The
Assumption of Our Lady
(Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10; 1st. Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56)
The Assumption of Our Lady, which
has been celebrated in the Eastern Liturgy since the 6th. Century,
and in Rome since the 7th., was defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950 as a
dogma of our faith. It states that, at
the end of her life on earth, Mary did not know corruption, but was taken up to
heaven, assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
The first point I want to stress
today is that Mary was taken up to heaven as a human being, in her human
flesh, albeit glorified in that humanity.
This means that heaven and the joys of heaven are not alien to us in our
humanity. Whereas it could have been
feared that although the human flesh of Jesus was glorified in His Resurrection
and Ascension, that was because it was the flesh of Jesus, a divine Person, the
very Son of God, and so did not set any precedent, did not necessarily offer any
hope, for us ordinary human beings. The
same, however, cannot be said of Mary’s flesh, since it was the flesh of our
sister, the flesh of a merely human person and creation of God.
And so, thanks to Jesus’ victory
over sin and death, thanks to the coming and abiding with us and in us of the
Holy Spirit, the body and soul of Mary -- a sublime woman and yet an ordinary,
human personal being -- is now supremely happy in heavenly glory; which means
that the joys of heaven can indeed be for our total human fulfilment and
glorification, for in heaven we will see and experience depths of divine beauty,
goodness, and truth beyond all our imaginings indeed, but, for all that, a
beauty, goodness and truth, we will gratefully acknowledge ourselves to have
already partially -- though fleetingly -- experienced in our life of devotion on
earth, whilst also, in humble confusion, confessing that we never really
appreciated them aright.
Imagine a farming couple who started
out with a small holding, who had to struggle through years of natural
adversity, drought, floods, blights of various kinds, and through periods when
capital was short and anxiety was oppressive.
Imagine such a couple, years later, when their farm has grown beyond
anything they might have anticipated; when they can look out on acres upon acres
of fine crops growing and feel secure in the knowledge that they have built up
something which will last because it is established on firm foundations of hard
work and sound finance. Their joy on
looking out over their smiling fields will be all the greater because they are
now seeing the fruitful outcome of all the efforts they had made over the years
before.
Our experience of heaven will be
somewhat similar to that, in so far as its joys will not be entirely new or
totally unconnected with our earthly experiences. We will recognise the sublime
goodness of the divine Wisdom and Providence which guided us throughout our
lives, together with the beautiful gifts of human friendship and love we
experienced in our dearest and deepest relationships. We will be both thrilled and amazed at the
glorious truths of our faith which we understood so little and scarcely
appreciated before. In other words,
heavenly joy will be the transcendent flowering and glorious fulfilment of all
that had been truly beautiful and worth-while in our lives as disciples of Jesus
pilgrimaging successfully through this world. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:29-30)
writes:
Whom (the
Father) foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He
predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and
whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Mary is indeed the only one who has
shared in the glory of Jesus so far, it is His supreme gift to His most faithful
and loving mother; but since she is, by His gift, also our mother, therefore all
His true disciples can receive and one day will receive, with her, their share
in His glory when He comes in the fullness of time to judge the world. Mary has already been glorified in her
humanity: she is the pledge that what Jesus won in His humanity, has been won
for us, for all His true disciples.
Now let us turn our minds back to
the first reading where we heard:
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with
the sun
Pope Paul VI strongly suggested that
Our Lady of Fatima’s appearance was the fulfilment of that prophecy, and Pope
John Paul II not only suggested but even affirmed that this “great sign in
heaven: a woman clothed with the sun” has been fulfilled, after 1900 years, in
the events that took place at Fatima on the 15th. October 1917, when
70,000 people saw the “sun dance”. Let
me read the account in the Masonic and anti-clerical newspaper “O Seculo”
reporting those events:
We saw the huge crowd turn toward the sun which appeared
at its zenith, clear of the clouds. It
resembled a flat plate of silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the
least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes.
It did not blind. Before the
dazed eyes of the people the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements,
outside of all cosmic laws, the “sun danced” according to the expression of the
people.
According to other eyewitnesses “it seemed the sun was being detached from
the sky and was falling on us. It was a
terrible moment.” The miracle lasted
about 8 minutes, after which the sun returned to its place in the sky, while the
ground, which before the miracle had been saturated due to an all-night driving
rain, was seen to be dry. Likewise, the
clothes of those who had been standing all day in the rain before the miracle
were completely dry.
