The Marian feast we celebrate today, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, is considered the Church’s principal Marian observance – it crowns the whole series of Marian celebrations that we mark throughout a liturgical year: from the Feast of her Immaculate Conception, to the Annunciation, and the celebration of her Divine Motherhood.
In the words of the Second Vatican Council, we celebrate today the fact that "when Mary’s earthly life was over", she "was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory... and exalted as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, who is Lord of all, and the conqueror of sin and death" (Lumen Gentium, n. 59).
This is to say that the Assumption echoes very closely the joyful news of Christ’s victory at Easter. Just as Christ rose bodily from the dead, conquering sin and death forever, so now the Immaculate Virgin, already free of the stain of any sin, follows her Son body and soul into heaven.
In the words of our beautiful first reading, from the Book of Revelation, we contemplate “a great sign in the heavens:” a woman, “the handmaid of the Lord,” who has given birth to “the ruler of all the nations,” and is now “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”
This vision of our Blessed Mother enthroned in heaven is a cause of great joy for us. In celebrating Mary’s Assumption we anticipate all that will happen when the end of time comes, when, as St. Paul says in our second reading, Christ “raised from the dead,” “hands over the kingdom to His God and Father, and has destroyed every sovereignty, authority and power.”
When this happens, we too will rise with Him. Where Mary has gone, we can now hope to follow! In the Assumption, we see the goal that we ourselves are called to attain at the end of our earthly journey: we too are destined to rise body and soul into heaven and to reign with Christ!
Though our Gospel for today’s feast is the story of Mary’s Visitation to her kinswoman Elizabeth, it is in reality the perfect passage to meditate on so that Mary can “show us the way of life, show us how we too can become blessed.” Her Magnificat, and the narrative surrounding it, is a “mirror of Mary’s soul, an icon in which we see” who Mary really is and what we must do to follow her into glory.
“Blessed are you who believed”:
In today’s Gospel, when Mary arrives at the house of Zechariah, Elizabeth greets her by proclaiming, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb . . . Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Mary is blessed because she believed, she trusted – “Mary is blessed because -- totally, in body and soul, and forever -- she became the Lord's dwelling place.”
And so, “the first and fundamental” step in our following of Mary, in our becoming a dwelling place of the Lord, is to have faith: to believe in God, “who has shown himself in Christ Jesus and makes himself known in” the Scriptures, in the Liturgy and in the Church.
This believing is not merely the acceptance of a principal, an idea, or a piece of data – it is not an exercise of the intellect, because the “conviction, that God exists is not information like any other.”
Believing is an act of the will – and must become the fundamental reality upon which our lives are built. To believe, to echo Mary’s ‘yes’ and say, ‘I am the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word,’ this must give direction to the entirety of our lives. More than a thought, believing must be for us, as it was for Mary, “a way of acting, and a manner of living.”
“I Magnify the Lord”:
Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s greeting, her great canticle of thanksgiving, comprises the center of today’s Gospel. And in Mary’s very first words we see that her belief has indeed become her way of acting and her manner of living. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,” she says “and my spirit rejoices in God my savior . . . the Almighty has done great things for me and Holy is His Name.”
Mary’s entire life becomes an act of worship of the Lord she has brought forth into the world. She declares the greatness of God because she has made God great in her own life and wants Him to be great in our lives as well. Mary “knew that if God is great, we too are great. She was not afraid that God might be a ‘rival’ in our life,” that His greatness might somehow crush our freedom.
The tragic sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was that they thought otherwise – they imagined that they could set God aside and become like gods themselves!
“This is the great temptation for us in the modern age as well.” We are constantly tempted into thinking that God’s commandments merely restrict us – that without God we could have more freedom, more autonomy and independence. We imagine that to be truly free is to be our own gods and to simply do as we please.
But the truth is that “when God disappears, men and women do not become greater; rather, they lose their divine dignity, and can therefore be used, abused and discarded.” So much of our modern society shows that this is precisely what happens to humanity when God is absent.
Mary’s life of worship shows us that “only if God is great is humankind also great.” And so with Mary we “must ensure that God is great in our lives,” and make Him present in the world, for it is only then that “we too will become divine!”
“Mary set out in haste”:
Finally, in today’s Gospel, St. Luke sets the stage for Mary and Elizabeth’s encounter by telling us that after Gabriel’s announcement, “Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste.”
This makes clear that Mary’s vocation to make God present required “taking a new road and immediately setting out.” There could be no delay, and God alone could lead her on this journey.
The rest of Mary’s life “is marked by this ‘holy haste’ which knows that God always has priority and nothing” can keep us from following where He leads. Even in moments of darkness and suffering,” from Bethlehem, to exile in Egypt, and even to the foot of the Cross, Mary follows God’s plan of love and bears her Son to the world.
Following in Mary’s footsteps, hoping to reign with her in eternal glory, we too must set out with haste on the path of vocation that God is leading us on. We must not only believe in the Lord, and become His dwelling place, and worship Him who dwells within us – we must also bring Him to the world as Mary brought Jesus to Elizabeth.
“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice.” So too, when we go in service to our brothers and sisters they will recognize Christ in us and be filled with the joy of His Spirit.
Friends, we will emulate our Blessed Mother, when we believe as she believed and make faith in God the very foundation of our living. We will emulate Mary when we worship as she worshipped, and find our freedom and our greatness in adoring and proclaiming God’s greatness. We will emulate Mary when we answer God’s call with haste, and bear Christ to others as she did.
Brothers and sisters, if we emulate our Blessed Mother in these ways, then we can dare to hope that we will follow her in yet another way – we can hope that we will rise with her, body and soul into heaven, and reign there forever with her and her Son.
This homily is a distillation of three homilies Pope Benedict XVI has given on the Assumption during his papacy. The hyperlinked section titles above correspond to the respective homilies and the quotes taken from them.
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