The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Readings for Year A: Apocalypse 12:1-10; I Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56
This weekend we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. Despite the importance of devotion to Mary, expressed in so many ways in this church in particular, we might be tempted to see this as an obscure piece of theology which may be difficult to see as relevant to ourselves. In 2019 James Hanvey, the former superior of the Jesuit community at 114 Mount Street and now working in the Jesuit Curia in Rome, wrote a reflection on the Assumption for Thinking Faith, the online magazine on the Jesuits in Britain website. The reflection took as its starting point Botticini’s Assumption of the Virgin. In that reflection James wrote:-
“One way of understanding why the Church speaks of Mary with a loving and devotional boldness is to recognise that in speaking of her, the Church is always speaking about Christ and the life of grace in us as it comes into its eternal plenitude.
About Christ: It is not an accident or only a poetic touch by which the writer of Acts places Mary with the apostles at Pentecost. She is the cantus firmus of their faith and the truth that they are now called to serve. How could they ever mythologise Christ or turn him into a concept when they have his mother at the centre of their community? She keeps them (and the Church) true to the person of Christ. For Mary is the guarantor of the incarnation, guarantor of the reality of Christ who lived in a time, a place, a family, a people, with a God, a history and a hope. Her ‘yes’ was not a coerced response nor an utterance given in a moment of being overwhelmed by the divine majesty. God never compels us but always bestows upon us the gift of freedom. For this reason, when Mary responds her acceptance is not a passive one. She anticipates that freedom which is the gift of her son to us, ‘for in freedom Christ has set us free.’ She is truly a free woman because her ‘yes’ to God is also her ‘yes’ to herself, who she was and who she would become as that impossible will unfolded in the life, death and resurrection of her son.
About Us: In a real, personal and immediate way, Mary illuminates what it means to live a life totally alive to Christ and to God’s purpose for our world. In her we see a complete freedom and an undivided will through which she places herself without reservation at the service of Christ and the kingdom. Hers is an unconditional freedom that does not need to see the future outcome in advance of saying yes. She only needs to encounter God’s call and choice of her, nothing more is needed. For this reason, Mary’s faith stands in the same line as that of Abraham and draws on the total faith of her son. In her we can begin to see something of the way in which the life of grace makes us more human, not less so. In the very fullness of her faith and womanhood, Mary shows us that faith does not close us off from the world but makes us more open to it. With her ‘yes’ she stands in solidarity with the poor and the victims, with all those who, like her, have had to hold a dead child in their arms, or flee their home to protect their family. This woman of Nazareth is in solidarity with all those who, in the midst of the precariousness and toil of an unrecognised domestic life, have never stopped believing that somehow, even in the darkness of suffering and death, God was working”.
Today gives us a chance to reflect on what Mary means for us and our understanding our faith. You might want to read the full article:- https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/reflections-assumption.
Fr Chris Pedley, S.J.