Homily for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

August 15, 2023
Nolan Catholic High School
Fort Worth, Texas

Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16
First Corinthians 15:20-27
Luke 1:39-56

Mary’s positive response to the Archangel Gabriel’s message of God’s invitation to her was to travel in haste to attend in love to her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, whose pregnancy would be replete with many difficulties because of her advanced age. Mary’s journey is made “in haste” because the mission of the Lord defies indifference and passivity; it is a vocation; it possesses a dignity and importance requiring urgency and mindfulness for it is given and can only be received in love. Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s greeting is a song, an outpouring of joy for what God has done in her life. Through her song, Mary heralds the victory of her Son over the dragon of indifference, selfishness, and hatred.

This inspired prayer is not about Mary’s powerfulness, but about the power of God in her life, in that of her ancestors, and in that of her Son’s Church. Mary’s song is about the marvels and tender mercies of God. Among other things we can learn from the Feast of the Assumption is that our awareness of God’s blessings and gratitude toward Him opens us more fully to the power of the Holy Spirit leading us to our true home in heaven. God’s love for us is so overwhelming that our true home in heaven ultimately includes the resurrection of our bodies. This is why as Christians we honor the bodily remains of those who have died with Christian burial or the interment of cremated ashes in a columbarium or mausoleum. The Blessed Virgin Mary is preserved from sin, and she is the first Christian to receive the share in her Son’s resurrection that she is taken into heaven – body and soul. This too can be our destiny if we ask her help and follow her example.

We also learn from the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as we listen to our first reading from the Book of Revelation that there are two conflicting and irreconcilable ways to live our lives. There is the way of the dragon and the way of the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head the crown of twelve stars. In his book entitled, The City of God, Saint Augustine referred to this as the struggle throughout human history between two loves – the complete love of God whereby a person becomes holy and virtuous, or its opponent, the completely sinful love where one only thinks of oneself and becomes hateful of God as an adversary to our freedom and indifferent to the needs of other people. The first way involves our complete trust of God cultivated through prayer and good works; the second way involves our rejection of God and our demand to live our lives according to our own demands and desires.

When we hear this story in the Book of Revelation, it appears that the inevitable victor in this contest between the dragon and the Lady is the overwhelming and ferocious power of the dragon. The Lady appears to be weak and powerless; the dragon is fierce and ruthless. When Saint John authored the Book of Revelation, he had in mind the Roman Empire and the ruthless control of the pagan emperors, with its persecution of the Church and the killing of martyrs. Yet, we know that the power that was Rome was to decline, brought to destruction from within by its own corruption and decadent ways. We know that in that battle the victory was won through the blood of the martyrs and resulting in the conversion of many to Christ and His Church of which His Mother is a symbol.

This has been true throughout history in the example of all powerful dictatorships opposed to truth and human dignity: for example, the Nazis and the Soviet Union. The power of these empires appeared invincible, they too made many martyrs, yet they collapsed and were defeated because of their embrace of evil and rejection of God. The same will be true today with the dragons of today – the ideologies that demand us to live only for ourselves; the ideologies that want us to see the belief in God as something absurd and ridiculous; the ideologies that tell us that we can design ourselves including our bodies as we desire; the ideologies that tell us that happiness lies alone in material wealth; the ideologies that tell us that our every move and thought can be anticipated and caused by algorithms patterned for our desires. Yet, we know that these ultimately will not last and will fall because of their own corruption because of the way of our Lady, offered to us by her Son’s victory.

You have worked very hard to arrive at the start of this new school year and your enthusiasm can soon become boredom and impatience because each of us can forget that for us to attain our true destiny we trust God and rely on God’s power for everything through prayer and acts of kindness and that we are only instruments in His hand. We can forget that we are powerless over so many aspects of our own lives that we require His grace to form us as human beings and as Christians. Yet, Christ is always here to help us, as is His Mother.

The God in whom we believe offers us love through the virtue of hope. We cannot have authentic freedom to love without hope. “All generations will call me blessed.” This means that the future brought about instrumentally by Mary’s “yes,” what is to come, belongs to God; it is in God’s hands, that it is God who conquers our enemies and brings us home to Him.

It is only God, made fully human through Mary’s “yes” in Jesus Christ, who saves us from the dragon of indifference and sin, so He must be the intentional center of our lives. The gift of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary conveys most clearly and purely the hope in the Resurrection, given to us in the Eucharist which now is to be offered and received.