Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Blessed Virgin Mary

  • The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    On this, the octave day of the Assumption of Mary, we celebrate another great Marian event, the memorial of the Queenship of Mary. Today we celebrate the fifth glorious mystery of the rosary: Mary is crowned Queen of heaven and earth. The Queenship of Mary has been celebrated ever since Venerable Pope Pius XII instituted this celebration in 1954. But the feast itself is rooted in Sacred Scripture. In the Old Testament, the mothers of the king had great influence in court. Certainly this would be the case between Mary and Jesus; we know that Mary’s intercession is a powerful force for our good. The Queenship of Mary, though, is most properly understood as a sharing in the Kingship of Christ the King. St. Paul speaks of the crown that awaited him after a long life, filled with fighting the good fight. And we know that that same crown – the crown that comes from Christ himself – awaits all who believe in Jesus and live lives of faith.


    The origin of Mary’s crown, I think, can be seen at the very end of today’s Gospel reading. Having heard the overwhelming news from the angel Gabriel, Mary responds in faith: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Her faith, a faith that responded to the Lord’s call even though the details were not clear, is the kind of faith we’re all called to model. This kind of faith responds to God’s movement with absolute trust in his providence. Mary models that kind of response for us, and perhaps her reward, too, is a model of what we can hope to receive. Just as she responded in faith and was rewarded with a crown of glory, so we too can hope to have the same crown if we live the kind of faith she did.

    And that’s the goal of our spiritual lives, brothers and sisters. We are to discern God’s call and respond with faith that leaves the details to God alone. Mary is always the model for us. She paves the way to living the Gospel as we are all called to do. But Mary is also the intercessor for us. She knew the difficulties and the sorrows that taking up the cross of the Gospel means for us, so we can depend on her intercession to help us through it. So on this feast day of her crowning, may we all look at our own calls in this life, and respond with her fiat: “Let it be done for me according to your word.”

  • The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    Today’s Gospel story is a fitting one, I think, for this celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  The evangelist tells us that Mary’s heart was filled with wonder.  There are a few stories in the Gospels that end with that wonderful line: “and his mother kept all these things in her heart.”  I think the moms here can understand the sentiment of these lines.  I think any mother is amazed at the things their children learn to do, but Mary’s wonderment goes beyond even that: she is amazed at the coming of age of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.  She knew her child would be special, and when you read these stories you can just imagine how astounded she is at times.  Her heart was filled with wonder.

    At other places in the Gospel, I imagine her heart is filled with fear.  She began to see, I am sure, that the wonderful things her son was doing were not universally appreciated.  She must have known that the authorities were displeased and were plotting against him.  She probably worried that he would be in danger, which of course he was.  Her heart was filled with fear.

    Toward the end of the Gospel, her heart is certainly filled with sorrow.  As she stood at the foot of the cross, her son, the love of her life, is put to death.  The Stabat Materhymn calls that well to mind: “At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus at the last.”  The prophet Simeon had foretold her sorrow when she and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple.  Her heart was filled with sorrow.

    At the end of the Gospel, her heart must have been filled with joy.  Jesus’ death was not the end of the story.  Not only did his life not end at the grave, now the power of the grave is smashed to oblivion by the power of the resurrection.  In those first hours after his resurrection, she shared the joy of the other women and the disciples.  Her heart was filled with joy.

    And as the community went forward in the book of Acts to preach the Good News and to make the Gospel known to every corner of the world, Mary’s heart was filled with love.  That love that she had for her son, that love that she received from God, she now shared as the first of the disciples.  Her place in the community was an honored one, but one that she took up with great passion.  Her heart was filled with love.

    For us, perhaps, the best news is that, through it all, her heart was always filled with faith. That faith allowed her to respond to God’s call through the angel Gabriel with fiat: “let it be done to me according to your word.” Because of Mary’s faith, the unfolding of God’s plan for the salvation of every person came to fruition. We are here this morning, to some extent because of her faith, that faith that allowed her to experience the wonder, sustained her through fear and sorrow, and brought life to the joy and love she experienced. She kept all these things in her heart, that heart that was always filled with faith.

  • Mary, Mother of the Church / Memorial Day

    Mary, Mother of the Church / Memorial Day

    Today’s readings

    This morning’s celebration has us gathering to celebrate two important moments.  The first is the Church’s celebration of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, and the second, of course, is our nation’s remembrance of Memorial Day.

