ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Rev. 11:19-12:1-6, 10; 1Cor 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

Today we are celebrating the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven The Assumption of Mary, taken up by God body and soul into heaven, is the fourth dogma on Virgin Mary, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in his Munificentissimus Deus in 1950:

“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… (44-45).

“As the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of the Son, the immortal King of the Ages,” (40).

Assumption means, “To be taken up” body and soul to heaven. It is not Ascension, like Jesus, done by His own power, but Assumption done by the power of God. It is something God did for her, not something she did for herself. It is a gift of God as a result of Christ’s redemptive power applied to the Blessed Virgin Mary. the dogma says, “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection.” The Assumption was God’s way of finishing the job he started at Mary’s Immaculate Conception, redeeming her body from the effects of sin as well.

But why is Mary? It is because she was the Mother of Jesus and Jesus did what you and I would have done with our mothers if we would have the power: Jesus did not allow the hands that cared for His to be corrupted and the heart that loved Him so much…. If He did it to Enoch and Elijah, in the Old Testament, why is not to His Mother?

The Blessed Mother died like Jesus but her body was never corrupted, was taken up to heaven and for this reason there are no relics of her body. The dogma doesn’t say she never died. At the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), when bishops from Mediterranean world gathered in Constantinople, Emperor Marcian asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the relics of Mary to Constantinople to be enshrined in the capitol. The patriarch explained to the emperor that there were no relics of Mary in Jerusalem that, “Mary had died in the presence of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later…. was found empty and so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.

There is no secret about the Blessed Virgin Mary being related to the Holy Eucharist. It is very simple: excepts for the Blessed Virgin, say that we would not have the Holy Eucharist if Mary never accepted God’s plan. The key to this relationship is the humanity of Jesus Christ. God as God was present in the world from the dawn of creation. The same almighty power by which God brought the world into being is the same almighty power by which He sustains the world in existence and provides for its constant activity.

It was from Mary that the Son of God took over human nature. It was from Mary that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity received His humanity. It was through Mary that Jesus Christ, who is God from all eternity, became man, lived visibly on earth in Palestine and is now invisibly on earth in every church and chapel in the Catholic world where the Holy Eucharist is offered, received and reserved. Mary remains the Mother of the Divine Grace, through whom He pours out His blessings on a sinful world. As Pope John Paul II observed in Redemptoris Mater, “Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist.” The Pope in his message to the 19^th Marian Congress in Poland (August 15, 1996) repeated the same message: “Let Mary leads us to the Eucharist.”

The story of the Fall is not only the story of Adam but the story of Adam and Eve. If Jesus is the new Adam, who then is the new Eve? Mary is the new Eve. Just as the full story of our Fall cannot be told without Eve, so also the full story of our Redemption cannot be told without Mary. There are many revealing parallels between the old Adam and Eve on the one hand and the new Adam and Eve, Jesus and Mary, on the other. Here are some of them.

• In the old order, the woman (Eve) came from the body of the man (Adam), but in the new order the man (Jesus) comes from the body of the woman (Mary).
• In the old order, the woman (Eve) first disobeyed God and led the man (Adam) to do the same, in the new order the woman (Mary) first said "Yes" to God (Luke 1:38) and raised her son Jesus to do likewise.
• Adam and Eve had a good time together disobeying God, Jesus and Mary suffered together doing God's will. The sword of sorrow pierced their hearts equally (John 19:34; Luke 2:35b).
• In the old order Adam and Eve shared immediately in the resulting consequences and punishments of the Fall. In the new order, similarly, both Jesus and Mary share immediately in the resulting consequences and blessings of the Redemption, the fullness of life with God; Jesus through the Ascension and Mary through the Assumption.

The doctrine of the Assumption teaches that at the end of her earthly existence, the Blessed Virgin Mary was taken up (assumed), body and soul, into heaven. That means, therefore, that there are two human bodies we know to be in heaven with God at this time: the human body of Jesus and that of Mary. In this doctrine we see the collaboration of man and woman in the work of our salvation all the way from the Fall to the Redemption to sharing in the fruit of Redemption in heaven. Without the Assumption to balance the Ascension, the man Jesus alone without the woman Mary would be enjoying the fullness of salvation with God and we would be telling only a part of the story. The Assumption is the ultimate proof of the equality of man and woman before God. It also shows the sacredness and eternal destiny of the human body, including the woman's body which is desecrated by pornography and the sex trade. The Assumption enables us to tell the full story, the full gospel that salvation is for all Men, male and female, and for the whole Man, body and soul.

The Assumption of Mary is also for us the feast of hope. We are reminded that our bodies too will be redeemed… we will be in heaven with body and soul too. The Christian hope is not so much the immortality of the soul, which many pagans affirm but the Resurrection of the Body.