Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Blessed Virgin Mary

  • The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s Gospel can be a confusing one, perhaps even a little difficult to hear.  It’s very disconcerting to see Jesus as being callous to his mother and not receiving her when she came to visit.  But our gut – or rather our faith – tells us that Jesus and Mary had a relationship that transcended that kind of thing.  It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t care about Mary; it’s just that he knew he really didn’t have to worry about her.  She had been filled with grace from the moment of her conception, and would never be without the benefit of that grace.

    Theirs was a relationship in which Jesus instinctively knew that his mother was okay and he needed to attend more to the people he ministered.  And it is for that reason we celebrate Mary’s presentation today.  As with Mary’s birth, we don’t really know anything official about Mary’s presentation in the temple.  An unhistorical account tells us that her parents, Anna and Joachim, offered Mary to God in the Temple when she was three years old.  This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still childless.

    Though it cannot be proven historically, Mary’s presentation has an important theological purpose.  It continues the impact of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary.  It emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.  We celebrate Mary, full of grace from the moment of her conception and all throughout her life.

    We pray the words of Mary in the Responsorial Psalm today: “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”  Mary was always aware of the amazing grace that sustained her throughout her own very difficult life-long mission.  We are graced like that too, and we celebrate that grace with Mary today.

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

  • The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today our parish celebrated our Patronal Feast Day: the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This superseded the celebration of the Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time for us.

    Reading the genealogies isn’t my favorite thing to do, and often because there is a choice, I choose not to proclaim them at Mass.  I chose to proclaim it at Mass today for a reason.  Matthew’s genealogy is unusual for many reasons, but most notable among those reasons, and the reason it was chosen for Mass today is because it contained the name of five women.  This might not seem all that amazing to us today, but back in Matthew’s day, genealogies never contained the names of women.  So Matthew is clearly telling us something important by including their names.

    The women mentioned include Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Four of them were women of the Old Testament and the last, of course, cooperated in bringing about the New Testament.  Tamar was a childless widow whose brother-in-law, to whom she had been given in marriage after her husband’s death, refused to provide her with offspring.  So she had to pretend to be a harlot and seduce Judah in order to have a child.  Rahab actually was a harlot in Jericho.  She hid and protected the spies of Joshua, so the Israelites protected her when they ambushed Jericho.  Ruth was a daughter-in-law who cared so much for her mother-in-law that she accompanied her on a dangerous journey to Israel after her family died.  Ruth is known for her devotion.  Bathsheba was seduced by King David, who covered up the affair by arranging to have her husband Uriah the Hittite killed in battle.  She became the mother of Solomon.

    All of these women represent the struggle and the blessing the Israelites had with God and his salvation.  Tamar represented the struggle to follow the law and to protect the widows, orphans and aliens as God intended.  Rahab represented the giving of the land to the people Israel.  Ruth represented the devotion and faithful love of the Lord.  Bathsheba represented the struggle with faithfulness, and the blessing of repentance.

    And from all of these, we finally come to our Patroness, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the woman whose faith and willingness to cooperate with God’s plan made possible the salvation of all the world.  Today we celebrate her Nativity, the traditional date of her birth, exactly nine months having passed since her Immaculate Conception on December 8th.

    Every single birth is a sign of hope in our world, and therefore a cause for great celebration.  Our world may be in a bad place, plagued by war and on the verge of another in Syria, and dark from sin – both societal sin and our own personal sin.  But birth brings joy because it is a sign of God’s wanting the world to continue to bring salvation to all people.  Mary’s birth in particular stands out prominently among us because of the grace she received from God who chose her to be mother of His Son.

    This feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is our parish’s patronal feast day.  Out Church of Notre Dame, our Lady, reveres Mary in a special way: Mary who is the Mother of God, the Mother of our Salvation, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of Priests, the Mother of all the faithful.  We celebrate today her faithfulness to God’s Word, and pray that she would intercede that we too might be faithful to God’s call.  We celebrate today the intercession that has built our Church and this parish, and pray that her intercession would continue to guide us all in the future, that one day we might join her as she reigns in glory with her Most Holy Son.

    The Byzantine Church Daily Worship proclaims well the joy that we have on this feast of Mary’s birth: “Today the barren Anna claps her hands for joy, the earth radiates with light, kings sing their happiness, priests enjoy every blessing, the entire universe rejoices, for she who is Queen and the Father’s Immaculate Bride buds forth from the stem of Jesse.”

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

  • 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 feast, that 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 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 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    The tradition of the Assumption of Mary dates back to the very earliest days of the Church, all the way back to the days of the apostles.  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.”

