Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Although Pope Pius XII declared dogmatically in 1950, Mary’s Assumption into heaven, homilies and liturgical celebrations focusing on this reality go back to the early centuries. What we declare is that ”having completed the course of her earthly life, (Mary) was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory” (Munificentíssimus Deus, 39).

Like many theological formulations, this understanding and teaching comes from ‘connecting the dots’. So while Sacred Scripture doesn’t provide explicit details of the Assumption itself, we take note of the description of the woman described in today’s first reading from of the Book of Revelation, a woman caught in the middle of a cosmic battle between good and evil.

  It’s important to consider that reading from Revelation in light of the Ark of the Covenant and what it meant to the Jewish people: the Ark had once been their source of strength, their identity and God’s presence among them, and eventually came to be housed in the Temple in Jerusalem. But it vanished from their midst. What happened to it remained a mystery, though there were theories and even a suggestion that Jeremiah hid it in a cave on the very mountain where God spoke to Moses (2 Maccabees 2:4-8).

Yet it would never have vanished from the consciousness of the Jewish people, even in Jesus’ time, 600 years since it was last publicly accounted for. Where was it? Would they ever get it back? And considering that the Jewish people had been handed off from one conquering power to the next, the Jews of Jesus’ time would surely have wondered if somehow it would ever appear to them again: Would they no longer be under the thumb of the Romans? The Ark never left their consciousness nor their hopes.

  In the Book of Revelation, John is given a vision of heaven, and sees the powerful unveiling of God’s power, gradually building to a crescendo until the seventh, and final, trumpet sounds. Heavenly voices begin praising God. One can imagine hearing something like Handel’s Messiah. Then suddenly, John describes that “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm….” (Rev 11:19).

The people for whom this vision was recorded, upon hearing this would certainly have been dumfounded upon hearing that John had seen the Ark, lost for 600 years. He saw it!, they must have thought. Is God going to entrust us with it again?

With those questions in mind, John continues with his vision: “….A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child…” (12:1-2). The Ark, God’s dwelling place among them, was no longer made of acacia wood and covered with gold. Now the Ark was itself en-fleshed, as the Virgin of Nazareth. No longer did the Law within exist on tablets of stone, but instead was held within the Virgin Mary’s womb—Mary, the new Ark of the Covenant.

This identity of Mary as the new Ark makes further sense when we consider events from Israel’s history that describe how a mysterious cloud—known as the shekinah cloud—hovered over the Ark in Moses’ time (Ex 40:35), and how that same cloud later filled the special chamber of the Temple in Jerusalem, where the Ark was kept (2 Chron 7:1-3). That same mysterious shekinah cloud was what would overshadow young Mary of Nazareth, upon her response to God’s plan: “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

One way of understanding today’s solemnity is that Mary—the woman seen in heaven, whom we declare each year on December 8th to have been conceived without original sin in order that she might be worthy to be the new Ark—is that after she finished her course of life on this earth, she, the sinless Mother of God, was given a place in heaven, so that she might be mother to us all in a new way—a heavenly intercessor.

And this reminds us that ultimately, this feast is not just about what happened to Mary.

• As St. Paul once declared: “in Christ all shall be brought to life”.

• As our second reading (for the Mass of the Day) declared: “in Christ all shall be brought to life”.

Jesus was only the first to be raised from the dead. What he went to, he drew his mother into it, and that’s what he has planned for all of us.

As Pope Benedict XVI once said, “By contemplating Mary in heavenly glory, we understand that the earth is not the definitive homeland for us either, and that if we live with our gaze fixed on eternal goods we will one day share in this same glory and the earth will become more beautiful”. At the core of all our theological statements is the beautiful reminder that God desires heaven for us. We need only to also desire it, and orient our lives toward it.

Let us call upon our Mother, our heavenly intercessor, to pray us to that reality, and let us always look to her with the due affection as sons and daughters, seeing her as a sign of our hope, and her prayers as a source of strength.