Mary, The Ark who Leads Israel into Battle

 Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
 

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  In 1981, Steven Spielberg produced a movie that introduced to the world the great archeologist, Indiana Jones.  “Raiders of the Lost Ark” continued Harrison Ford’s connection with action movies that had been started with the “Star Wars” franchise, but was also one of those feel good movies about American beating Nazis.  It also raised this question about where the Ark of the Covenant was.  It reminded people that the Ark of the Covenant was “lost,” as it were.  Contrary to the movie, it has still never been found and is not sitting in a Smithsonian warehouse somewhere.  The two main theories that are prevalent now are: that the Ark is in Ethiopia, brought by Jeremiah to Egypt when the Chaldeans destroyed Jerusalem, and then made its way south to the great Ethiopian kingdom when the Chaldeans went to expand the empire to Egypt, and is now protected by Ethiopian Orthodox priests in a shrine; or that the Ark is buried under rubble of the Solomonic temple, which is currently located under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
    But for us Catholics, the Ark of the old covenant is not important, anymore than the Temple building would be important.  And it’s not important because we have a new Ark of the Covenant: Mary.  Our first reading from the Book of Judith described a woman who led Israel into battle and gained, victory, just as the Ark was often taken into battle, like at Jericho.  The Book of Revelation describes the ark in the temple, and then goes on to describe this woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” who gives birth to a son who rules the nations.  You don’t have to be a Scripture scholar to know that this refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  
    Usually as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we focus on how Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  But our readings also draw us to Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.  And it’s not simply in the Book of Revelation.  The Gospel account of the Visitation is chosen for today’s celebration (as Mary’s Assumption is not directly explained in Scripture) bears striking resemblance to the account of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, who lives just outside of Jerusalem, in a village we now call Ein Kerem.  The new ark is on the move, just as David had it brought to him.  As David brings the Ark of the Covenant with him, he dances before it.  John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, leaps for joy before Mary, the new Ark.  Elizabeth says at the Visitation: “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  David says, after God promises to raise up a dynasty for him, “‘Whom am I, Lord God, and what is my house, that you should have brought me so far?’”  So Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
    Think, too, of what the Ark of the Covenant contained: not sand (like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), but a golden pot with manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the tablets of the Law.  Think about what (or better, whom) Mary carried with her: not the law written on stone tablets, but the author of the Law, who was God’s law made flesh; not the budding staff of the first high priest, but the Eternal High Priest Himself; not the manna which God had given the people in the wilderness, but the True Bread from Heaven, as we have heard over the past few weeks in the Gospel according to John.  Mary is this new Ark.  In fact, when I was in Israel as a seminarian on pilgrimage, I remember visiting a church in Abu Ghosh called Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant, and is said to have been built around the place where the Ark of the Covenant rested until King David took it to Jerusalem.

Statue of Mary in Abu Ghosh

    Today’s Solemnity of the Assumption reminds us that God will raise up, not just our souls, but also our bodies, at the end of time.  What Mary shares in now, we hope to share in when God re-creates the heavens and earth.  But in order to do that, we, in our own way, need to become arks.  God also invites us, and Mary shows us it is possible, to carry the Law within us, written on our hearts, the new law of love that Jesus gave us that does not annul the Ten Commandments, but helps us to live it out more fully.  God invites us to be priests according to our baptism, those who offer our daily sacrifices to God.  We offer God our joys and sorrows, our successes and our failures, our work and our vacation.  Each day we can call on God, just as Aaron, the first priest of the Law, did.  I know that sometimes this is used to distort the ministerial priesthood, but we are truly priests who can "dare to say" (audemus dicere as I say before I say the Our Father) that God is our Father and offer our daily sacrifices to Him.

