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. 

Revelation: Consolation & Worship

Fourth Sunday of Easter

When a lot of people think about the Book of Revelation, they think about scary stuff about the end of time.  They think about 666, the number of the beast, and the trials and tribulations of the end of the world.  And those things are in there, to be sure.  But the overarching theme of Revelation is not what we probably think.

If you’re looking for a good book on how to read the Book of Revelation, you can pick up Scott Hahn’s book, The Lamb’s Supper.  As a Church, we have been listening to the Book of Revelation for the past few Sundays of Easter.  But we haven’t heard too much about beasts and tribulations, dragons with seven horns, or the like.  And that’s because the overarching theme of Revelation is that God is going to take this fallen world, put an end to the fallenness, and then fully bring about a new heaven and a new earth, which He began through the Resurrection of His Son, Jesus.  Yes, evil will be punished, and justice will be established in fullness.  And then we will begin to enjoy the eternal reign of Jesus Christ that will last forever (no, it’s not just 1,000 years; that’s a symbolic number to signify eternity).  

Revelation is meant to be a book of hope for those who were suffering for the faith.  Those who were suffering during “the time of great distress,” those who gave their lives for Jesus, either by martyrdom of blood or the martyrdom of the witness of their lives, will be rewarded.  And it will not be limited to one group of people.  There will be those “from every nation, race, people, and tongue” in heaven.  And what will they do?

Revelation does not describe heaven as a sunny day of golf (golf wasn’t invented yet).  Revelation doesn’t describe heaven as a Caribbean paradise (as nice as that sounds).  Revelation describes heaven as filled with those who have remained faithful to Christ standing “before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.”  The white robes should remind us of the white garments that those who are baptized wear.  It is also the basis for the alb that I and some of our servers wear, or the white surplice that our servers in cassocks where.  The white robes are the clothing of those who are worshipping God.  The palm branches should also remind us of Palm Sunday, when the people, and we in imitation of them, praised Jesus as the Messiah as He entered Jerusalem.  

Our second reading continues that those in heaven, “stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple.”  Heaven is eternal worship of God.  Heaven is a Mass that lasts forever, but without the symbols and signs that we have in the Mass, because God is all in all, and there is no need for things to remind us of God because He is fully present.

Coming to Mass each Sunday and Holyday is practice for heaven.  In heaven we join with the angels in adoring God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in an eternal act of praise and adoration.  When God spoke to Moses in the Book of Exodus, God gave Moses a pattern by which Moses was to make the ark of the covenant, the meeting tent (where the ark was, and where God dwelt).  The Temple of Solomon was built to represent the universe as it should be, with waves of the sea, oxen, and fruit, all symbolizing paradise and the Garden of Eden, with the ark of the covenant in the middle, and incense offerings and bread offerings before the presence of God.  Our churches, though some do this better than others, are meant to be patterns of heaven, drawing our hearts to the things that are above, as St. Paul says, not the things of earth.  Earth is fallen; heaven is perfection.  But all of these are patterns for heaven, with Christ at the high point in the sanctuary, especially represented by the altar, as well as His real presence in the tabernacle.  And our angels and saints are meant to remind us that we do not worship alone.  

Revelation teaches us that heaven is a place of reward for those who have followed Christ, where there is no more sorrow or tears, no extremes of weather, no need for any earthly food or drink.  We worship God and He satisfies all our needs.  Coming to Mass each Sunday and Holyday is not about being forced, or making us feel good about ourselves, or getting anything (though God does provide for us to hear His Word and receive the Body and Blood of His Son).  Coming to Mass is about preparing ourselves for eternity.

There may be lots of other things that sound more enticing, that sound more enjoyable than heaven.  There are many shepherds that want to lead us to their goals of happiness.  But, as the sheep of the Good Shepherd, the only truly Good Shepherd, Jesus, we are called to follow Him to eternal life.  If we are honest, we have all listened to other shepherds, who sounded like what they were offering us was what we wanted.  But only the Good Shepherd leads us to heaven.  We cannot get there by any other guide.  Only Jesus welcomes us into the verdant pastures of eternal life.  Only Jesus leads us to heaven, which the Book of Revelation describes as perfect happiness and justice, where sin has been fully defeated, and death and sorrow are no more, where we join with the angels in worshipping God forever in an eternal act of adoration, in the place where God provides perfectly for all our needs.  May we listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd so that we can follow where He leads His sheep.