    The Church celebrates the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, each year on the day after Pentecost.  It’s a relatively new feast for us, because Pope Francis extended this feast to the Universal Church in 2018.  Before that, it had a long history in Poland, and it was Saint John Paul II who commissioned a mosaic of Mary, Mother of the Church, at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

    The image of Mary, Mother of the Church, has its origins in the Gospels, and in Sacred Tradition.  At the foot of the Cross, Jesus commended Saint John to Mary as his mother, and her to Saint John as her son.  The Church has seen this as Mary welcoming all members of the Church in the person of Saint John, and relating to them as mother.  This gives strength to the Tradition that since Mary is the Mother of Jesus, the head of the Body, so she is also the mother of the members of that same Body.

    Mary also prayed with the disciples in the Upper Room for the coming of the Holy Spirit, and as the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, she became the mother of the emerging Church.

    Memorial Day originally began in our country as an occasion to remember and decorate the graves of the soldiers who died in the Civil War.  Later it became a holiday to commemorate all those who had died in war in the service of our country.  So today we remember those men and women who have given their lives for peace, justice, righteousness, and freedom.  These have been people who have given everything, have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.  It’s important that we take time to reflect on the freedom we have received from their sacrifice, because I think we often forget it or at least take it for granted.  They lived lives of real freedom, and so must we in our own way.  Real freedom is expressed in service, in our making the world, or at least our corner of it, a better place.  Real freedom is living in such a way that we become the person God created us to be.

    Today we pray for those courageous men and women who have made that ultimate sacrifice to keep the world safe, and free.  These are the ones who have been people of faith and integrity and are true heroes that God has given us. These are the ones who have laid down their lives for what is right.  If we would honor them on this Memorial Day, we should believe as they have believed, we should live as they have lived, and we should rejoice that their memory points us to our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is our hope of eternal life.

    Today’s Gospel has Jesus showing us the way for all of this.  Giving his own mother to be our mother, the Mother of the Church, he shows that the members of the Church must lay down their lives if the Church is to make an impact in the world.  Those who gave their lives in the service of our country did that in their way, and we are called to do that in our way too.

  • Our Lady of Lourdes

    Our Lady of Lourdes

    Bernadette Soubirous was a sickly young woman. But on February 11, 1858, her entire life changed when a beautiful lady, clothed in white, with a rosary over her arm and a yellow rose on each foot, appeared to her and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” In the years since, the site of those wonderful apparitions, Lourdes, has been a place of pilgrimage and healing, but even more of faith. Church authorities have recognized over 60 miraculous cures, although there have probably been many more. To people of faith this is not surprising. It is a continuation of Jesus’ healing miracles—now performed at the intercession of his mother. Some would say that the greater miracles are hidden ones. That is, many who visit Lourdes return home with renewed faith and a readiness to serve God in their needy brothers and sisters.

    Many continue to be healed in body, mind and spirit today. Maybe it’s the remission of cancer, or deliverance from the flu. Perhaps the intercessor was Saint Blaise, who we recently remembered, or Saint Peregrine, or Our Lady of Lourdes who we celebrate today. However it is accomplished, healing is the ministry of our God. Sometimes an illness is not cured, perhaps it even grows worse or is terminal, and so maybe the healing that God intends in that situation isn’t the physical one we hope for, but instead some spiritual gift or growth in faith. God answers our prayers in all sorts of ways, though the prayers of many intercessors; a person of faith takes comfort in that.

    In 1992, Pope Saint John Paul II proclaimed today as the World Day of the Sick, “a special time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the Church and of reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of Christ who, by suffering, dying and rising, achieved the salvation of humankind.” In our prayer today, we remember all of those who are sick, and we offer our own illnesses and frailties for the accomplishment of God’s will in our world.

  • Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    Mary is the mother of God the Word, according to his human nature.

    That’s the formula that my Christology teacher in seminary, Sister Sarah, made sure that we memorized about the nature of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s relationship with her son, Jesus.  I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood in these days.  These are some of the reflections that have led up to my celebration of this great feast:

    You might know that my sisters and I have been taking care of my ailing mother, pretty much 24/7, for the last few months.  It’s difficult in many ways, especially emotionally, but it’s also a blessing.  We have the holy opportunity to spend these last moments, however many or few of them we may be granted, with her.  She who has been mother to us for all our lives now requires some of the care she selflessly offered to us.  Jesus certainly knew that his own mother would require the same when he gave her as mother to John the Beloved at the foot of the Cross.