    And so we have gathered here this evening to celebrate the life of Mary, Mother of God, the first of the disciples of Jesus her son.  What is important for us to see in this feast is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church can muster that what happened to Mary can 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 St. Paul tells us today.

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed.  That is good news for us who have difficult lives or find it hard to live our faith.  There are those among us too who have unplanned pregnancies.  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.

    Mary’s life was a prophecy for us.  Like Mary, we are called to a specific vocation to do God’s work in the world.  We are called to make sacrifices so that God’s work can be accomplished in us and through us.  We can be joyful because God is at work in us.  We are called to humility that lets God’s love for others shine through our lives.  We are called to lives of faith that translate into action on behalf of others, a faith that leads God’s people to salvation.  And one day, we hope to share in the glory that Mary has already received in the kingdom of God.

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

  • The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    The Immaculate Heart of Mary

    Today’s readings

    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 Mater hymn 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 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.

  • Our Lady of Lourdes/World Day of the Sick

    Our Lady of Lourdes/World Day of the Sick

    Today’s readings

    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.  That is, many who visit Lourdes return home with renewed faith and a readiness to serve God in their needy brothers and sisters.

    In today’s Gospel, people flock to Jesus for healing.  Whenever people heard he was in the area, they would flock to him, bringing their sick loved ones on mats and laying them in the marketplaces so that as he passed, they might touch his cloak, and be healed.  And they were healed.  One can only imagine how faith in his power to heal grew as these miracles continued.

    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.  Maybe that healing 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.

    In 1992, Pope 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.

  • The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    Today’s readings

    One of the ways that I think we come to know about ourselves and our families, is the shared memories and stories that our parents and senior members of our families share with us over time.  I always enjoyed hearing stories from my grandparents about Mom and Dad, and my aunts and uncles, when they were growing up.  Now, we get to hear stories about me and my sisters.  Those are sometimes a little harder to enjoy!

    I wonder if Jesus felt the same way about the stories about him that Mary must have told.  Luke tells us of all the amazing things that were observed and said about Jesus, even in his infancy, and all these things are what Mary kept and reflected on in her heart.  I think it’s fair to say that she may not have understood all of them at the time, or at least she didn’t know where they were leading, although she certainly knew that her son was someone very special, the Son of God.  And so she keeps all these things and reflects on them in her heart.  She is the first, really, to receive the Gospel – observing it, as it were, while it was happening and unfolding.  And so she is the model for all of us hearers of the Word; we too catch little phrases or episodes that we later reflect on in our hearts.  When we first hear them, it might well be that we don’t understand them.  But we know that we can later reflect on them in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit will reveal their meaning.

    The Church gives us this wonderful feast of Mary on this, the octave day of Christmas.  In a very real way, the Church still celebrates this day as Christmas Day – that’s one of the wonderful things about being Catholic.  We get to celebrate this glorious event for many days.  But to celebrate the eighth day of Christmas as the feast of Mary, the Holy Mother of God is a wonderful and appropriate thing to do.  We all know that we are indebted to Mary’s faith, a faith which made possible the salvation of the whole world and everyone ever to live in it.

    More than that, Mary’s faith is a model for us.  Much like Mary, we often do not know where God is leading us, but in faith we are called to say “yes” anyway.  How willing are we to do that?  We are often called upon to take a leap of faith, make a fiat, and cooperate with God’s saving plan for us and for others.  Just like Mary, 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 will lead to redemption beyond belief, beyond anything we can imagine.

    And so, yes, Mary is the Mother of God.  And let me tell you, this was a doctrine that came without its price.  People fought over whether a human woman could ever be the mother of God.  How would that be possible?  But the alternative, really, would be to say that Jesus was not God, because we clearly know that Mary was his mother.  So to say that Mary was not the Mother of God is to say in a very precarious way that Jesus was not God, and we know just as surely that that would be incorrect.  Jesus was fully human but also fully divine, his human and divine natures intertwined in his person without any separation or division or degradation of one nature at the expense of another.  And so, as theologians teach us, Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.  Every once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly theologically courageous, I reflect on that statement 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 completion of our mission.  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 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.  She is the Mother of God, and our mother, and we cannot sing our Christmas carols without singing her praises too.  We honor her faith and example today, and we ask for her intercession for our lives, for our families, for our Church and 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

    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.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.  So let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.  It’s easy to keep this straight if you remember 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.

    Today’s 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 just before Christmas, when our salvation begins 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 noticed that, and asked about it.  He 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.  It all 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 St. Paul tells the Ephesians, and us, today: “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 for his birth through 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.

    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 can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  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.  Amen.

  • The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    The tradition of the Assumption of Mary 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 toMountZion, 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.”

