Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The perspective of love seems most accurate if one wants to grasp the meaning of the mystery of Mary's Assumption. It all starts with the fact that Christianity - if we take it seriously - is one great thanksgiving for this Gift we have received from the Eternal Father in the person of Jesus Christ.
Let us think: Since the Son of God truly became one of us, Mary is absolutely the only human being of all the generations of mankind, whose life’s calling was motherhood to the Son of God. Many human generations have already passed through our earth. We do not know how many more generations will live on it. They are definitely billions, billions of people. Well, among these many billions of people there was not and will not be anyone who would have a vocation as sublime as Mary. Only she was called to be the mother of the Son of God and we rightly call her the Mother of God - because although she gave birth and raised the Son of God in his human nature, maternal service is directed towards the person of a child. The man Jesus Christ is the same divine person of the Son of God through whom the world was created. The one whom Mary gave birth in Bethlehem as one of us, is eternal and Almighty God, the only begotten Son of God. That is why in Mary we honor the Mother of God.
The truth about the Assumption of the Blessed Mother has many different dimensions. Now let us look at it as a particularly solemn message of the dignity of our bodies, as a particularly solemn reminder that “by offering your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (Rom 12: 1), we prepare them for the glorious resurrection.
Mary's Assumption completed her exaltation that began in God's eternity. God chose us all in Christ “before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him “(cf. Eph. 1: 4). God most certainly chose Mary for himself, because she, one of all generations and among many billions of people, was to become the Mother of the Son of God.
Let us think: Her body was to become the place where the Son of God accepted our humanity! In her body, the Son of God was to prepare for his human birth, she was to give birth to him, feed him with her own breast, carry him in her arms! This is why - because of this mission, unique in all human history - God made her holy and immaculate from the very first moment of her existence.
Because she was immaculate, her body has not suffered any of the humiliations our bodies are subjected to. Her body, her arms, legs and tongue were always and only instruments of good, never of evil. Her femininity was all virgin and filled with God's presence. All her fears, feelings and desires were beautiful and pure, filled with love for God and neighbor, permeated with unconditional and whole-person abandonment to Him who alone deserves to be entrusted completely to Him.
Yes, her body - like the body of her Son - suffered the effects of sin, but the sin of the world, our sin, not her own. Mary experienced the humiliation of poverty, she also experienced misfortunes in exile, and above all she was a painful witness and sharer in the rejection and suffering of her Son. We do not understand how terribly a Mother - such a Mother - must have suffered on Good Friday. One thing is certain: that Mary, completely devoted to God, passed through our world deformed by sin, that she also gave her body - the body that carried God's Son - to the Eternal Father, all holy and clean, not disfigured by anything that could displease God.
The Assumption, the salvation of soul and body, was the logical culmination of her motherhood and her devotion to God. At the same time, it is a sign of hope for us that all of us who strive to go through life, believing in the dignity of our bodies and in their future resurrection, will actually be resurrected. After all, our Lord is Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us. He certainly has the power and will to “change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body” (Phil. 3:21).
Our hope is enlivened and made concrete by the Assumption of Mary. And it encourages us to discover the dignity of our bodies every day and to regain it more and more fully.
After her death, Mary, with body and soul, found herself in heaven, because it was unacceptable that the body from which the body of the Son of God was taken, should remain in the tomb and suffer decay. At the same time, she was fully ripe for such a great exaltation, because she had lived through her life without sin and filled with love. In this way, she is a living guarantee that all of us who have hoped in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ will also be saved in our bodies, if only in this hope we will persevere to the end.
Anyone who can admire Mary's faith and love will necessarily want to follow her, imitate her total trust in God and total, unconditional love. After all, it was because Mary was completely filled with love that her body could also enter in heaven. Moreover, Mary's Assumption reminds us of the special dignity of our human body. Mary now, but someday all of us, if we only find ourselves in the group of the saved, we will be saved whole, also in our bodies. “The body, however, is not for immorality, but for the Lord," the Apostle Paul teaches. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? (cf. 1 Cor 6: 13-19).
In a world that is shaped as if God did not exist, the human body is humiliated not only by pornography, drunkenness, drug addiction, or various debauchery. Unfortunately - as evidenced by the ever-rising voices in favor of euthanasia - we see more and more contempt for the human body when it is sick, old or infirm.
Today we very much need a renewal of the Marian devotion. If we revive in ourselves the faith that Mary is already saved completely in her soul and body, perhaps our respect for our own body will be renewed in us, but also for the bodies of our neighbors. After all, our bodies - and not just our souls - are destined for eternal life!
Until Tomorrow
fr. george