    Also in these days that we mourn the loss of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, I was reminded he spent his final days at the monastery Mater Ecclesiae, Mother of the Church.  Mary was no doubt a special consolation to him in his last days, he whose devotion and dependence on her for all of his seventy-one years of priesthood was well-known.

    My other reflection this week was remembering my trip to Rome several years ago, and seeing, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, the wonderful sculpture of the Pieta by Michelangelo.  You can’t help being taken by the sculpture as you enter the basilica, and looking on the sorrowful face of our Blessed Mother, knowing the sorrow that every mother has when she loses a child.

    And so we come to this great feast of Mary, whose cooperation with God’s plan for her, made possible the salvation of all the world.  She who was full of grace, cooperated with that grace, and loved the Child entrusted to her all the way to the Cross.  She was mother to Jesus, mother to his disciples, and mother of a Church that would be born at his Resurrection.  She embraced true motherhood from that fiat to the angel in her home at Nazareth, to the empty tomb, and beyond.  She continues to mother the church and us fledgling disciples as we make our way to our true home in heaven one day.

    So today, on the octave day of Christmas, which we still celebrate as Christmas Day, we are blessed to remember the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God. We do this because we all know that Mary’s faith made possible our own lives of faith and even more wonderfully made possible the salvation of the whole world and everyone ever to live in it. She was the one, chosen by God, to see the Gospel come to life before her very eyes. She intimately beheld the Word, she held our God in her faithful and loving hands, treasuring each moment in her heart.

    So Mary’s faith is a model for us, a goal which we disciples must strive to attain.  God’s call will often take us into unknown territory, as it did for our Blessed Mother, but in faith we are called to say “yes” to his plan for us anyway.  God’s call will often call for sacrifice and even sorrow in the short term, as it did for our Blessed Mother, but we are still asked to give all that we have.  Mary did that without a second thought or a moment’s regret.  How willing are we?  Can we take a leap of faith, make a fiat, and cooperate with God’s work in our lives and in the world?  We have no way of knowing where that might lead us; just like Mary, that might lead to heartache and sorrow; but just like Mary, it may lead to redemption beyond belief, beyond anything we can imagine.

    So, Mary is the Mother of God, and Mary is also the Mother of the Church, leading its members to her son Jesus and to faith in God.  She is mother of priests, caring for us in a special way and interceding for the faithful work of our calling.  She is the mother of mothers, interceding for them and showing them how to nurture faith in their children.  She is the mother of the faithful, showing us how to cooperate fully with God’s plan.  She is mother of Scripture scholars and those who just love and study and proclaim the Scriptures, having seen the Word unfold before her and treasuring it in her heart.  She is the mother of disciples, having been the first of the disciples and the most dedicated of them all.  And she is the Mother of Mercy, who gave birth to our Savior and birth to our eternity.  She is the Mother of God, and our mother, and we cannot sing our Christmas carols without singing our thanksgiving for her.  We honor her faith and example today, and we ask for her intercession for our lives, for our families, for our Church and for our world.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Solemnity of the Annunciation

    The Solemnity of the Annunciation

    Today’s readings

    Fear keeps us from doing all sorts of things the Lord wants for us.  If we would truly let go of our fear and cling to our God, just imagine what he could do in us and through us.  Ahaz was King of Israel, a mighty commander, but yet was so afraid of God and what God might do that he refused to ask for a sign.  He was such an ineffective leader that he had good reason to be afraid.  Perhaps he knew how far he had strayed from God’s commands, and he was afraid to engage God on any level.  He would prefer to cut himself off from God rather than give himself over to the amazing power of God’s presence in his life and his rule.

    But his weakness did not disrupt the promise.  In the fullness of time, God’s messenger came to a young woman named Mary and proposed to accomplish in her life the sign for which Ahaz was too afraid to ask.  The difference, though, was that Mary heeded the initial words of the angel that have resounded through Salvation history ever since: “Do not be afraid.”  And, thanks be to God, Mary abandoned her fear and instead sang her fiat, her great “yes” to God’s plan for her, and for all of us.  “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.” 

    And we know what happened from there.  Mary certainly knew that none of that could be accomplished through her own efforts, but she absolutely knew that God could do whatever he undertook.  Nothing would be impossible for God, and she trusted in that, and because of that, we have the great hope of our salvation.  We owe everything to Mary’s cooperation with God’s plan.

