman is about to give birth and the dragon is waiting to
devour her child … a male child … following which she then had to flee into the
desert.
Most of us think of the woman as Mary, and, in fact, that
is a good interpretation of the passage and was the interpretation popular from
medieval times. However there are a couple of other interpretations that have
found favor with some theologians. One is that the woman represents Old Israel,
the nation from which the Messiah came. It is suggested that the author of
Revelation was not seeing Mary but Israel waiting for the coming of the
promised Messiah. Another is that the woman represents the Church, the New
Israel, and the mother of the faithful.
Yet there is one thing that stands out to me, the Woman
“wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.” Now, in Genesis God is
punishing Eve for her disobedience telling her, “I will intensify the pangs of
your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.” Now since Mary was
free from Original Sin you would think that the birth of Our Savior would have
been painless.
These are just a few bits and pieces of Mary’s life that
I hope will raise you curiosity about her and perhaps start you to study her
life and the message. And when you do you
will find that she not only teaches us by her example, but by her words as
well.
The first lesson we learn about her is that she was
humble before God and surrendered herself to him completely, “let it be done to
me according to your word,” she told the angel and you can see throughout
Scripture how she lived that surrender: Simon told her that her soul would be
pierced with sorrow, she frantically sought the young Jesus when he was lost
for three days, and committed to her total surrender when he said that he had
to be about his Father’s business.
One way for us to imitate Mary’s complete surrender is
through her oft repeated messages that were contained in many of her
apparitions. And it was through those apparitions that she taught us in the
only way the Mother of God could.
For example, during her appearance to St. Catherine
Laboure in 1830 she asked St. Catherine to have medal struck in her honor on
which was to be a depiction of Mary as she appeared to St. Catherine with rays
of light streaming from many of her fingers. Catherine asked Mary why light was
not streaming from all of her fingers.
Mary’s response was, “These rays symbolize the graces I
shed upon those who asked for them. The gems from which rays do not fall are
the graces for which souls forget to ask.”
The message, of course, is an
invitation to ask our Holy Mother for the graces we need to live a more devout
life.
In several other apparitions she begged us to do penance,
and to pray for sinners. The conversion of sinners was paramount to her, and
she continues to speak of the value of penance and prayer for the conversion of
all.
However, for most of us we tend to think of Mary as she is in today’s celebration: the Glorious
Mary; the Mary of Guadalupe, the healing waters of Lourdes, or the miracle of
the sun at Fatima. But what we often
times don’t realize that she was human, just like us. Yet she had an unusual
faith in the Word of God, and perhaps this is the best lesson she can give to
us.
If
you take a look on the west wall you’ll see what I mean. There you will find probably the saddest
point in our redemptive history. Station
Four: Jesus meets his mother.
Think about that meeting. Jesus, beaten, humiliated, and under a death sentence meets his mother. He knew that in a few hours they would kill him, but I suspect this was his worst moment; for the beatings, the scourging, the piercings would not compare to the tears he saw in his mother’s eyes.
And
Mary, can you imagine what was going through her mind? Isn’t this the child that the angel told her
would sit on the throne of David – whose kingdom would not end? And now look at him. Betrayed by a disciple, abandoned by all,
save young John and a few women, he was being led to a criminal’s death by a
band of roguish soldiers at the behest of their Jewish community.
If there was time for despair; if there was time to question God, for Mary it was then.
Yet despite what she saw she did not abandon hope, she did not despair, she did not falter in her faith. As hard as it was for her, we find her following her Son, and the Cross of our Salvation, to Calvary.
She followed, station after station, she saw Simon carry the cross, Veronica wiping His face, Jesus falling two more times, her Son being stripped of his clothing and nailed to the cross: She saw it all, and throughout all, she remained faithful. And at the end, she could be found at the foot of His cross.
I think we can learn a lot from that. Today, we are all confronted with challenges when things just don’t go right; things and events that can shake our faith; that can cause us to question our basic assumptions about God and the Church.
And it’s all around us today; not only in our personal lives, but in the public arena. Our secular world is ready to crucify Christ again. It rejects faith, prayer, and values just as the Pharisees rejected Jesus 2,000 years ago. It rejects our spiritual heritage in favor of a worldly view that puts man – not God – at the center of the universe.
Just as Mary watched Christ stumble in the streets of Jerusalem, we are today watching – as the Prophet Isaiah once described – truth stumbling in the public square.
Like
Mary we’re being called to reject the crowd and follow the cross. And if we do so; if at the end we are found –
like Mary – at the foot of the cross, then we too will experience the glory of
our own resurrection; to join with Mary – and the faithful who preceded us – in
the home our Heavenly Father who has, as Mary quite rightfully put it:
“remembered His promise of mercy, the promise He made to our fathers, to
Abraham and his children forever.”
Let us close as we should begin each day, with the prayer of the Miraculous Medal, the medal that Mary asked St. Catherine Laboure to have struck:
“O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
St. Augustin Parish, Des Moines, Iowa August 15, 2021
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