Feast of the Assumption of Mary

See Gospel Commentary Luke 1:39-56

Homily 1 - 15 August 2021

I love Mary’s inspired song that she sang in response to Elizabeth’s greeting. The wording draws liberally from earlier Scriptural texts and prophecies. For me it sums up the best of Hebrew spirituality. And there it is, articulated by Mary. It shows a wonderful insight into the heart of God, an equally wonderful sense of Mary’s relationship to God, which she sees reflected and repeated in God’s response to humanity and to the whole created world. Her heart goes out so joyfully to the God of the little ones like herself and the needy ones of the world — the compassionate God, the faithful God.

I think that we all need, often, quietly, to reflect on her inspired song to God, as we seek her help in our personal journey across life into the heart of God.The more it becomes our song, too, the more we spontaneously find ourselves proclaiming with her the greatness of God and exulting in God’s saving action in our world.

In celebrating Mary’s Assumption, body and soul, we see her human like us and in some way divinised now like her Son. Through her unique union as mother of the historical human Christ, she too shares now in his risen state. Through and in him, she is drawn into the ceaseless flow of the divine love of our Trinity God. Amazingly, God who did great things for Mary will likewise do similar great things for us.

It was Mary’s human body, her womb, that conceived, nourished and formed the human body of Jesus for nine months, her breasts that fed him for some time afterwards, her hands that washed him, her arms that embraced him, her personality and even spirituality that shaped his.

That human body of hers was composed of myriad molecules, some of which came to be shared by the developing Christ in her womb, those same molecules that first took shape in exploding stars, that still are the basic building blocks of everything that exists, and that now form our bodies.

We so easily take our human bodies for granted. We so easily take the human bodies of others for granted. We ignore the wonderful reality that everything that exists is drawing life, existence, at this moment, from our creating God — each individual human person, every animal, insect, plant, rock that is, is being actively created and individually sustained by God. We personally are more than human creatures, we are children of God, destined to live together with the risen Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father, and with Mary already assumed, body and soul, in heaven.

Last week, at the direction of the United Nations, the international Panel on Climate Change issued a striking and urgent warning that our world is noticeably and inexorably growing hotter — faster than earlier predicted. Global Warming is relentlessly transforming our world. And the ones most likely to suffer its impact first will be the poorer nations of the world, particularly those bordering the oceans. We have begun to starve each other to death. They are are our brothers and sisters. It is not yet too late. The direction can be stopped. But nations will need to work in unity, and get their act together quickly.

We need to realign our sense of God, to move on from the attitudes formed during the Industrial Revolution. God has not licensed us recklessly to dominate and endlessly to exploit our world and its resources. Rather, we are called to work with God in carefully and responsibly tending our world with its limited and fragile capacities.

Our celebrating of Mary’s bodily Assumption and, at the same time, our thoughtfully contemplating what it means, give us Catholics a privileged vantage point from which to see more meaningfully what we are doing to each other and to our common home. Constantly attuned to Mary, Pope Francis is giving a lead, and setting the pace.

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Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now.