    And so the promise comes to us.  We have the great sign of which Ahaz was afraid, but in which Mary rejoiced.  We too are told that God can accomplish much in our own lives, if we would abandon our fears and cling to the hope of God’s presence and action in our lives.  Can we too be the handmaids of the Lord?  Are we bold enough to say, “Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will?”  All we have to do is to remember the first thing the angel said to Mary: “Do not be afraid.”

  • The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    Today’s readings

    Today, on the octave day of Christmas, which we still celebrate as Christmas Day, we are blessed to remember the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God. We do this because we all know that Mary’s faith made possible our own lives of faith and even more wonderfully made possible the salvation of the whole world and everyone ever to live in it. She was the one, chosen by God, to see the Gospel come to life before her very eyes. She intimately beheld the Word, she held our God in her faithful and loving hands, treasuring each moment in her heart.

    So Mary’s faith is a model for us, a goal which we disciples must strive to attain.  God’s call will often take us into unknown territory, as it did for our Blessed Mother, but in faith we are called to say “yes” to his plan for us anyway.  God’s call will often call for sacrifice and even sorrow in the short term, as it did for our Blessed Mother, but we are still asked to give all that we have.  Mary did that without a second thought or a moment’s regret.  How willing are we?  Can we take a leap of faith, make a fiat, and cooperate with God’s work in our lives and in the world?  We have no way of knowing where that might lead us; just like Mary, that might lead to heartache and sorrow; but just like Mary, it may lead to redemption beyond belief, beyond anything we can imagine.

    Today the Church proclaims courageously that Mary is the Mother of God.  And let me tell you, this was a doctrine that came at great price.  People literally fought over whether a human woman could ever be the mother of God.  How would something like that even be possible? But the alternative, really, would be to insinuate that Jesus was not God.  We know that Jesus had two natures: human and divine.  Neither nature was subordinate to the other there was no separation or division or elevation of one nature at the expense of the other; they were both wrapped up intimately with one another, incapable of being divided in the person of Jesus Christ.  So, because we clearly know that Mary was his mother, we say that Mary is the Mother of God.  And as theologians teach us, Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.  She didn’t give birth to his divine nature; that was begotten by God.  She is not the mother of the First or Third Persons of the Blessed Trinity; she is the mother of the Second Person, God the Word.  Sister Sarah made us memorize all this in seminary, and every once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly theologically courageous, I reflect on this doctrine and marvel at its beauty.

    So, Mary is the Mother of God, but Mary is also the Mother of the Church, leading its members to her son Jesus and to faith in God.  She is mother of priests, caring for us in a special way and interceding for the faithful work of our calling.  She is the mother of mothers, interceding for them and showing them how to nurture faith in their children.  She is the mother of the faithful, showing us how to cooperate fully with God’s plan.  She is mother of Scripture scholars and those who just love and study the Scriptures, having seen the Word unfold before her and treasuring it in her heart.  She is the mother of disciples, having been the first of the disciples and the most dedicated of them all.  And she is the Mother of Mercy, who gave birth to our Savior and birth to our eternity.  She is the Mother of God, and our mother, and we cannot sing our Christmas carols without singing our thanksgiving for her.  We honor her faith and example today, and we ask for her intercession for our lives, for our families, for our Church and for our world.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    Today, we come together as a parish for this very special liturgy, in which we give thanks for the intercession of Saint Joseph during this past year in honor of him as patron of the Church; we also give thanks for a very blessed time of Eucharistic adoration during the Forty Hours Devotion we have just finished; and we joyfully celebrate the Vigil Mass of our Patroness, the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.  We Catholics know how to party!

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  Now, let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary herself, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25th.  It’s easy to keep this straight if you do the math: nine months after this date is September 8th, the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Nine months after the Annunciation is December 25th, or Christmas, the feast of the birth of our Savior.