And God invites us to be sustained, no longer by the old manna that decayed, but the new manna, the bread of life, the Eucharist, which is food for our pilgrimage from this vale of tears to the true Promised Land of heaven.  We are invited to worthily receive the Eucharist so that the Bread of Life can be within us, just as it was within the Ark of the Covenant.  In that way, we become arks of the new covenant, like Mary was and is.
    We don’t need to go to Egypt to find a secret cave that is filled with snakes (“I hate snakes!”) in order to find the Ark.  We don’t have to worry that “we’re digging in the wrong place!”  Following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can be arks of the covenant, the covenant made in the Precious Blood of the Spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is Lord for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant

 Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
 

   In 1981, Steven Spielberg produced a movie that introduced to the world the great archeologist, Indiana Jones.  “Raiders of the Lost Ark” continued Harrison Ford’s connection with action movies that had been started with the “Star Wars” franchise, but was also one of those feel good movies about American beating Nazis.  It also raised this question about where the Ark of the Covenant was.  It reminded people that the Ark of the Covenant was “lost,” as it were.  Contrary to the movie, it has still never been found and is not sitting in a Smithsonian warehouse somewhere.  The two main theories that are prevalent now are: that the Ark is in Ethiopia, brought by Jeremiah to Egypt when the Chaldeans destroyed Jerusalem, and then made its way south to the great Ethiopian kingdom when the Chaldeans went to expand the empire to Egypt, and is now protected by Ethiopian Orthodox priests in a shrine; or that the Ark is buried under rubble of the Solomonic temple, which is currently located under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
    But for us Catholics, the Ark of the old covenant is not important, anymore than the Temple building would be important.  And it’s not important because we have a new Ark of the Covenant: Mary.  In our first reading today, the Book of Revelation describes the ark in the temple, and then goes on to describe this woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” who gives birth to a son who rules the nations.  You don’t have to be a Scripture scholar to know that this refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  
    Usually as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we focus on how Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  Our second reading talks about how Christ has been raised, and will bring all those who belong to Him to that same glory, “each one in the proper order,” which means Mary as first, since she is the perfect disciple.
    But our readings also draw us to Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.  And it’s not simply in the first reading from Revelation.  The Gospel account of the Visitation is chosen for today’s celebration (as Mary’s Assumption is not directly explained in Scripture) bears striking resemblance to the account of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, who lives just outside of Jerusalem, in a village we now call Ein Kerem.  The new ark is on the move, just as David had it brought to him.  As David brings the Ark of the Covenant with him, he dances before it.  John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, leaps for joy before Mary, the new Ark.  Elizabeth says at the Visitation: “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  David says, after God promises to raise up a dynasty for him, “‘Whom am I, Lord God, and what is my house, that you should have brought me so far?’”  So Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
    Think, too, of what the Ark of the Covenant contained: not sand (like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), but a golden pot with manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the tablets of the Law.  Think about what (or better, whom) Mary carried with her: not the law written on stone tablets, but the author of the Law, who was God’s law made flesh; not the budding staff of the first high priest, but the Eternal High Priest Himself; not the manna which God had given the people in the wilderness, but the True Bread from Heaven, as we have heard over the past few weeks in the Gospel according to John.  Mary is this new Ark.  In fact, when I was in Israel as a seminarian on pilgrimage, I remember visiting a church in Abu Ghosh called Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant, and is said to have been built around the place where the Ark of the Covenant rested until King David took it to Jerusalem.
    Today’s Solemnity of the Assumption reminds us that God will raise up, not just our souls, but also our bodies, at the end of time.  What Mary shares in now, we hope to share in when God re-creates the heavens and earth.  But in order to do that, we, in our own way, need to become arks.  God also invites us, and Mary shows us it is possible, to carry the Law within us, written on our hearts, the new law of love that Jesus gave us that does not annul the Ten Commandments, but helps us to live it out more fully.  God invites us to be priests according to our baptism, those who offer our daily sacrifices to God.  We offer God our joys and sorrows, our successes and our failures, our work and our vacation.  Each day we can call on God, just as Aaron, the first priest of the Law, did.  And God invites us to be sustained, no longer by the old manna that decayed, but the new manna, the bread of life, the Eucharist, which is food for our pilgrimage from this vale of tears to the true Promised Land of heaven.  We are invited to worthily receive the Eucharist so that the Bread of Life can be within us, just as it was within the Ark of the Covenant.  In that way, we become arks of the new covenant, like Mary was and is.
    We don’t need to go to Egypt to find a secret cave that is filled with snakes (“I hate snakes!”) in order to find the Ark.  We don’t have to worry that “we’re digging in the wrong place!”  Following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can be arks of the covenant, the covenant made in the Precious Blood of the Spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ. 

