Today is a great feast of contemplative joy, indeed of explosive, intergalactic joy. At once our gaze is invited to soar upwards, beyond sun and moon and stars, by St. John’s vision in the Book of Revelation: “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant”—the precious human ark containing the resplendent Word—“could be seen in the temple: … a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” How utterly magnificent! This vision of her who is, nevertheless, our sister and mother, steals our breath.
Such a dazzling cosmic vision of faith, however, looks very different to the eyes of the body: the only thing our eyes actually see in the gospel is a very ordinary, pregnant young woman sweating as she laboriously climbs hills to visit and help her equally pregnant older relative. With good reason, today’s solemn feast of our blessed Lady’s Assumption is the patronal feast of the Cistercian Order. In this great mystery, that shows forth the fulfillment of Mary’s life and its deepest meaning, we see that what truly counts in the end for any human life is not external glitter but the degree to which God’s plan of grace and salvation has been realized in it. And what is the ardent intention and desire of God’s Heart for us? That we should come to share forever in his own life and glory; that his own nature as self-spending love should rejoice in raising up to itself the very creatures that he had drawn out of nothingness. If I say that this is rightly our patronal feast as Cistercians it’s because the path that Mary our Mother followed to the attainment of glory is precisely our own: a life of dedication to prayer and growth in love that in every way is “ordinary, obscure and laborious”. The destiny of the woman in St. John’s vision—“she fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God”—is a very apt image of our own monastic existence as we await, in the hiddenness and apartness and even occasional aridity of life in our monasteries, the return of the Lord who has ascended to the Father’s glory.
We look in vain for impressive exterior events and accomplishments in the earthly life of the Mother of God. This strenuous trip on foot to Elizabeth’s house in the hill country of Judah is about as exciting as it gets at the level of visible happenings. All that is truly extraordinary, thrilling, astounding in Mary’s life occurs within the intimacy of her heart and soul. It is as if she, too, had taken vows of obedience, conversion of manners, and stability, in order to undertake the only adventure that matters, which is the voyage into the Heart of God. We strive to be hidden contemplatives, and therefore commit our whole being to the mostly invisible journey of the heart, following the lead of our Mother.
Let us recall the actual words of Pope Pius XII on November 1st, 1950, when he solemnly proclaimed the mystery of the Assumption. We should be interested in them because these words are really describing our own destiny as Christians: We proclaim, declare and define as a dogma revealed by God that the immaculate, ever-Virgin Mother of God, Mary, after completing the course of her earthly life, was taken up with body and soul into the heavenly glory. Nothing could be simpler than these serene words, yet nothing could be more extraordinary than their meaning and implications. This pope, like all bishops of Rome, is here, in fact, declaring nothing new, but affirming, with the full authority of Peter, the Church’s millennial faith. The Church has always seen in Mary’s life the fully accomplished glorification of a member of the human race who, by divine intervention, became the Mother of the incarnate Word and thus came to share intimately in Christ’s Resurrection and definitive triumph over death. Today’s feast has been celebrated in the East on this date at least since the early fifth century, in the wake of the Council of Ephesus, and was then introduced in the West in the seventh century. The dogmatic definition succeeds wonderfully, I think, in saying the essential about the mystery of the Assumption in the fewest possible words.
The titles “immaculate” and “ever-Virgin” point to the roots of the Assumption event as lying in the way that God had himself prepared a fitting earthly dwelling-place for his Son in the sinlessness of Mary and in her graced response to God’s proposal to her. In her response Mary held nothing back because she opened her spirit, heart and body with heroic receptivity to what God wanted to give her.
God’s unique intervention in Mary’s life radically changed the whole direction of her personal history and challenged her to give up every preconceived notion of virtue and righteousness. Nevertheless, Mary still had to live out the full course of her appointed time on earth in an (externally speaking) most ordinary manner. And yet within, in the interior chamber of her prayer and in her keen awareness of God’s intense presence in her being, she was one unceasing act of gratitude, praise, and joy; in her own words: My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked upon his servant in her nothingness. Henceforth all generations will call me blessed. These words of her Magnificat mark the most significant turning-point in the human race’s understanding of itself. Small, hidden, humble Mary turned the course of world history and man’s self-understanding on its head.
From now on, the greatest reason for any person to rejoice would be not the typically male feats sung in every epic poem (violent acts of vengeance, merciless slaughter of one’s enemies, proud triumph over one’s rivals, exploitation of others’ weaknesses, and so on). The reason for greatest joy would rather be the deeply interior feminine virtues that spring from faithful love, and that should flourish in the heart of every human being, men and women alike: hopeful expectancy, generous preparedness, intelligent listening, permanent availability for the service of others, the offering of one’s whole being as a vessel for the reception of divine love so as then to contribute to love’s circulation throughout the body of creation. This edifice of interior virtues, constructed in the first place by the divine Architect in the person of the Virgin, offered a spectacle of such splendor in his own sight that in the end the Heart of the Creator was ravished by the beauty he had himself invested in his creature. As a result, God’s sheer delight elevated Mary to his own royal status: “The Queen stands at [the King’s] right hand, arrayed in gold. So shall the King desire [her] beauty”.
Mary’s greatest joy comes from the knowledge that the all-powerful God delights in her “nothingness”, because he has found in her a human space and disposition where he can make himself at home and work unhampered. God has found in Mary a creature who will allow the Creator to be fully God in her! In Mary, every human faculty and desire responds with perfect harmony to the desires and expectations of the Creator. This is dynamic sanctity, which overturns every convention and tradition, and value system of human society. After Mary, only those will be called “blessed” who are poor in spirit and courageous enough to allow God to be everything in them. In Mary, God has proved that such a thing is possible, and from now on every child born of woman will be judged by the standard that the very human Mary has set. Mary is said to have been “taken up into heavenly glory”, in the passive voice, because she made herself fully malleable in God’s hands; and this being-taken-up by another, this “assumption”, swept up both her body and her soul, because she had held nothing back because she had offered her whole being to God’s work and transforming activity. From now on, the shape of every human life will either be Marian or it will have failed in the fullness of humanity.
God wants the whole of us, body and soul, for himself. He created our whole being and he wants our whole being back for his own delight and for our complete glorification. Notice how I naturally slip into saying our, because it is impossible to talk about Mary’s ultimate transformation in glory without, at the same time, talking about the same vocation and destiny for ourselves. Pius XII chose November 1st, 1950, as the date for the proclamation of the dogma presumably because he wanted to stress, on the feast of All Saints, the fact that Mary’s Assumption, a unique and unheard-of event if ever there was one, at the same time opened the way for the glorification, along with her, of every member of the human race. In isolation from us, the mystery of Mary really makes no sense. Can you imagine a church, or a world, in which, out of all human beings, only Mary has been saved? Impossible! No mother can be happy without her children! In the same way that “Christ has been raised from the dead, as the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep”, so too Mary enters into divine glory next only after Christ, even while human history still continues; but she does so only as a trailblazing anticipation of our own assumption into heavenly life and bliss. First, the Son; then, the Mother; finally, “at his coming, those who belong to Christ”, all those who have come to fullness of life in the divine Son as a result of the earthly Mother’s obedient love; “each one in proper order”, as St. Paul says.
Today, then, as a result of our participation in the mystery of Our Lady’s Assumption through the celebration of this life-giving Eucharist, “may our hearts, aflame with the fire of love, constantly long for [the glory of God]”
Detail of Assumption by Maurice Denis. Homily by Father Simeon.