    The Immaculate Conception had been a belief strongly supported by Tradition since at least the eleventh century, probably earlier.  Scholastics hotly debated the topic, since if Mary was not subject to original sin, she would seemingly have no need of a Savior.  This was eventually answered by the teaching on “prevenient grace.” That’s a mouthful.  We will hear it in the Prayer over the Offerings this evening.  The prayer specifically says, “…Grant that, as we profess her, on account of your prevenient grace, to be untouched by any stain of sin…”  Prevenient grace is the same as other kinds of grace in that it relies on the saving action of Jesus on the Cross at Calvary, dying for our sins.  But prevenient grace refers to grace applied before that happened, as would have been in the case for Mary who was obviously conceived before her son was put to death.  This prevenient grace relies on the fact that God loved us so much that he foresaw the sacrifice of the Cross and applied the grace of it to Mary at her conception.  As the Collect prayer today said, “…as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw…”  All of this is a very technical discussion that boils down to the fact that God will not let the constraints of time limit the outpouring of his grace.  And that’s the really good news we celebrate today.

    Today’s feast is an important one.  Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception is the Patroness of our parish, and, since 1856, also of the United States of America.  This feast celebrates our faith that God loves the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.  How appropriate it is, then, that we celebrate the Immaculate Conception in these Advent days when we prepare for Christmas, that glorious day when our salvation began to unfold.

    The readings chosen for this day paint the picture.  In the reading from Genesis, we have the story of the fall.  The man and the woman had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God found they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful; they had not been created for shame.  Sin had entered the world, and God asks the man to tell him who had given him the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to a rather pathetic deterioration of morality, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me: she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game in which we all participate from time to time.

    Thus begins the pattern of sin and deliverance that cycles all through the scriptures.  God extends a way to salvation to his people, the people reject it and go their own way.  God forgives, and extends a new way to salvation.  Thank God he never gets tired of pursuing humankind and offering salvation, or we would be in dire straits.  This cycle of salvation comes to perfection in the event we celebrate today.  Salvation was always God’s plan for us and he won’t rest until that plan comes to perfection.  That is why Saint Paul writes, in his letter to the Ephesians: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.  In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing a fitting mother for his Son: the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming vulnerable, taking our flesh as one like us, and as the least among us: a newborn infant born to a poor family.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.  There’s a wonderful Marian prayer called the Alma Redemptoris Mater that the Church prays at the conclusion of Night Prayer during the Advent and Christmas seasons that sums it all up so beautifully.  Pray it with me, if you know it:

    Loving mother of the Redeemer,
    gate of heaven, star of the sea,
    assist your people who have fallen yet strive to rise again,
    To the wonderment of nature you bore your Creator,
    yet remained a virgin after as before,
    You who received Gabriel’s joyful greeting,
    have pity on us poor sinners    . Amen.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we know that we were made for heaven.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    In every age of the world, people have needed hope.  Because in every age of the world, there has been unbelievable hardship.  There has always been war, and disease, and poverty, and oppression, and alienation, and all the rest.  There has always been sin, and broken relationships, and impure desires and that feeling of emptiness that hardens our hearts.  Evil has run rampant from the fall of humanity and ever onward.  And the weight of all of that could be crushing – if we didn’t have hope.

    And I don’t need to be abstract about this.  We certainly have been and still are dealing with one of the most prolific pandemics of our time.  Just when we think things will go back to normal, a variant emerges that causes concern all over again.  No one can agree on what to do to keep people well, and an illness becomes even worse: a source of division, as if we needed another one.  Our pulling out of the endless conflict in Afghanistan causes renewed violence in the region.  Wildfires are destroying whole regions and are plaguing ever more locations of the earth, and violent weather batters many other places.  In our own lives we have the illness and death of loved ones; family members alienating one another; loss of employment; and that’s just to name a few.  There’s no way we could live with all that – if we didn’t have hope.

    And I don’t mean hope in the Pollyanna sense.  I’m not going to tell you, “don’t worry – everything will work out all right” because, honestly, some things just won’t.  The hope that I think we can find in today’s Liturgy is the theological virtue that reminds us that this is not all there is; this is not as good as it gets.  Our readings remind us that there has been and still is, and perhaps always will be incredible evil in this world, but evil doesn’t get the final say – not for Jesus, not for Mary, and not for us.  One look at the way things work in our world and in our lives could convince us that this has all been an unbelievable failure – if we didn’t have hope.

    Today, we joyfully celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which dates back to the very earliest days of the Church, all the way back to the days of the apostles. It was known that Mary had “fallen asleep” and that there is a “Tomb of Mary” close to Mount Zion, where the early Christian community had lived. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 tells us that, after Mary’s death, the apostles opened the tomb, finding it empty, and concluded that she had been taken bodily into heaven. The tradition was spoken about by the various fathers of the Church, and in the eighth century, St. John Damascene wrote, “Although the body was duly buried, it did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay … You were transferred to your heavenly home, O Lady, Queen and Mother of God in truth.” The current celebration of Mary’s Assumption has taken place since 1950, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus, saying: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.”