Pyromaniacs for Faith

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Guys seem to have a universal reputation for being pyromaniacs, that is, obsessed with fire.  It may not apply to all men, and it may apply to some women, but generally the guys I know love lighting fires.  There is a special thrill that comes from getting some newspaper, small twigs, and a couple of logs to make a large fire, giving off heat and light.  Sometimes guys have to settle with the fire they create lighting a grill.  But generally, guys love fire.

I doubt that Jesus was obsessed with anything, other than doing His Father’s will.  Yet, maybe he really liked fire, too, as we heard Him say today, “‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!’”  But, as we all know, Jesus wasn’t talking about a bonfire.  He was talking about the heat and the light that come from the passion for God and His truth and love.

Sometimes we get a taste for this with other people in our lives.  We are approaching the beginning of school, which generally makes the students (and often the teachers) a little sad.  Yet, it can also be a time of great joy and excitement, especially when friends haven’t seen each much or at all during the summer.  Teachers know all too well about the chaos that ensues when two friends who haven’t really seen each other all summer get in the same room for the first time.  It is definitely fire-like!

Jesus wants that sort of intensity in our relationship with Him.  Now, as with fires, just because there are big flames does not mean the fire is super hot.  Some of the hottest fires I have made have been fires that no longer flame as much, but are white-hot coals.  Our relationship with Jesus doesn’t need to have lots of exciting moments to be strong.  Sometimes a strong relationship is one that doesn’t have lots of flames, but is more white-hot coals.  Still, when new fuel gets added to those white-hot coals, it can certainly create those exciting new signs of activity.

So how do we have a fire-like relationship with Jesus?  How do we quench Jesus’ thirst for the world to be on fire with His love and truth?  One way is prayer.  A few years back as a Diocese we prayed the prayer to the Holy Spirit.  The beginning of that prayer is: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.”  How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit, using those words or others, asking Him to stoke the coals, or maybe add more fuel to the fire before it goes out?  How often do we ask God to make the fire of faith alive in us?

Another way to keep that fire of God’s love hot is to suffer.  We hear about that in our first and second readings today.  Jeremiah suffers for speaking God’s Word.  He’s even thrown into a cistern and starts to sink into the mud.  Now, we might not think of that as a way to help our relationship with God.  But think about your friends: are your best friends the one who are only with you in the good times?  Or are your best friends the ones who are with you no matter what, who are willing to be with you with life has got you down, and when others, or maybe even the world, seems to be against you?  The author to the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us to not grow weary or lose heart, because suffering perfects our relationship with God.  It is not a sign that God hates us; it is not necessarily a sign that we have done something wrong (though sometimes our sufferings come from our own sins).  But it is always a way that God is inviting us to trust Him more, and to remind us that, no matter how bad things get, He never abandons us, just as He never abandoned Jesus even as Jesus endured the cross.

In order to strengthen our relationship with God, we can also look to Mary, whose Assumption, body and soul, into heaven we celebrate tomorrow.  Mary always leads us to Jesus, and she shows us how to be a good disciple.  She shows us how to ponder God’s Word in our hearts, how to suffer with faith, and how to rejoice in the triumphs that God gives us.  How long has it been since you prayed a rosary?  Sometimes we think we don’t have time, but even just a decade is a good place to start.  I often pray the rosary as I’m driving from one place to another.  Or, if we pray the rosary regularly, are there other ways that we can strengthen our relationship with Jesus through Mary?  

