The official, dogmatic, teaching of Mother Church about Our Lady’s Assumption, which we joyfully celebrate today, was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, and our Catholic Catechism explains it in this way:
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.
Today I want to propose to you that, while Mary’s Assumption is indeed a singular participation in her Son’s triumph, that does not mean that it is of no particular significance for all women.
Mary’s Assumption into heaven is, I believe, not totally based on her personal human sinlessness and responsiveness to God’s inspiration, but also on the fact of her femininity, in the sense that it contains a message and offers a transcendent inspiration and aspiration for the whole of Christian womankind.
Once Jesus --- God-made-man by His assumption of human flesh and blood, our flesh and blood, from the virgin Mary of Nazareth in Galilee --- had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven for our salvation, there could be no rational doubt for believers that the whole of mankind … men and women, both formed in the image and likeness of God as human beings… would, granted God’s goodness and mercy, both be called and allowed to participate in that glory.
However, given humanity’s enduring frailty, sinfulness and perverseness, there can be little doubt that it could soon have been irrationally thought and secretly whispered that Jesus had gone to heaven because He was God; and that men also might indeed possibly go there too, having ‘already gone there’, so to speak, in and with Jesus-as-man. But what about women, not having that direct sexual relationship with Jesus?
I like, therefore, to think that today’s great feast has also the purpose and function of recalling for all believers, the supreme dignity and glory of God’s original plan for humanity as a whole; and that today’s feast of the Assumption proclaims Mary’s peerless expression of humanity in the beauty of her femininity as intended in God’s original creation, now redeemed by Christ, and ultimately glorified by the most Holy Spirit.
A peerlessly full, and sublimely beautiful, feminine expression of God-intended-humanity, that is what Mary’s Assumption proclaims.
Think of Mary hearing the angel Gabriel’s greeting, so religiously and calmly satisfying herself about his personal integrity and authority, then going on to question him humbly yet pertinently about the meaning of his message for herself; before most courageously committing herself -- unconditionally and unhesitatingly -- to God’s purpose, for His glory alone. And this she did despite being aware the possibility (remote but real) of her being put to death by the religious authorities of her time, and knowing most certainly that she would have to endure the public contempt of all who did not know her intimately, most especially those women who knew her only sufficiently enough to be able to gossip about her at the well, and in the ‘shops’ of Nazareth!
There are many women today who think that Mary’s expression of womanhood treasured for so long by the Church is not enough; and the exemplary women of today(!) want power: freedom from the restricting will of any God, total freedom in the exercise of their physical and sexual being. And, in the Church herself, there some women wanting power in their own way: the diaconate now, the priesthood next and who knows, sometime perhaps a Pope Joan??
People of that mentality, ruled by secular logic, not inspired by Catholic faith, have no appreciation whatsoever of the beauty and power of catholic complementarity. For them, if one person or group has something another does not have, that is prejudice, and wrong, and yet, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our faith in God -- His very own Personal Being, and His creation in all its wonderful diversity -- proclaims the sublime and indeed ultimate beauty and power of complementarity, which evokes those two most sublime virtues of Love and Humility which are the hallmarks of all Catholic faith and life.
Mary as shown forth in her Assumption is and always has been the ideal of Christian womanhood: beautiful in face and figure yet ever humble and heaven-bound with her Son, and as our God-given Mother. Her beauty was not excogitated and worked out by human vanity and pride, but one originally gifted by God for His own glory and our great blessing: an earthly beauty most perfectly redeemed by Christ, then totally polished as a most sublime, heavenly gem, by the Most Holy Spirit, all for the Father, in the complementarity of their Personal expressions of the one and undivided Godhead of Infinite Love, soul penetrating and purifying Truth, and redeeming, almighty Power.
No comments:
Post a Comment