    And so we have gathered here this morning to celebrate the life of Mary, Mother of God, the first of the disciples of Jesus her son.  And there is plenty to celebrate in her life.  We who would be Jesus’ disciples too, can learn much from the way she lived her discipleship.  We can see in her life, I think, at least three qualities of discipleship.  The first is joy.  She is one who not only allowed something incredibly unbelievable to be done in her, but allowed it with great joy. That she did this with joy tells us something very important about who she was. Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” Those who live with joy, true joy, do so because God is at work in them and God is at work through them. Mary knew this from the moment the angel came to her.

    The second quality we see in Mary’s prayer is humility. She knew this wasn’t about her; this was about what God was doing in her and through her. It wasn’t she that did great things, no, “the Almighty has done great things for me,” she tells us, “and holy is his Name!”  The third quality is faith: Mary’s simple faith allowed her to say “yes” to God’s will and made possible the salvation of the world.  Because of that faith, she had a bond with our Savior beyond anything we could ever hope for.  Indeed without Mary’s fiat, her great leap of faith, the salvation of humanity may have gone quite poorly.

    What is important for us to see in this feast, though, is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church can muster that what happened to Mary can 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, asSt. Paultells us today.

     

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed. That is good news for us who have difficult lives or find it hard to live our faith.  There are those among us too who have unplanned pregnancies.  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.

    Mary’s life was a prophecy for us.  Like Mary, we are called to a specific vocation to do God’s work in the world.  We too are called to make sacrifices so that God’s work can be accomplished in us and through us.  We too can be joyful because God is at work in us.  We too are called to humility that let’s God’s love for others shine through our lives.  We too are called to lives of faith that translate into action on behalf of others, a faith that leads God’s people to salvation.  And we too, one day, hope to share in the glory that Mary has already received in the kingdom of God.

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

  • The Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    One of the most important things we can know about the Blessed Virgin Mary is summed up in the simple statement: “As Mary goes, so goes the Church.”  Mary is the Mother of the Church, and so, through her intercession, we hope to follow the path she followed.  We certainly celebrate and hope to emulate her faith; that faith that allowed her to be God’s instrument in bringing salvation to the whole world.  One simple “yes,” one fiat forever changed the world and the destiny of all people.  We also celebrate and choose to emulate her discipleship; that dedication to Christ that went beyond merely being his mother and encompassed being one who “hears the word of God and observes it” as Jesus extols in today’s Gospel reading.  And finally, we hope to share the heavenly glory that she enjoys even now, even though our sinfulness will not keep us from tasting death in the process.

    Today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The Assumption is an event for which we have no Scriptural reference.  Instead, the doctrine of the Assumption is born out of the enduring Tradition of the Church, beginning in the early Church, encompassing the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, and culminating in the doctrinal declaration of Venerable Pope Pius XII.  We know, by the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that the Blessed Virgin Mary was born without taint of sin.  Today’s second reading reminds us that the sting of sin is death, and so it follows then that Mary would not undergo the corruption of bodily decay.

    In the early Church, it was known that Mary had “fallen asleep” and there is a “Tomb of Mary” close toMountZion, 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: “By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

    We know that Mary’s life was not an easy one, and that makes her faith all the more beautiful.  The grace she received in the Immaculate Conception allowed her to be a model for all of us and for the Church.  The fruit of her grace began to unfold with the Annunciation: when the angel Gabriel brought her God’s call to be the Mother of God.  Mary was a young girl with all the concerns of a young girl in that time and place. She was as yet unmarried, yet faithfully embraced God’s call, strange and unfathomable though it must have been to her. Mary’s simple faith allowed her to say “yes” to God’s will and made possible the salvation of the world.

    Because of that faith, she had a bond with our Savior beyond anything we could ever hope for. And so we truly believe that Jesus, risen from the dead and now ascended into heaven, prepared a place for his mother and caught her back up into his life. She was assumed body and soul into heaven, and the corruption of death was not allowed to touch the one whose purity made possible the birth of the Savior. As St. John Damascene also said, “It was necessary that she who had preserved her virginity inviolate in childbirth should also have her body kept free from all corruption after death.”

    What is important for us to see in this feast, though, is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church can muster that what happened to Mary can 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 will completely lose its nasty sting, asSt. Paultells us today.

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed.  That is good news for us who have difficult lives or find it hard to live our faith.  There are those among us too who have unplanned pregnancies.  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.

    As I’ve reflected on this feast today, what kept coming to me was the fourth Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.”  Jesus showed us the way to do that by honoring his own mother with grace that she would never know death.  We aren’t able to do that, of course, but we can certainly call our mother or spend time with her, or for those whose mothers have passed, pray for her.  And may we all find in Mary our Mother the example of faith that will lead us to everlasting communion with her Son.

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