Last Monday we celebrated Mary's assumption, when, like the Prophet Elijah, she was taken up into heaven. It is a harvest feast. I have been thinking of Mary all week as the stands at my local produce market fill with Rocky Ford cantaloupes and watermelons, Palisade peaches and Olathe sweet corn. I'm also thinking of Mary as my grandson arrives today, a first year student, at the University of Notre Dame (that is, the University of Our Lady).
I wrote about the Feast of the Assumption in a book my daughter, Anna Keating, and I co-authored, called The Catholic Catalogue. Here's some of what I wrote:
“For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind.” – Flannery O’Connor
The oldest and the most important of the Marian feasts is the Feast of the Assumption on August 15. It is a feast that grows out of the particular love and devotion Jesus showed his mother even as he suffered and died on the cross. It is a celebration of the courtesy of Christ to the one who bore him and nurtured him in her womb. And it is an acknowledgement of the holiness of the vessel that bore the Holy One.
Sometimes this feast is called The Dormition, or “falling asleep” of Mary. The word “assumption” refers to the ancient belief that Mary, like Elijah the Prophet (Second Kings 2: 11-12), was taken up into heaven without suffering the pain or decay of death. We know this belief has been held since apostolic times. We also know, that even in the middle ages, when the trade in holy relics was at its height, no one, before or since, ever claimed to have a relic of Mary. There is a tomb near the site where she is believed to have been assumed into heaven, but it has always been empty. Today, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition of Mary stands on the site of the tomb.
As God, Jesus loves the whole world, but, as a man, as a son, he also knows the particular bond between a mother and her child. John’s gospel says, “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” That speaks to Jesus’ full humanity, for that is the way we learn to love, one person at a time, mother to child and child to mother. Those who are taught well learn to give love more and more, until it spreads like a balm, an ointment, upon all they meet. But it starts with one and two.
As Jesus hung on the cross, he took care of his own, his mother, Mary,
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
John didn’t check in on Mary or giver her a call each week. He took her into his home. I hear that story and recall the first time our oldest grandchild, Lucas, spent the night with us. After prayers and many cups of water and kisses and a story and some songs, I went to turn out the light. I heard Luc make this declaration, against the dark, against the fear. “Ma-Maw,” he said, “If I call you in the night, you will come.”
Jesus gives John and Mary to one another. They stand together, against the dark, against the fear. If Mary calls John in the night, he will come. The tradition holds that Mary lived with John until her death, and we can imagine the care she needed and the care he gave to her in those last days.
The tradition tells us that, as Mary’s death grew closer, all the disciples gathered at her bedside. The living and the dead, from foreign lands and foreign graves, they came to be with her as she went to her son and savior. There’s nothing in scripture to suggest a close relationship between Mary and Peter or any of the others, yet they come as sons called to their mother’s bedside. I like to think the relationships flowered and grew in John’s house, as the disciples came to visit, perhaps, or to rest or to seek counsel. Maybe they came to learn more about Jesus from the woman who raised him.
As Mary lay dying, the apostles gathered at her bedside. The apostles, the living and dead, kept vigil and watched as Mary was taken into heaven, the flesh that had cradled the Christ never falling into corruption and decay.
It is as if God understood Mary’s grief at the cross and sought to spare her further sorrow. She would die, but she would not be alone and she would never know the darkness of the grave into which her beloved child was laid.
Because Pope Pius XII declared the assumption of Mary to be a dogma of the Church in 1950, some people think that this is a recent teaching. (Dogma is from a Greek word meaning “what seems right.” It is a definitive or infallible teaching of the Church, one that cannot be denied or changed. It must be found in sacred scripture or in the post biblical tradition of the Church and, so, a teaching divinely revealed).
But the belief in Mary’s assumption into heaven is ancient. When the bishops of the Church gathered in Constantinople for the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Roman Emperor Marcian asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the relics of Mary to be enshrined there. The patriarch replied that "Mary died in the presence of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later was found empty and so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven."
From this testimony it seems that the apostles did not understand God's plans for Mary any more than they understood God's plans for Christ. Both Mary and Christ were laid in tombs but did not remain there. Christ was resurrected and, forty days later, ascended into heaven; Mary fell asleep and was assumed into heaven.
One way to think of the August feast is that it is Mary's harvesting home. Like a bountiful crop, she is being gathered in...Watermelons and sweet corn and tomatoes and peaches and fresh green beans snapped off the vine weighted down with its bounty — all these foods speak of the fullness of life and fertility that is Our Lady. Mary gave life. She brought forth the Savior of the world, the fruit of her womb...St Catherine of Siena wrote of Mary that "you have given us your flour...The Godhead is joined and kneaded so thoroughly into our humanity that this union can never be broken, neither by death nor by our ingratitude."
Give thanks for the one who shared her flour with us, and ask her to pray for us, to help us on our way.
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