MOTHER ASSUMED INTO HEAVEN

 

SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Rev 11:19,12:1-6,10; Ps 45:10-12,16; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Lk 1:39-56

The Appearance of a Great Sign

We celebrate the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven today. It is one of the great celebrations of the Church, for we observe it as a day of obligation; we observe it with observances equivalent to those of a Sunday, the day of the Lord. Such a celebration is the greatest honour the Church can accord to a mere mortal. But the importance attached to the celebration centres on the salvation of man, for the great honour accorded to the Blessed Virgin Mary stems from her unique role in human salvation. The unique importance and honour are what the Church learnt from God himself, through the Scripture. According to Scripture, God had us in mind and planned our salvation even before the foundation of the world. The Blessed Virgin Mary and her Son had a prominent and central place in the divine plan of salvation. The unique role she played in the mystery of human salvation is what the readings present to us. If God conceived and planned our salvation before the foundation of the world and carries it out with divine care, we must pay careful attention to the divine plan. Careful attention reveals the mystery of the Woman as central to the mystery of our salvation.

Since redemption entered the picture because of sin, the mystery of human salvation came to the fore at the appearance of sin and evil in God’s creation. We see this in Genesis in the account of the fall of Adam and Eve. God promised the Woman and her Offspring only at the instance of the original sin of Adam and Eve. Since the serpent had corrupted the human race God created for his own purpose and glory, God revealed his plan to reclaim his work and purify it from the corruption of sin and evil. The struggle and conflict that the redemptive work would entail are given in the enmity God planned to put between the woman and the serpent, between her Offspring and that of the serpent. The sign of the conflict is revealed to us in the first reading. “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown. She was pregnant, and in labour, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth.” This first sign is of human redemption or rebirth. Our redemption would involve a struggle within human nature. There is the renewed human nature, which the woman signifies, and the corrupted nature which is to be redeemed. The woman’s birth pangs entail the struggles involved.

The second sign reveals the cause of the struggle. It is the seed of sin which the devil has sown in the fallen human nature. The ancient serpent, now revealed in its true colour as the dragon, hates the woman whom God uses to reconceive human nature and bring it to birth without the contamination of sin. “Then a second sign appeared in the sky, a huge red dragon which had seven heads and ten horns, and each of the seven heads crowned with a coronet. Its tail dragged a third of the stars from the sky and dropped them to the earth, and the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that he could eat it as soon as it was born from its mother.” The Church sees the Blessed Virgin Mary in the sign because she conceived and brought forth the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus, God brings into being a new humanity in the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Son, Jesus Christ. Understanding that this is the mystery of human salvation makes us see all the redeemed in the Son of the woman, who is taken to his throne in heaven to rule all nations. We celebrate that the woman rules with her Son in heaven with her body and soul intact, since she shares sinlessness with her Son, Jesus Christ, who ascended into heaven.

David prophesied about this victory and the reign of the woman with her Son in heaven in the Psalm. “On your right stands the queen, in garments of gold.” These words echo the revelation of the Queen of heaven and earth giving birth to the Son of Man. The Church brings another prophetic utterance by Elizabeth, and her event that shows the realisation of the old prophecies, to corroborate the interpretation of these signs and revelations. “Now as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” Elizabeth and the baby in her womb received a spiritual birth at the greeting of Mary and her Son, whom she conceived at the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the woman so immersed in God’s will that she and her Son represent or embody the divine will for our salvation. Since the serpent and its seed did not touch anything of hers, and her Son, neither of them experienced corruption of any kind. So, the Church celebrates her as assumed body and soul into heaven.

It is a cause of great rejoicing for us because through her maternal help and intercession we are being renewed daily and transformed into Jesus Christ. Saint Paul writes of the mystery of our transformation and salvation. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him.” Our resurrection from the dead is an ongoing mystery; it is our transformation into Jesus Christ; it involves our conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and our coming to birth, through her, in Jesus Christ. Thus, our celebration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is also our celebration in hope of our resurrection and heavenly restoration, as Paul explained. Mystically, we share the life of Jesus Christ, and the life of his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her assumption into heaven, for we bear Jesus and bring him to birth in our lives and in the lives of others. Let us therefore rejoice with her. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit exults in God my saviour; because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.