Homily for Thursday, 15 August 2019– Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

Thursday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel, St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

My sisters and brothers, today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul into heaven. But do we really celebrate Mary on this day?

Let me offer a “yes, but” answer to my own question here. I was not about to scandalize us by saying that we do not in fact celebrate Mary on this Solemnity of her Assumption. Yet, if I dare say, there is more to this celebration of Mary’s Assumption than a celebration of a woman being taken up body and soul into heaven, in a way that might conjure some almost fanciful images in our minds if we think about it long enough: How is somebody taken, body and soul, into heaven?

There have been many artistic representations of Mary’s Assumption, but none, as beautiful as they are, quite do the event justice. Even one of my favourite depictions of the Assumption of Mary, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, draws on imagery from our reading from Revelation today and a superimposition of Mary on the mythical woman God promises to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, who will crush the serpent’s head and so remit the sin introduced into the world in the Fall of Adam and Eve. Our Lady of Guadalupe is surrounded by twelve stars. She stands above the earth and heavens, on the crushed head of a snake, and she is supported by St. Juan Diego, who experienced this vision of Mary, clothed also in a tilma, an Aztec garment made from cactus fibre and overflowing with roses.

I suppose it is easy enough to depict, in art or icons, a beautiful woman ascending bodily into heaven. But how would we depict a soul? This is impossible, because a soul is not visible to our senses. How do we distinguish an ascension to heaven, like that of Jesus, from an assumption, like that of Mary? Why celebrate the Assumption of Mary anyway, since this event is mentioned nowhere in the Bible (but it is, from not long after the writing of the last books of the New Testament, mentioned in writings that reflect the beliefs of the earliest Christians)?

These are all wonderful questions but, first of all, I think the difficulty we have in answering them points to the Assumption of Mary as mystery. Second, do all these questions and all of our imperfect ways, even the most beautiful ones, of depicting the Assumption of Mary, not miss a very important point about why we celebrate this Solemnity as Church?

This important point, I think, is that the Assumption of Mary is less about Mary, as important as she is as Mother of God and model of the Church and all, and more about God and about us. What do I mean by this? Mary’s Assumption is not so much a form of witness to Mary’s own power but to God’s power to work through Mary to make her the ideal mother of God’s own Son made human, Jesus Christ. Our readings today give this due praise to God. 1 Corinthians says that Jesus is the only way to the destruction of death, and so eternal life. Mary herself, as well as Elizabeth before her, also praise God, Mary through her Magnificat—“My soul magnifies the Lord”—and Elizabeth through her recognition that Mary is “the mother of my Lord”; of our Lord.

Mary, uniquely in history, has been raised to heaven body and soul by God immediately after her earthly life ended. But we, too, await not only an ascension to heaven of our souls when we die, but of our bodies, too, between now and the end of time. So we pray, especially when we pray the Apostles’ Creed, that we believe “in the resurrection of the body.” The gift Mary receives in being raised body and soul to heaven immediately is a gift we will receive, too, only in a more deferred way.

But Mary’s Assumption is nonetheless the great witness to the power of God over death itself, and to the promise of eternal life, body and soul, that awaits us and that we celebrate here and now.