Imagine if all of us, guys and gals, were as obsessed with our relationship with Jesus as guys tend to be with fire.  Imagine if we worked as hard to get our relationship with Jesus going as we did trying to get newspaper, twigs, and logs to burn.  If that were the case, the world would be a warmer and brighter place, not with climate change and light pollution, but with the warmth and light of God’s love.

Mom and Jesus Lead us Home

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

One of the great things about mothers is that they generally know how to make a house into a home.  Whether as a family you have as much money as Warren Buffett, or you’re struggling to make ends meet, a mother has a way of making a place feel comfortable, and making it a place where you want to return.  Home is the place you know you can go back, even if things aren’t going so well.  It’s the place where there is love and acceptance of the person, even if not everything the person does is accepted.  Home, as the saying goes, is where the heart is, and where mom is, there is always a lot of heart.

Today, in the convergence of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord and Mother’s Day, we celebrate in the fact that Jesus has prepared a home for us, and is waiting for us to go there.  We have not been there, but the disciples saw Him go there.  Jesus ascended into heaven, our true home, and wants us to go there.  Heaven is the place of ultimate love, as those who live there forever are embraced by God, who is Love Itself.  Jesus is not our mother, but He wanted to show us the way home.  He has taken our Blessed Mother there, body and soul through the assumption, just as He is present there through the Ascension.  There are members of our Catholic family there already, the saints, both those who are canonized and those who are known only to God, hopefully including our mothers who have gone before us.  

But Jesus hasn’t shown us the way so much in a physical manner.  He did ascend, body and soul, into heaven, but it’s not as if we shoot up in a space shuttle that we can get to Him.  He has shown us the way in the manner He lived His life.  We are meant to imitate Jesus’ life, and in that way, we follow the way that Jesus has shown us to our home.  If we follow Jesus’ teachings in Scripture, some of which can be pretty hard, then we’re on our way, because, as Jesus Himself said, He is the way.  If we love others and God loves us; if we do not hate each other; if we are humble, poor in spirit, clean of heart; if we live marriage as God created it from the beginning; if we pray for those who persecute us; if we are willing to suffer for the ones we love, even to the point of death; then we are no longer living our life; we are living the life of Jesus, and, as St. Paul says, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  And if Christ lives in us, then we will know the way home to Him in heaven.

In the meantime, our Mother, the Church, helps us to allow Christ to live in us.  It cannot be forced.  No one can force us to live life in imitation of Jesus.  Holy Mother Church helps us through her laws, her rules, but also through her liturgy.  The Letter to the Hebrews talks about how Jesus entered into the true sanctuary in heaven.  And in the Solemnity of the Ascension, we celebrate that Christ is seated forever at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.  Because He is there, in the heavenly sanctuary, our true home, we can enter through His way, to participate in His worship as High Priest of the New Covenant in His Blood.

In the liturgy, we are given a taste of heaven.  Of course, this isn’t heaven; this is Adrian (to paraphrase the movie “Field of Dreams”).  And because we live in a fallen world, even our liturgy is a shadow of the eternal liturgy in our heavenly home, which will be perfect.  But we get a taste of heaven in the Mass, where God is made known to us, just as He gives Himself to us in His Word and the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We get a taste of heaven in the Mass as we gather in a community, part of the communion of saints.  Of course, in heaven the only ones there will be perfected, and none of us is there yet.  But still, we get a taste of being in the communion of the saints of heaven as we gather here on earth.  We get a taste of heaven through the light, shining through our stained-glass windows, giving us a glimpse of what a glorified body might look light through the images of the saints that we have in our stained-glass windows.  We get a taste of heaven as we have union with (communion) God.  In all these ways, Holy Mother Church prepares us for the home that her Groom, Jesus, has prepared for us.

