NUNTIATORIA

Assumpta Est Maria in Cælum

MASS Gaudeamus omnes in Domino
LESSON Eccles. 24: 11-13, 15-20
GOSPEL St Luke 10: 38-42
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore beatæ Mariæ Virginis: de cujus Assumptione gaudent Angeli, et collaudant Filium Dei. “Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating this feast in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at whose Assumption the Angels rejoice and together praise the Son of God.”

So Holy Church sings as we enter upon one of the most glorious days of her year. Notice at once where she directs our eyes. The Angels rejoice at the Assumption of Mary, but they praise the Son of God. Mary is exalted, and Christ is glorified. The Mother is crowned, and the victory belongs to the Son. There is in that one sentence the whole sanity and splendour of Catholic devotion to Our Lady: the more perfectly we understand what God has done in Mary, the more clearly we see the magnificence of what Christ has accomplished.

Today Mary is taken body and soul into heaven. Not her soul only, for that is the ordinary blessedness of the saints who die in God’s friendship. Her body also is glorified. The flesh which gave flesh to the Eternal Word, the hands which held Him, the arms which carried Him, the eyes which looked upon Him, the heart which loved Him with a mother’s love and suffered beneath His Cross — all this is taken into glory. Christ ascended into heaven by His own power because He is God. Mary is assumed because she is a creature. Christ is the Victor; Mary is the first and most perfect trophy of His victory. Christ is the cause; Mary is the masterpiece of His grace.

And the old Roman liturgy places before us today a Gospel which at first may seem an unexpected one. It does not describe the empty tomb of Our Lady. It does not recount a procession of Angels. It does not attempt to satisfy our curiosity about the last moments of her earthly life. Instead we hear of another Mary, sitting at the feet of Christ, while Martha is troubled about much serving. Martha complains, and Our Lord answers: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and art troubled about many things: but one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

For centuries these words were heard at the Mass of the Assumption, and the Fathers and medieval doctors understood why. St Augustine saw in Martha and Mary the two conditions of Christian life. Martha represents the life we live now: necessary, busy, burdened with duties, filled with works of mercy and the cares that arise because we inhabit a fallen world. There are hungry people because men hunger; there are sick to visit because bodies suffer; there are dead to bury because men die. All these things are good, but all of them belong to a world which is passing away. Mary, sitting at the feet of Christ, represents the life which does not pass away: the contemplation and possession of God. Martha’s work will one day cease because there will be no hunger, no sickness, no death. Mary’s portion remains because God remains.

And on this feast the meaning becomes wonderfully clear. Our Lady knew Martha’s part. No one should imagine the Blessed Virgin as some ethereal figure who passed through this world untouched by ordinary duty. She knew what it was to work. She travelled through the hill country to serve Elizabeth. She gave birth in poverty. She wrapped the Child in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger. She fled by night into Egypt. She kept the house at Nazareth. She lost the twelve-year-old Christ and searched for Him in anguish. She noticed the embarrassment of the hosts at Cana. She followed her Son towards Calvary and stood when others fled. Mary knew weariness, anxiety, poverty, bereavement and the ordinary hidden fidelity of daily life.

But in all that activity she remained the contemplative Virgin. St Luke tells us that she “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.” She worked without losing God. She suffered without losing God. She served without losing God. She lived in this world without allowing this world to become the measure of her life.

Now Martha’s work is ended. Bethlehem is past. Egypt is past. Nazareth is past. Cana is past. Calvary is past. The sword has done its work. The earthly pilgrimage is completed. And now Mary possesses perfectly that which she had chosen throughout her life: the optimam partem, the better part, which shall not be taken from her.

That is why today’s Gospel is addressed very directly to us. Most of us are Martha most of the time. We are troubled about many things. We have duties, anxieties, health, money, family, work, relationships, responsibilities, grievances, plans. Much of it is legitimate. Some of it is necessary. Yet Our Lord says something almost frightening in its simplicity: “One thing is necessary.”

One.

Not ten things. Not twenty. One.

The possession of God.

We may possess everything else and lose that one thing. We may also lose almost everything else and still possess it. Health can be taken from us. Money can disappear. Friends can fail us. Reputation can be destroyed. Strength diminishes. Beauty fades. Plans collapse. Even those whom we love most dearly cannot remain with us forever in this world. Death strips away everything which time has lent us.

But sanctifying grace is of another order. If I possess God, I possess that for which I was created. If I lose God, then however successful my life may appear before men, I have lost the one thing necessary.

The Assumption therefore judges our priorities. It asks us what exactly we are doing with the little span between our birth and our death. We live as though so many temporary things were permanent and the eternal things somehow optional. We can find hours for entertainment and minutes for prayer. We can brood upon an insult for days and examine our conscience for seconds. We can be intensely concerned about what others think of us and strangely unconcerned about what God sees in us. We can arrange our earthly lives with extraordinary care while leaving eternity largely to chance.

