Assumption of Our Lady 2020
Apocalypse 11:19, 12:1-6, 10; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56
A priest friend of mine, now deceased, recalled standing in St. Peter’s Square, as a student at the English College, Rome, in 1950, as Pope Pius XII promulgated the definition of the Assumption of Our Lady as a doctrine to be believed by all Catholics.
What struck my friend was something which the Pope didn’t say. He didn’t state that this was a unique privilege granted to Mary: instead, he set Mary very firmly within the Church, and declared that what God had done for Mary, He would do for the whole Church—that Mary’s Assumption was a sign and pledge of what awaits us all.
In many ways, this is what defines Our Lady. She is OUR Lady because she is OURS. She is our fellow-creature, redeemed by her Son as we are redeemed by her Son, though in her case redeemed in advance by virtue of her Immaculate Conception, which was to prepare her to be Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God.
Like us, Mary is a member of the Church. She is THE member of the Church par excellence, the one truly faithful member, the one who said “Let it be done to me according to your word” and who was faithful to that pledge to the full.
Yet even in uttering those words, Mary was speaking on behalf of the Church. The whole Church prays, and we as individuals pray, “Let it be done to me according to your word”. The whole Church brings Christ to birth, making Him present in the world of today, the difference being that Mary, the first and only fully faithful member of the Church, responded to God perfectly, and so brought Christ bodily into the world.
“Blessed is she who believed” says Elizabeth, “that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Mary’s faith was complete. Her understanding wasn’t complete: she wasn’t spared the anxieties faced by any mother. In fact, she was given those anxieties in abundance; hearing puzzling and disturbing prophecies about her Son, losing Him as a twelve year old for three days; being baffled by, and yet pondering and doing her best to understand the responses made by that twelve year old; not being able to grasp some of the finer points of His mission.
Yet, without always understanding, she kept believing, with a faith and a love which took her to the foot of the Cross, and later to the Upper Room, where she mothered the Church into existence as the Spirit which had filled her descended upon those who were to be the continuation of her own Spirit-filled life, and of the life of that Son whom she had brought to birth.
“My soul glorifies the Lord” is Mary’s response to that blessing proclaimed by Elizabeth, as she declaims that prayer which is also a prophecy, and which we know as the Magnificat. Filled with the Spirit, she accepts Elizabeth’s declaration of her blessedness, and takes it further. Henceforth, all generations will call her blessed. That blessedness is a gift from God, and every generation of human beings must acknowledge it, must recognise her as blessed by God, the all powerful one who has done great things for her.
Since the earliest days of the Church, Christians have believed that this blessing has been brought to fulfilment, a belief ratified by Pius XII as he defined the doctrine of her Assumption. Yet it has been fulfilled not only for Mary as an individual, but for Mary as the first member of the Church. What HAS been done for her WILL be done for us. This then is our Feast. Let us rejoice in it.
