Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Assumption of the BVM
15 August 2023

    A formal part of Catholic faith is our belief that God has blessed Mary with certain privileges.  These privileges bring salvation to Mary and they come purely from the generosity of the Holy Trinity.  These privileges are an answer to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and so they are part of God’s plan to make it possible for mankind to have eternal salvation.  All the privileges of Mary stem from her first or main privilege, namely that God chose her in a singular way to be the Mother of God the Son in the flesh.  In the privilege of the Assumption that we celebrate today we express our Catholic faith that at the end of her earthly life Mary, having been preserved from sin from the first moment of her life and having chosen to use her freedom to live sinless her entire life, was rescued from the decay of the tomb and brought up body and soul into heavenly life.  You can find this doctrine already believed and celebrated liturgically in the fifth century.  Finally, being formally defined in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, this doctrine is thereby a dogma of the faith.

   In her Assumption we have one of the reasons for which we call Mary “blessed”.  In calling her blessed in her assumption, we join Elizabeth in the Gospel in proclaiming according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Mary is blessed among all women and blessed because of the fruit of her womb.  That fruit is our Savior, Jesus Christ, Mary’s Son and God in our flesh!

   A simple idea to help us appreciate the dogma of the faith that we observe today is this: That the ark of the covenant, and what the ark contains, belong together.  The contents of the ark of the Old Covenant were sacred: it contained God’s Word, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, it contained the rod of Aaron which had miraculously bloomed as a sign of priesthood, and it contained a vile of the mysterious manna from heaven.  By containing such sacred objects of God’s presence and power, the People of Israel rightly saw the ark itself as holy and as a place of encounter with God precisely because of its relationship with the sacred contents it contained.

   Likewise with Mary.  She is called the New Ark of the Covenant.  In fact, that image of the ark is invoked in the first reading from Revelation and moves immediately into a reference to Mary, the great sign of the pregnant woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve starts.  Mary as ark, contained the presence of God Himself as we heard in the Gospel passage.  That presence of God in her womb caused St. John the Baptist in utero to leap for joy, as we also heard in the Gospel passage.  Mary gave to God the Son his flesh, our human nature, so that he could save us, dying in our flesh and rising again to newness of life.  Furthermore, he grew in her, he was contained in her womb, like the ark contained the sacred presences of the Old Covenant.  But this time, the new ark contained not the Word of God on stone, but the Word of God in the new ark in flesh, Jesus the Christ.  It contained not the rod of Aaron that bloomed as a sign of priesthood, but in the new ark the Eternal High Priest himself.  It contained not a vile of that mysterious manna substance that was gathered from the desert floor by God’s People, but it contained the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the one whose flesh gives eternal life.  This is the ark of the new covenant and what it contains for our salvation.

   The ark and what it contains belong together.  Consider a different application but related imagery.  We wouldn’t put the Blessed Sacrament here on the altar but then have the tabernacle over there in the cry room.  The two belong together.  The tabernacle and what it contains belong together.  It is proper that after the Lord’s ascension into heaven, the ark – Mary – be reunited with her Son and brought to his dwelling place and this happens by a special privilege given to Mary by God.  This is what we believe in faith and what we celebrate in the Assumption.  We express faith that, in view of what needed to be accomplished in God the Father’s plan for our salvation, Mary was first saved by grace beforehand.  She was preserved from all sin in her conception and then, after a life of cooperation as the faithful and holy new ark of the covenant, that salvation that God gave her came to fruition such that, at the end of her earthly life, she was taken up body and soul into heaven.  God would not allow decay and corruption to touch her, the New Ark.  Since she had been saved from sin by a special grace, that means she was also saved from the consequences of sin, principal among those being death and the decay of the tomb.  May all of this about Mary serve to inspire us as disciples today to cooperate, like she did, with God’s grace so as to follow where the Lord has opened for us the way to heaven; a way she herself, we proclaim in faith, has followed.  Having been taken up body and soul into heaven we rightly say with the Psalm of this holy Mass: “The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold!”