Assumption 2024

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth towards Himself.

Today we celebrate the Assumption of Mary into Heaven at the conclusion of her earthly life.  The Church has not definitively taught whether Mary died at the end of her life, but regardless we believe that she was taken up into Heaven body and soul.  Unlike so many other saints, Mary has no tomb we venerate and no relics we treasure.  This teaching, long held by the faithful, was declared an official dogma of the Church only in 1950 by Pope Pius XXII.  This is not to say that we only started believing this teaching seventy-four years ago, but rather that it took time to properly articulate and understand this truth which Catholics have always believed.

We tend to get it all wrong about the relation between our bodies and souls.  We think it perfectly natural that at the end of life our bodies are separated, freed from our souls.  The body is left on earth while the soul is purified and arrives at its true home in Heaven.  But in reality, this separation isn’t natural at all.  Body and soul were created for each other and the temporary separation between them is a consequence of the original sin and the fall of humanity.  At the end of time, we will receive new, glorified bodies, once again whole as we were meant to be.  We are not merely souls trapped in a machine of flesh and blood.

Mary, conceived without sin, stands apart from us.  In preparing a worthy and fitting mother for the second person of the Trinity, God preserved her from all sin.  Though she endured immense pain and suffering in her life, she was spared from that which plagues all those born in sin: the separation soul and body.  Jesus would not allow His mother to experience the full effects of sin which we must undergo.  He would not leave her body to remain in a tomb with her soul separated from her body until the end of time because of the unique and important role she played in the story of our salvation.

Mary’s entire mission was to bring us to Jesus, to magnify the majesty of God, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord.  She is that woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under feet, her head crowned with twelve stars.  While we all must slog through this valley of tears, she is placed above us to lift our eyes towards Heaven.  God has used her to show what awaits all who, like Mary, use their lives to magnify the greatness of the Lord.  Mary exemplifies what awaits those who strive to expand the kingdom of God, bringing the presence of Jesus into the world just as she brought Jesus to Elizabeth.  When the Son of God came to earth, He came to turn our hearts away from earth towards Himself.  And Mary, in her Assumption, is that light to grab our attention.  She is a beacon, drawing our eyes upwards and gently helping us along towards the reward foreshadowed in her life: the integration and perfection of all things in the resurrection and glorification that awaits us in the life to come.