Sadly, and some of you know this all too well, sometimes children don’t go home.  Sometimes they choose to stay away from home for a variety of reasons.  And God will not force us to go home to heaven.  If we choose to live our own life, a life in contradiction to what Jesus teaches us, then we will not go home, will not go to the place of love and joy and peace.  But I pray that, by the power of the Holy Sprit, we will use the grace God gives us to live the life of Christ, to let Christ live in us, so that we can go to the place God has prepared for us, the love and joy and peace of heaven, our true home.

Don't Forget the Holy Spirit!

Sixth Sunday of Easter

No one likes to be ignored.  But if there’s one Person of the Blessed Trinity that we often ignore, it’s the Holy Spirit.  We tend to always remember the Father in our prayers, especially the Our Father, or sometimes we’ll just refer to Him as God.  Jesus, as the one who took flesh and was our means of being reconnected to the Father is usually at the front of our minds as well.  But the Holy Spirit tends to get left out.  How many prayers do we being with some form of: Dear Holy Spirit…?  Probably not many, if any, while we are very comfortable with beginning prayers with: Dear God… or Heavenly Father… or Lord Jesus.  

It’s important, then, that in these last few Sundays of our Easter Season, the Church really focuses in on the Holy Spirit.  Of course, every Mass we begin with the Holy Spirit, and He’s mentioned in the Gloria, and our opening prayers always say “in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”  But the readings in these weeks also remind us that the Holy Spirit is God and guides the Church in a special way since the Ascension of Jesus.

Our first reading reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding what we are to believe as Catholics and how we are to live as Catholics.  Having discussed whether or not the Gentiles (the non-Jews) had to be circumcised and follow Judaic laws, and with the testimony of St. Peter, St. James sends a message to the Jews who had become Christians about what is required for Gentiles to become Christians.  And he writes specifically, that it was “‘“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”’”  It was not simply a group of old men getting together and thinking of the most pragmatic thing to do.  It was the Holy Spirit, the love shared between the Father and the Son, who guided the apostles to decide that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish and follow those laws to become Christians.  In other words, every time you eat a cheese burger or bacon (which Jews cannot do because it’s contrary to kosher laws), you should thank the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit did not stop guiding the Church with this decision.  Throughout the 2,000 year history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in making decisions about what we are to believe and how we are to live.  Some of those teachings are crystallized in the Creed.  But also in all the 21 Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I in AD 325 to Vatican II in the 1960s, and even in Papal pronouncements in between, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach the Church everything and remind the Church of what Jesus told us.  He has guided us on how many books to have in the Bible; who Jesus is; how many Sacraments were instituted by Jesus; Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption; that only men can be ordained priests; that marriage is between one man and one woman for life; all these are part of Jesus’ words, which the Holy Spirit has helped us to understand and which the Holy Spirit has guided the Pope and the bishops to proclaim as being what is necessary to be believed if we wish to truly call ourselves Catholic.  The Holy Spirit and the successors of the apostles, the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, work together to continue Jesus’ teachings into new times and new cultures.

But the work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Pope and bishops.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us life.  He helps us to understand what is right and wrong in our conscience.  We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, and a new gift in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to help us as individuals know what is God’s will in our daily actions and in the major decisions of life: what vocation we should choose, how to use our gifts and talents in a job, how to educate and raise our family.  Of course, the Holy Spirit would never contradict Himself, and we as individuals do not have the gift of infallibility, as the bishops in union with the Pope, and even the Pope by himself on matters of faith and morals has.  So if our conscience is ever telling us to do something that is contrary to what the Church officially teaches as to what we need to believe or how we need to live, we should do some major research on what the Church teaches and why, because it is more likely to be right than what we think our conscience is saying.  But the Holy Spirit is in us, too, and wants to make our living of the Gospel a joy-filled experience.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us the power to say yes to God and no to our fallen nature and to evil.  And by virtue of our Baptism, all we need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.  

