Revelation 11:19,12:1-6,10
1 Corinthians 15:20-26
Luke 1:39-56
The older I get the more time I seem to need to spend on paying attention to my body and making sensible choices. This is anything but self indulgent. When you live in community your own well-being is linked to the whole. There’s something of an implicit understanding that what you do or don’t do will affect the whole. While the monastic path might be an overtly spiritual choice, there’s no escaping the fact that this choice is worked out in a very physical way each day. Bodies matter.
The media handling of the Archie Battersbee case has made me think deeply about what it means to be alive and what it means to die a natural death. There are so many layers to this situation. Facing death is probably one of the hardest things that is asked of us as human beings. We know that the pain of separation will take its toll emotionally and possibly physically too.
When I come to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption I bring to the liturgy my own questions about my bodily life and death. The Church offers me some interpretative keys in the Liturgy of the Word. These are not keys that unlock the mystery straight away. For me these are well worn keys and I need a certain patience to unlock the various doors of mystery.
The first reading from Revelation invites me into the realm of apocalyptic literature. Today the ‘woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown.’ is Mary of Nazareth. I need to suspend what I understand to be the context and meaning of these words of Scripture and allow the text to have a meaning specific to the feast. Here we have Mary, Queen of heaven and bearer of our Saviour.
Today’s text from Corinthians plunges us into the mystery of the physicality of resurrection. There is a reassuring order in which things happen:
‘Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him.’
This text gives me such hope. Despite our weaknesses and our failings we know that we ‘belong to him’. In the Church’s understanding of the Assumption, Mary is so closely related to Jesus in mind and body that it is unthinkable that she her body should know decay. Legend has it that, perhaps in Ephesus, she falls asleep and is bodily assumed into heaven. In the bodily Assumption of Mary we find our hope too. I think there’s a case for understanding the Assumption as a sign that Mary’s body and our bodies too are places where God’s grace can take hold and where God’s power and glory can be seen. Our destiny, as those who belong to Christ, is to be resurrected with bodies that are glorified.
When we come to the Gospel text from Luke we are on familiar territory. This door opens easily for me. Two pregnant women meet in a sharing of joy and thanksgiving for the new life that they bear within them. Both women know that their bodies are channels of God’s promise and grace.
Poet Malcolm Guite expresses this so well in his sonnet, Visitation.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
As we look at this scene from the vantage point of the feast of the Assumption we see the dynamic of Mary’s faithfulness in mind, body and heart.
‘Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’
With Mary’s ‘Yes’, this promise takes shape in flesh and blood. What God has done in and through Mary, is God’s desire for each one of us. In celebrating the Assumption we celebrate redeemed humanity. Theologian John McQuarrie sees the Assumption as an on going event:
‘…whenever here on earth there is a gleam of true glory, a faithful act of discipleship, a prayer offered in faith, a hand stretched out in love, there is assumption, human life is being lifted up to God by God.’
How can you be open to the graces of the Assumption this week?