Our Catholic Church celebrates eighteen feasts devoted to Mary every year. There are three that are Holy Days of Obligation; that means that Catholics are obliged to attend Mass on those days. Lucky for us this Holy day landed on a Sunday this year. But there is a reason that these three days deserve our attention.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception takes place on December 8. What is that all about? It means that through a singular grace Mary was conceived without original sin. Where did this grace come from? Her son of course. God doesn’t worry about before and after; God is always now. Why did he single Mary out, way back before the big bang, for this special grace? What did she do to deserve it? She didn’t, anymore than you and I deserve anything we are given. Could God have used someone born with original sin to be the mother of his son? Sure. But God through the Church has revealed that Mary was conceived without original sin. She is like Adam and Eve, before the fall. She is like human beings are supposed to be. Could we say the same about Jesus? NOt really; Jesus is like us in all things but sin -- and so is Mary; but Jesus is divine, and Mary is not, and you and I are not. So we can look at Mary and see how we are supposed to be -- saying yes to God all the time. And today we hear those words -- My soul glorifies the Lord. “Glorifies” is not a good word, though. We used to say “my soul magnifies the lord” but that isn’t too good either. Because what we really mean is that Mary’s soul reflects the Lord; she is so pure, so open to God, that when you look at her you see something of God.
The second holy day of obligation is the feast of Mary, the Mother of God, celebrated on January first. There was a lot of controversy in the early days of the Church. Was Mary the mother of the human part of Jesus? Did Mary give birth to some pre-existing Jesus who used her as a vehicle to enter the world? The Church spent a lot of time and effort to get this straight, and finally concluded that Mary is truly mother to God because Jesus’ humanity and divinity cannot be separated. But what does this tell us about Mary? Why do we insist that she is really and truly the Mother of God? Well, again, for God there is no past, no future; God is by definition always now. And Mary, whose life in time was limited to a few years about 2000 years ago, is constantly bringing God into the world. We can’t have Jesus without Mary; in a way, God made the human race for the purpose of welcoming him into the world. Mary stands in for all of us when she brings the Son of God into our lives.
The third holy day is the Assumption which is what we are celebrating today. Our Church teaches that Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven. Did she die? After all, hte Church teaches that the reason people die is because of original sin. Human beings were meant not to die. That’s the point of the Genesis story. In Genesis we learn that in the Garden of Paradise there was a tree in the center called the Tree of Life. Its fruit gave Adam and Eve eternal life. The reason they were expelled from Paradise was because they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and an angel was stationed at the gate to keep them from getting back in to eat from the tree of life. Obviously we are talking symbolically here. But the point the author was making is that we are not supposed to die. So did Mary die? Well, Jesus died, and he didn’t have to. So in the Eastern tradition, Mary did die, not because she had to but because she did so in solidarity with her son. In the Western tradition, at least among some Fathers of the Church she did not die, but simply translated into heaven. We’ll never know. But the assumption of Mary into heaven simply reminds us that God’s intention from the beginning was to gather up everything about us, body and soul, everything that makes me into the person that I am, and bring it into himself for all eternity. Saint Jane Frances de Chantal said it would be like a drop of water falling into the ocean -- the drop becomes the ocean. And Mary is the first to complete what God intended from the beginning -- to be born, to consent to being God’s way into the world, to reflect God in all that we do, and finally to become one with God at the end of our lives while all the while retaining our individuality.
And Mary has achieved that, not through anything she’s done, but out of the sheer love of God. And because she is united with God, she is fully alive, more so than ever on earth. And she can answer our prayers, because she is one of us, our mother; and one with God, her spouse, her Father, and her Son. And I believe she continues to show her children that she’s there for us -- at Fatima, at Lourdes, at Guadalupe, and maybe at Medjugorje, and countless other places down through the years.
So on this Sunday when we celebrate Mary’s Assumption into heaven, reflect on her life, especially on the Annunciation, the Solemnity of the Mother of God, and on her assumption into heaven, and see that her life shows us what God wants for each of us, and that she’s there to help us receive it.