Pope John Paul said:
According to divine plan, “a Woman clothed with the sun”
came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the
Father. She speaks to them with a
mother’s voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of
reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. The message of
Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the
“dragon” whose “tail swept down a; third of the star of heaven, and cast them to
the earth.
In those appearances, Mary affirmed
clearly the reality of hell saying to the children: “You have seen Hell where
the souls of poor sinners go”. She
likewise affirmed the reality of Purgatory: when Lucia, one of the three
children to whom Our Lady appeared, asked about a friend of hers who had died at
about the age of 18 or 20, Our Lady answered, “she will be in Purgatory until
the end of the world”. Another friend of
Lucia’s, however, who had died at the age of 16, was in heaven Our Lady
said.
The important thing for me to do
today, People of God, is to remind you of our commitment to Mary our
Mother. Her prayers are totally
dedicated to ‘making-up’, so to speak, for all the many failings in our response
to God’s grace; grace so abundantly won for us by her Son, and so freely offered
to us by His Spirit. She is totally
committed to us her children, and what she asks of us in return is: daily
recitation of the Rosary; the offering of our daily duty to God as an act of
sacrifice in reparation for sins; and the dedication of Five First Saturdays of
reparation to her Immaculate Heart.
However, there is a final point
concerning those words from the book of Revelation which state, as you
heard:
Then another
sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and
ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.
And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to
the earth.
What are the stars? Catholic commentators have commonly said that
the stars of Heaven represent the Catholic clergy. Sister Lucy says the most effective way the
devil can do harm to souls is by taking away their leaders, the priests; and we
have indeed seen manifest evidence of the devil’s campaign against priests. Fr. Nicholas Gruner, perhaps the priest most
closely associated with efforts to spread abroad the message of Fatima
said:
If one third of the stars of Heaven are dragged down,
then people will find it harder to save their souls. The faithful must be careful to follow those
Catholic clergy who preserve the faith.
It is important for people to pray for priests, for bishops, for the
Cardinals, for the Pope.
People of God, Our Lady’s Assumption
is the pledge of our future blessedness and fulfilment in God; for, just as
sinful Eve misled Adam and thus helped close the gates of Paradise to her
children, so Mary was Immaculate in following her Son -- the second Adam -- Who
has opened those blessed gates once more for His disciples and her
children. And now, Our Lady of Fatima,
the Woman clothed with the Sun, has come to warn us her children of the dangers
which threaten us in our affluent western world where irresponsible dedication
to the pursuit of personal pleasure, worldly plenty, and moral
self-determination, so frequently takes hold of and ruins human lives. These are dangers, Mary tells us, which would
rob us of our divine and eternal inheritance.
Let us therefore look once again at
Our Blessed Lady on this celebration of her Assumption into heaven to learn more
of the supreme glory of that divine inheritance that can, and will be ours, if
we but heed her warning and follow Our Lord’s way.
Mary received the Gift of God, that
is, the most Holy Spirit, when, St. Luke tells us:
The angel
(Gabriel) said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you …
(1:35ss.)
The Spirit was given her then to
enable her to become the worthy Mother of God.
It was like that with Jesus Himself when the Spirit came upon Him at His
baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist: for then the Spirit came upon Jesus
for a particular purpose, namely, to prepare Him in His humanity to undertake
His public ministry to the People of Israel; and when Jesus rose from the dead
He did so, once again, in the power of the Spirit Who glorified His human nature
for His ascension to heavenly and eternal life.
Mary did indeed meet her risen and glorious Son on earth, but her joy as
such a mother was short-lived for He was soon to ascend into heaven, necessarily
leaving her behind gazing after Him because her human relationship with Him,
even that of immaculate motherhood, could not sustain the intimacy, depth, and
intensity of a heavenly and eternal relationship. Mary did receive the Holy Spirit once again
while yet on earth, this time at Pentecost, for her role as Mother of the
Church. Ultimately however, the Spirit
needed to totally glorify and transfigure her in her Assumption that she might
be able to enter upon her ultimate and eternal calling as Queen of heaven and
Mother of Jesus, mankind’s Saviour, and the eternal Word and only-begotten Son
of Him Who is the heavenly Father of all.
People of God, our union with Jesus
in heaven will be closer and more intimate than we can begin to imagine, because
it well be based upon the Holy Spirit Himself.
Today, therefore, we have double cause for rejoicing: let us rejoice with
Mary for her heavenly beatitude in and with her Son before the Father; let us
also rejoice in her motherly solicitude for us her children on our earthly
pilgrimage. However, let us make sure we
also give her cause to rejoice by embracing her requests and acknowledging her
warnings.
