Reflection on the Feast of the Assumption
Sunday, August 15, 2010
by Sister Dorothy Folliard, OP

This morning we come together to celebrate the Assumption, the summertime feast of Our lady, a feast of hope and grace. This celebration evokes meditation from us on:

• Mary’s last days on earth;
• The Scriptures chosen for this beautiful day;
• What God is revealing to us in the Assumption of Mary; and
• Our own response in prayer to Mary’s Assumption.

Did Mary die? This was a question of the earliest Christians. We know that in his last hours, Jesus entrusted Mary to John. In our imagination, we picture John coming into the house and finding Mary gone, crying, “Mother Miriam, Mother Miriam, where are you?” Or was her story more like that pictured by our brother Fra Angelico as Mary is surrounded by the disciples of Jesus in the Dormition, a quiet slipping away? Did she just ascend, like Elijah? Certain logic says that if Mary did not die, her deathlessness would have given her a privilege that was not given to her Son, who surely did die. So, in the earliest Christian centuries, the death of Mary was accepted.

But did death cause her body to die? Was the flesh that gave Jesus his flesh to be consumed by worms? The Assumption of Mary was affirmed as early as the sixth century, when it began to be celebrated liturgically. For the feast of the Ascension of Jesus, we have a scriptural account. There is no depiction of the Assumption of Mary in scripture. So, our liturgists can have a field day in choosing texts for our celebration.

Of course, they head straight to the Book of the Apocalypse and that mysterious lady in Chapter 12. She is clothed with the sun. The moon is at her feet. She wears a crown of twelve stars. She and her Son are protected by God. No evil can touch them, certainly not death. In the Psalm, this cosmic queen gets a robe of pure gold!

Paul’s epistle gives us a picture of death that is a bit clearer, but not by much. Is any one of us smart enough to look at an acorn and see an oak tree? We Christians place our hope in the resurrected life. Christ precedes us in our death.

Christ raises all who belong to him.

Our bodies will be         transfigured,

                                   glorious,

                                   spiritual,

                                   imperishable.

Of one aspect of our own assumption we can be sure: We will look like Christ!

Christ has gone before us in death and we will bear his image!

And our Gospel?

On this feast, when heaven touches earth, we turn to Luke, to the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, the scene that inspired our Chapter. An aunt an a niece meet each other. We can hear their laughter.

The niece says, “You’re too old!” 

The aunt says, “You’re too young!”

The children they are carrying have special roles to play for God.

Mary and Elizabeth embrace each other. They lay hands on each other’s bodies. The child Elizabeth is carrying leaps for joy! And Mary sings about herself, about being small and yet great. Mary sings about God and her gratitude.

Mary’s whole mind,

            her whole spirit,

            every single part of her body sings to God.

And Mary sings of a time when all who are poor will be filled with the good things of God.

We ask: in this heaven-touching-earth, what is God revealing to us?

When the Assumption of Mary was declared a dogma in the 1950s, many were upset because there seemed to be no basis in scripture for it. But Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, rejoiced. He said that what Mary experienced in her Assumption is exactly what all of us desire for ourselves.

This is a feast of hope, a celebration of our bodiliness, of the resurrection of the body, of eternal life for our flesh. Our faith tells us that, in the end, we will be truly ourselves, not ghosts, not simply “souls.” The faith that we profess today in Mary we profess in ourselves. Our creed says it. “I believe in the resurrection of the body – mine, yours, all of ours. This is what the Assumption means. Today’s feast emphasizes the holiness of the body.

Yes, the “old bod” is the vehicle for the saving life God brings to birth, a partner in our redemption. Our bodiliness is God’s instrument. Across the years, our faith practices have not always emphasized this and we have learned to say, “dirty – old; filthy – old; beautiful, gorgeous flesh.” The Assumption celebrates our fleshliness, and we respond to this revelation in our singing of the Salve Regina at the deathbed of our dying sisters.

A few years ago, Alice McDermott wrote the story of an Irish-American family as they went through the ups and downs of raising their children, as they kept their faith, knowing the incompleteness of life here on earth. She called her book, After This, a subtle reference to the line in the prayer, “after this, our exile…”

Today we reflect on Mary’s history,

                                    her strengths,

                                    her joys,

                                    her sufferings,

                                    her total fidelity to God.

Mary is truly our sister. She knows all about us. The Italian artist, Tintoretto, created two masterpieces: he depicted the Ascension of Jesus and the Assumption of Mary. In his painting of the Ascension, Jesus is looking up, longing to be with his Abba-Father. Looking up, he wants to draw us up, to lead us farther. By contrast, in Tintoretto’s Assumption, in her rising into heaven, Mary looks back at the people she is leaving behind. She is sad to leave behind those who will follow her in their own death.

So when we stand beside the caskets of our deceased sisters, it is with a sense of incompleteness. Their life stories do not end in our chapel, nor in our cemetery.

So we connect our own assumption to the Assumption of Mary as we pray:

“Turn then, O most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and, after this, our exile, show to us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus!

O gentle, O loving, O kind Virgin Mary!”