Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Before we begin to ask any questions about the text of this Gospel passage itself, we first need to ask, why this Gospel passage at all? Normally in this liturgical year, Year A, our Sunday Gospel readings come from the Gospel of Matthew, but what we have here is a passage, a very well-known passage, from the Gospel of Luke.

We have Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth, where she sings her great canticle of praise to God for the great things he has done in her life.

A canticle that's known as the Magnificat, because that's the first word in Latin, Magnificat Annammaea, my soul magnifies the Lord, or in this translation, my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

So, why this passage from Luke with the Magnificat? The reason is that this Sunday we're celebrating the Assumption of Our Lady, and so our Gospel passage is given to us in order to deepen our understanding of this very special celebration in our church calendar.

This is one of those Sundays where we can really appreciate how both Scripture and the tradition of the church, the two means by which the revelation of Christ is communicated to us, work together to bring us deeper into the mystery of Christ.

The assumption of Our Lady into heaven is not recorded in Scripture, but instead, knowledge of her assumption comes to us through the non-written tradition of the Church, passed down from the Apostles to our present day.

So now we've got to ask ourselves, what can this Gospel passage, this passage from Luke where Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth and proclaims her Magnificat, teach us about Mary's assumption? Well, firstly, let's be clear what it means to say that Mary was assumed into heaven.

For a short snappy explanation, we can turn to the Catechism, where we read that Mary, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up, body and soul, into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of Lords, and conqueror of sin and death.

The assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her son's resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.

So that's what the Catechism says.

That's the assumption.

Mary is taken up body and soul into heaven so that she might be more fully conformed to her son.

It's a participation in Christ's resurrection and an anticipation of our own resurrection.

Now, what's noticeable is that the Catechism talks about Mary's Assumption not just as something that teaches us about Mary, you know, oh isn't it great for Mary that she gets assumed, good for her.

The Catechism instead talks about Mary's Assumption in terms of what it tells us about God and what it tells us about ourselves.

She is assumed so that we may know that God is the living God, the conqueror of sin and death.

And she is assumed so that we may know that we too are called to share in the new life of the resurrected Lord.

And if the Church has given us this passage from Luke, the Magnificat, as our gospel for the Assumption, when we dig deeper into it, we should find very similar lessons about God, about ourselves, and also about the Church, the means by which the human person is brought to eternal life with God.

So that's what we're going to look at today.

We're going to look at what we can learn about God from Mary's Magnificat.

We learn that God, who has promised to draw close to his chosen people and lead them to new life, fulfills this promise through working in and through faithful human lives like Mary's.

We learn that the place where these promises of God's are fulfilled is the church, which grows out of the people of Israel, a people of which Mary is more than simply one member among others.

And through the blessings given to Mary and her free response to them, we learn that the human person is a unity of body and soul called to enter into eternal life through freely responding to God in faith.

And so the deeper we go into the spiritual senses of this passage from the Gospel of Luke, the deeper we go into the mystery of the assumption.

a mystery which, we remember, is given to us not simply to tell us something about Mary, but to teach us about God, the living God, and the destiny of the human person who is called to share in God's eternal life.