Our Lady did precisely the opposite. Her whole existence was gathered into one act of receptivity towards God: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum — “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

That Fiat is the hidden beginning of today’s glory.

The world says: make yourself.

Mary says: receive what God gives.

The world says: assert your will.

Mary says: Fiat.

The world says that freedom means refusing anything that limits our desires. Mary teaches us that true freedom is the joyful conformity of the human will to the divine will. And behold the result. The creature who most perfectly humbled herself beneath God is the creature whom God has most greatly exalted.

St John Damascene, preaching upon this mystery centuries before its solemn dogmatic definition, said that it was fitting that the body which had preserved its virginity in giving birth should be preserved from corruption; fitting that she who carried the Creator as a child should dwell in the heavenly tabernacles; fitting that she who had seen her Son upon the Cross should behold Him seated with the Father. The logic begins and ends with Christ. Mary’s body is precious because God took flesh from her flesh. Her Assumption matters because the Incarnation matters.

And herein lies a rebuke to one of the profound errors of our age. Modern man alternates between worshipping the body and despising it. He worships youth, appearance, health and appetite, yet at the same time increasingly treats the body as raw material, without given meaning, something which the will may manipulate as though creation itself had nothing to say about what we are. Catholicism will have neither error. The body is not God, but neither is it rubbish. It is God’s creation. Christ took a body. Christ redeemed us in His body. Christ rose bodily from the grave. We receive His Body in the Blessed Sacrament. And we profess every Sunday our belief in carnis resurrectionem — the resurrection of the flesh.

Today we see that Christian hope already realised in Mary.

The Assumption tells us what salvation intends to do with the human person. Not destroy nature, but perfect it. Not rescue a soul from an irrelevant body, but glorify man whole and entire. Mary has already reached that consummation towards which we still travel. She is, as it were, the Church arrived at her destination.

And this is why the feast should teach us how to die.

We do not pretend that death is pleasant. Christianity never requires us to call an enemy a friend. St Paul calls death “the last enemy.” Our Lord Himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus. But the enemy has been defeated. It can still wound us; it cannot finally possess those who belong to Christ.

The grave does not have the last word.

Corruption does not have the last word.

Our sins need not have the last word.

Christ has the last word.

At Easter we see the victory in the Head of the Mystical Body. Today we see its extraordinary fulfilment in its most perfect member. One day, if we die in Christ, we too shall know what Mary already possesses. The body entrusted to the earth will rise. The eyes which closed in death will open. The hands folded upon the breast will live again. The whole person will stand before God.

The question, then, is not whether we shall leave this world. We shall. The question is what we shall have chosen while we were here.

“Martha, Martha, thou art careful and art troubled about many things.”

How many of those things trouble us now which will seem absurdly small from the perspective of eternity? How many resentments are worth carrying to the grave? How many ambitions are worth losing peace of soul? How much sin is worth one moment of separation from God?

“One thing is necessary.”

Beloved in Christ, the Assumption is heaven’s answer to the confusion of our priorities. It shows us where human life is going when it is surrendered to God. It shows us that holiness is not wasted, obedience is not wasted, suffering offered with Christ is not wasted, prayer is not wasted, fidelity is not wasted. Everything surrendered to grace can be gathered up into glory.

And so today we should ask Our Lady for something more serious than a passing feeling of devotion. We should ask her to teach us the secret of her life: to hear the word of God and keep it; to serve when God asks us to serve; to suffer when He permits us to suffer; to remain at the feet of Christ when the world clamours for our attention; to say Fiat when His will contradicts our own; and above all to choose, amid all the many things which demand our attention, the one thing which cannot be taken away.

Mary began with Fiat and ends with Assumpta est.

Between those two phrases lies the whole Christian life.

First, the surrender: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

Then, after obedience, sacrifice, perseverance and the Cross, the glory: “Mary is assumed into heaven.”

What happened uniquely in her is the pattern of what grace desires to accomplish in us. Not the same privilege, but the same direction: from self-will to obedience, from sin to grace, from grace to perseverance, from perseverance through death, and from death at last to resurrection.

So let us rejoice today, not with the shallow rejoicing of spectators watching another’s triumph, but as children who see in their Mother’s glory the promise of home.

Assumpta est Maria in cælum: gaudent Angeli.

Mary is assumed into heaven; the Angels rejoice.

May she obtain for us the grace to choose the better part while choice is still ours; to possess Christ while we have time to seek Him; to persevere when the Cross becomes heavy; and at the completion of our own earthly course to be found in the friendship of her Divine Son, so that where Mary now reigns with Christ, there, by His mercy, we also may one day behold Him face to face.

For the better part, once perfectly possessed, shall never be taken away.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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