It may not come as naturally, but may we also pray to the Holy Spirit, especially when we are making choices.  We can pray in our own words, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, or we can also use that wonderful prayer to the Holy Spirit that we said as a Diocese a few years ago, and which I will lead today.  Please join in if you remember: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faith, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.  O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that, by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Where No Christian Man Has Gone Before

Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

            I sometimes hear from people that the Catholic Church is a “men only” club.  Sure women attend (and are often more faithful than their male counterparts!) but only men can be deacons, priests, and bishops, many of the major saints are men, etc., etc.  This solemnity stands in direct contradiction to that vision of the Church.  It is a denial of that point of view at its root.  No other Christian man in the history of the Church has received so great an honor as the one we celebrate tonight.  And what we celebrate is that Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  She is the only Christian person to receive that honor. 

Painting of the Assumption from the
Orthodox Church of the Dormition

            What makes the Blessed Mother worthy of this unique privilege?  Was it simply the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb and nursed him?  In our Gospel, Jesus takes the usual Jewish thought of blessing being connected with the generation of children, and modifies it so that the truly blessed ones are those “‘who hear the word of God and observe it.’”  And who has done this better than the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Mary heard the word of God through the Archangel Gabriel telling her that she would be the Mother of God.  But, while she wondered how this could happen, since she did not know man, she did not doubt the angel, but said with that great act of faith, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Because Christ is the Incarnate Word of God, every time Mary, along with St. Joseph, cared for Jesus: feeding him, teaching Him to walk, teaching Him to talk, and all the work of raising a child, she was being attentive to the Word of God in a way no other person could. 

            But the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb was also a special privilege that prepared her for the privilege of the Assumption.  In our first reading we heard about the preparation of the Ark of the Covenant made by David.  The Ark of God was the place where God dwelt with humanity in a special way, and so it was treated with great honor and joy.  At the moment of the Incarnation, when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, she became the new Ark of God, the Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant because she carried within herself God Himself.  Because of this previous honor, she who carried within her he Whom the universe cannot contain, the Source of Life Himself, it was most fitting that she should not taste death, but be preserved from it by her Son who gained for her the blessing of the Resurrection, not only of the soul, but also of the body. 

            But there the other mysteries of Mary’s life are also connected to this great privilege.  On November 1, 1950, in the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus, the document which solemnly defined the Assumption as belonging to the Deposit of the Faith, and therefore which must be believed by all the faithful, Pope Pius XII recalled how all the mysteries of Mary’s life are connected to this celebration.  He cites the Byzantine Divine Liturgy which, when celebrating this day, states, “‘God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature.  As he kept you a virgin in childbirth, thus he has kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb.’”  The privilege of Mary’s Virginal Motherhood is connected to this day.  So, too, is Mary’s Immaculate Conception, that she was conceived in the womb of St. Anne, without the taint of original sin touching her soul.  Pope Pius XII writes, “[Mary], by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”  Even Mary’s Immaculate Conception prepares her for this day that we celebrate, when she did not undergo corruption, but already enjoys the full joys of heaven, body and soul.

            There is no male human person who shares the same honors that we give to a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  There is no male person celebrated as much as we celebrate Mary, not even St. Peter or St. Paul.  Because of her Immaculate Conception, Virginal Motherhood, unique care for and adherence to Jesus as a perfect disciple, and her Assumption, no other human person can claim such honors.  We are a Church who celebrates only one human person who on earth lived perfectly, and that human person is a woman.  Mary is the glory of Jerusalem.  Mary is the fairest honor of our race.

            While women have often been the most faithful members of the Church, by the will of God only men can become deacons, priests, and bishops and share in the ordained ministry of Jesus Christ.  But, this is certainly not because men are better than women, smarter than women, or holier than women.  This celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminds all of us, men and women, that our salvation was made possible by a woman, and that the holiest human person we have is a woman.  But she is for all of us, men and women, an example to strive to follow in her obedience and love of Christ, so that one day, after our deaths and the resurrection of our bodies, we, too might be able to share in the joys of heaven, body and soul, and Mary currently does.