8/15/2012 – Solemnity of the Assumption – Luke 1:39-56

        Today we celebrate the solemnity of the patroness of our parish here in Yazoo City, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although the Assumption of Mary was not declared as a dogma of our Catholic faith until 1950 by Pope Pius XII, belief in the Assumption can be traced back to the early Church. In announcing the dogma of the Assumption, the Pope reflected what the theologians, bishops, & the faithful of our Church all over the world already commonly believed about Mary.

         But what we celebrate today goes way beyond a dogma of our faith.  Mary has an important place in our lives and in the history of salvation.  Mary is not only Jesus’ mother,  but she is our mother and the mother of the Church.  Even as we believe that in the Assumption that Mary shares with Jesus, body & soul, in his eternal glory in heaven, we recall that everything we believe about Mary always points us to her Son & increases our faith in Him.  When we look at our relationship with Mary, the focus is never solely on Mary for her own sake. In Luke's Gospel, Mary proclaims the Magnificat in response to the greeting she receives from her cousin Elizabeth.  Not only does the Magnificat express Mary’s faith, hope, and love for God, but it is one of the most radical messages in holy Scripture, with Mary challenging us to live out the values of the Good News.

         Mary travels in haste through the hill country to reach her elderly cousin Elizabeth in her time of need. We, too, are called to serve our brothers and sisters with this same sense of love, attentiveness, & urgency. As Mary travels in haste, she very personally gets involved in reaching out in love.   Mary always gives of her whole self, not asking for anything in return.  She recognizes the privilege she receives from God, but she does not seek to be served.  Rather, Mary always seeks to serve others.

         Mary tells us: “God has scattered the proud of their conceit.” Mary is telling us that if we want to live in the light of Christ, we must die to our pride and our self-centeredness. In our pride, we can easily place ourselves and our desires above our love for God and our brothers & sisters; we can become rigid or arrogant; we can fail to put ourselves in the shoes of our neighbors to truly understand their perspective.

         Mary also tells us: “God cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.”  This is so different from how our secular world operates, where the lowly often struggle to feed themselves or to make it to the next day. Perhaps Mary is telling us that the power and prestige that our secular world idolizes so much will not matter in the long run when God’s kingdom comes to fulfillment. We remember that Christ did not exalt himself or lift himself upon a throne here on earth.  Christ did not amass armies to seize power or to build up an earthly kingdom. Instead, he became one of the lowly, he humbled himself to die for our sins on the cross, to love and serve others.  As followers of Christ, we are called to serve others in our faith and out of our love for God, we are called to submit ourselves to the will of God in our lives, to follow this call to social justice that Mary sets forth.

         What about  Mary’s claim of “God filling the hungry with good things, & the rich being sent away empty?” I don’t think Mary is telling us that being rich is a bad thing in itself.  Perhaps she challenges us not to amass riches beyond our reasonable needs while ignoring the poverty around us, not to exploit others for our own gains, not to allow our material possessions to take precedence over everything else in life.  A member of our St. Vincent de Paul society at St. Richard parish in Jackson once commented to me that for those of us who are blessed with material wealth, our challenge is to share our blessings, to reach out beyond our comfort zone to help others. If we spend our lives only concentrating on what we want and what we can possess, then we'll ultimately come away empty & without meaning in our lives in terms of our eternal salvation.

         On this feast of the Assumption, we not only celebrate Mary as the Queen of heaven & earth, as our mother & the mother of our Lord, but we celebrate the way Mary lived her life in fidelity to God.                                        
         Although Mary experienced great joy in her life, exemplified in how she tells Elizabeth that “her soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,” Mary also experienced great sorrow in seeing her Son’s journey to the cross. Mary took in all the graces that God gave her - she pondered them in her heart.  Let us all ponder the radical significance of the Magnificat that Mary sings to us today. Let us allow the graces of the solemnity of the Assumption to touch our hearts today, affecting the way we live out our faith.