    The hope that we find in the doctrine of the Assumption is summed up in the Preface to today’s Eucharistic Prayer, which I will sing in a few minutes.  Listen to the beautiful words of that prayer:

    For today the Virgin Mother of God
    was assumed into heaven
    as the beginning and image
    of your Church’s coming to perfection
    and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people…

    The Church knows well that our pilgrim way in this world would be filled with evil.  But the Church courageously believes that this world’s experience isn’t the be-all and end-all of our existence: we have much to look forward to in the life to come.  Our Savior himself foretold as much in John’s gospel when he said, “I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)  This, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our hope, and this is the hope that we celebrate today.

    The reason the Church reveres Mary as much as she does, and celebrates this feast with so much joy, is because Mary’s life is the icon of the Church.  What is important for us to see in this feast is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church has at her disposal that what happened to Mary can happen and will happen for us who believe. We too have the promise of eternal life in heaven, where death and sin and pain will no longer have power over us. Because Christ caught his Blessed Mother back up into his life in heaven, we know that we too can be caught up with his life in heaven. On that great day, death, the last enemy, will be completely destroyed, as Saint Paul tells us today.  That is our hope: our unbelievably gracious, completely unmerited, lovingly-bestowed hope.

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed. That is good news for us who have difficult lives or fine it hard to live our faith. Because there are those among us too who have family lives that are made difficult by external circumstances.  There are those among us whose children go in directions that put them in danger.  There are those among us who have to watch a child die.  But because Mary suffered these sorrows too, and yet was exalted, we can hope for the day when that which she was given and which we have been promised will surely be ours.  We can and do hope in this salvation every day of our lives.  It’s what makes our lives livable; it’s what gives us the strength to keep going, in the midst of so much difficulty.

    Today’s readings can seem pretty fantastic, in the sense that we don’t know what to believe about them.  The reading from revelation has a dragon sweeping a third of the stars from the sky, and a child being caught up to heaven.  But really, I don’t think that’s too hard to grasp.  We have all been through things in our lives when it felt like a third of the stars had fallen out of the sky.  There is that evil dragon that seeks us out and wants to devour the hope that we have, but the child of that hope has been taken up to heaven, and we can go there one day too, if we believe, and repent, and cling to Christ who is our hope.

    Mary’s song of praise in today’s gospel reading, which the Church prays every evening in Vespers, echoes the hope we have in this feast of the Assumption:

    He has come to the help of his servant Israel
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
    the promise he made to our fathers,
    to Abraham and his children forever.

    Life is hard.  It always has been, and probably always will be.  But this life is not all there is.  As we walk through this life on our pilgrim way to God’s kingdom, we walk always in the presence of our God who sees us, who notices our pain and sorrow, who grieves with us and laughs with us, who never lets go of us, and who gives us hope beyond anything we deserve.  As we live our lives here on earth, we find ourselves straining toward heaven, looking up for our redemption, knowing that where Mary has gone, we hope to follow.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

    Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

    Maximilian Kolbe became a Franciscan novice at the age of 16. Earlier in life he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin offering him two crowns, a white one of purity, and a red one of martyrdom. Maximilian said “I choose both.” The Blessed Virgin smiled and departed from him. Maximilian devoted his life to purity through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. He founded the Mission of the Immaculata to combat religious indifference, which he saw as the greatest problem in society. By the time the Nazis overran Poland, the mission numbered as many as a million people.

    Maximilian was twice arrested by the Nazis and the second time taken to Auschwitz. One day a fellow prisoner escaped, and the commandant decided to put ten men to death, whom he chose by arbitrarily pointing men out as he walked among their ranks. Just after the tenth man was chosen, Maximilian stepped out of the ranks and asked to take the place of one man, who had a wife and children. The commandant asked “what about you?” to which Maximilian replied, “I am a priest.” Because the regime at the time was striving to eliminate all the leaders of the people, Maximilian’s request was granted, and he died in the starvation chamber some three months later.

    Saint Maximilian had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so it is appropriate that we celebrate his feast on this day, the vigil of Mary’s Assumption.  Through the intercession of Saint Maximilian and our Blessed Mother, may we too combat religious indifference and give our lives in service to others.