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.

Homily for Wednesday, 12 July 2017– Ferial

Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 41:55-57, 42:5-7a, 17-24a; Psalm 33:2-3, 10-11, 18-19; Matthew 10:1-7

Has anybody here ever seen a real shepherd? Today as well as yesterday, in Matthew’s Gospel we hear Jesus using the image of a shepherd to describe his own ministry; his activity, as well as, in the case of today’s Gospel reading, that of his Apostles. After choosing his twelve Apostles by name, Jesus sends them out with these instructions: “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Living and worshipping as we are in the middle of a major city like Edmonton, the image of a shepherd that Jesus offers of himself and his Apostles may not resonate with us, unless we have had past experience on a farm with sheep or other livestock. Few of us have likely had this experience.

Yet we still speak fairly commonly in English in shepherding metaphors. We have phrases like “the black sheep” to describe somebody who does not fit into a community, a family, or other social group. And in our Gospel reading today Jesus speaks of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Why does Jesus, according to Matthew, restrict his Apostles from ministering among the pagans or Samaritans, asking them to “go… to the lost sheep of Israel” only? This is hard to say. I speculate that perhaps Jesus knows the risk of his Apostles; those who minister in his name taking on more in their ministry than they could reasonably handle. Jesus asks his Apostles; asks us to remain focused in our mission. This mission we are given is to contribute to God’s work of salvation in our little corner of the universe, and to trust that our contribution, small though it may be, means something, and that ultimately it is Jesus Christ, not us, who is the Saviour of this universe.

To minister among “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” is still a fairly daunting mission, though, even if we stay focused on our little part of God’s universal mission of salvation as Jesus asks us to do. Who are “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; of our communities, our households, our Church today? Are each of us not in part shepherds after Jesus Christ and his Apostles, and also at times “the lost sheep”?

Could we not all think of somebody we know, if not ourselves, who struggle with their faith? Perhaps we know somebody does not believe or does not even understand well in order to live a difficult moral teaching of our faith. These are the people whom Jesus asks us to find and, in Pope Francis’ oft-used words, to accompany. May we not shut sinners out of the Church and out of access to God’s grace through the sacraments!

“Go rather to the lost sheep.” In a beautiful reflection on the Fall event in Genesis 3, Jean Vanier once remarked that God’s first words to Adam and Eve after they eat the forbidden fruit are not, “You’re bad,” but “Where are you”? Our mission to find and accompany the lost sheep means to ask this same question of one another that God has been asking us since the beginning, “Where are you”? It is in answering this question, in finding and accompanying the lost sheep, that we will be saved.

Homily for Saturday, 29 November 2014– Ferial

Saturday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 22:1-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 3-5, 6-7ab (R: see Revelation 22:20c); Luke 21:34-36

“Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!” This Aramaic then English response to our Psalm is not actually from the Psalms. It is the next-to-last verse of the Book of Revelation, following what we have heard today, also from Revelation, in our first reading. Clearly these are words of anticipation of the Lord’s return in glory. Would this response, “Marana tha, Come, Lord Jesus,” not fit best with our season of Advent, which we begin this evening?

Why do we have this anticipation of Advent? Why this prayer, “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus”? It is a very ancient Christian prayer, going back to the earliest Church. It is a prayer for the end times; for Jesus to return in glory. It was originally a plea to Jesus in a time of crisis and persecution of the first Christians. How might we make this our prayer; how might “Marana tha! Come Lord Jesus” become more real to us in our social context, as Christians in 2014?

Would this prayer become more real to us if we were to think of it not only as calling to mind the end times; Jesus’ return in glory (which it does), but also as drawing us back to our beginning; to creation; to our re-creation as daughters and sons of Christ in baptism?

The Book of Revelation, for all its strange imagery, is all about God’s act and our cooperation in this act of re-creation. It is no accident that John’s last vision in Revelation, the river flowing in all directions from the tree of life, “serving as medicine for the nations,” recalls the paradise of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The river and the tree of life in Revelation are a reversal of sin; of the Fall of Adam and Eve and the confusion of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. They are images of restoration; of re-creation.

When in our lives have we experienced restoration; re-creation; total freedom from the Fall (or, as many call it, Original Sin)? We experience this act of restoration; re-creation; total freedom from sin not first as an end, but as a beginning, in our baptism. We experience this again and again in the other sacraments, especially in our Eucharist, in reconciliation (a kind of “second baptism”), and in the anointing of the sick. We experience this continually as “medicine for” individual souls; “medicine for the nations.” Our lives as Christians are a continual experience of restoration; re-creation; freedom from sin. From our baptism to our death and entry into eternal life; from beginning to end, our lives are a continual experience of “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Our Scriptures, too, are our continual experience of God among us, from creation to re-creation; from the river and the tree of life in Eden to the river and the tree of life in John’s vision in Revelation; from “in the beginning,” the words in Genesis that introduce God’s creation of the universe, to a new beginning that we anticipate in Jesus’ return in glory. “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”