Fruits of the Resurrection: Our Lady's Assumption

A sermon for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, preached at The Ascension, Lavender Hill, SW11

Apocalypse 11.19, 12.1-6,10 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman adorned with the sun.

1 Corinthians 15.20-26 Christ will be brought to life as the first-fruits and then those who belong to him.

Luke 1.39-56 The Almighty has done great things for me.

 

 

Come, let us adore the King of kings:

today his Virgin Mother was taken up to heaven.[1]

(Antiphon to the Invitatory Psalm for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Divine Office Morning Prayer [Lauds])

 

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‘I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’

 

The closing phrase of the Nicene Creed is the moment, in that great assertion of Christian belief, when we look forward.

 

The Nicene Creed, to be recited shortly, tells us who God is - the Blessed and Undivided Trinity - and speaks of what God has done from the Creation to Redemption in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ; the Creed also tells of what God is doing in the Church through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

 

Having looked back and looking around us we can confidently look forward, forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

 

To look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come is to say something very powerful too: it’s saying that the Resurrection of Christ has an impact on our lives.

 

The Resurrection is not just something wonderful for Jesus that has precious little to do with you or me.

 

Rather, as one writer says, ‘The truth is that because of the bodily Resurrection of Christ, all of the material world has been raised to a new level of being, including our own souls and bodies.’[2]

 

The Resurrection of Christ smashes open the gates of death and hell and, as we declare in the Te Deum, ‘When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death: thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.’ (Tu, devícto mortis acúleo, aperuísti credéntibus regna cælórum).

 

The kingdom of heaven is open to believers to walk into because Christ is raised from the dead.

 

‘Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’ says the Lord, ‘and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. (John 11.25b, 26a)

 

Mary is the true and exemplary believer: she ‘lives and believes’ in him then surely as he promises shall ‘shall never die’.

 

From her fiat - her words ‘let it be to me according to thy word - to her standing patiently at the foot of the cross to receive the dead body of her Son, Mary’s soul magnifies the Lord, her spirit exults in God her saviour. (Luke 1.46,47)

 

She bore him in her womb, she suckled him at her breast, she searched for him in the temple; she pointed others constantly to him: Mary did great things in service of her Son, and we can be sure in the words of her Magnificat that, the Lord has indeed done great things for her (cf. Luke 1.49).

 

The Bodily Assumption of Mary shows us that the Resurrection of Christ is a mystery to be entered into not a phenomenon to be gazed at.

 

This mystery we believe first to be entered by Mary herself.

 

As Eve walked with Adam out through the gates of the Garden of Eden after their disobedience (Genesis 3.24) so Christ, the New Adam, harrowed hell to lead the man and the woman, all humanity, out of the gates of captivity and into life.

 

This he did through his Incarnation, ‘his saving Passion, his wondrous Resurrection and Ascension’[3]

 

Mary, the New Eve, plays her indispensable part through her fiat, her ‘yes’ to God spoken to the archangel.

 

That is Mary’s way as the true and exemplary believer.

 

Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not from her own power but from precisely the opposite; it is from her openness to God’s purpose to ‘unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Ephesians 1.10b).

 

To believe in the Assumption of Mary is first to believe in the power of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; to believe in the Assumption of Mary is to see the human face of she who is raised, as Christ promised.

 

Recall too that we see a foretaste of resurrection in the Raising of Lazarus (John 11.1-44).

 

But Lazarus, whose body was decaying in the tomb, would die again, as do you and I, as our spirits await the Resurrection at the Last Day to be joined to our glorious transformed body in heaven (cf 1 Corinthians 15.53).

 

Unlike Lazarus, who was raised before Christ’s Resurrection, Mary’s body, we believe, did not suffer decay for she was taken, body and soul, into heaven, for her Assumption comes after the Resurrection of Christ.

 

In this way she, not Lazarus, is the first of the children of God to experience what Christ promises to all, described by St Paul in our second reading:

 

Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him. (1 Corinthians 15.22,23)

 

‘Christ has been raised from the dead’ (1 Corinthians 15.20) and he shares that new life with us his children, starting with his Mother, Mary, the Mother of Believers: she belongs to him.

 

And because you and I have been baptized into Christ’s death and Resurrection, the power of his Resurrection is unleashed in us.

 

Because you and I have been baptized into Christ’s death and Resurrection we are now part of his Mystical Body, the Church, in which Mary, his Mother and ours, is ‘adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with twelve stars on her head for a crown’ (Apocalypse 12.1).

 

The Lord did not allow her body to be subject to the decay that our bodies will undergo after our death, but she was instead assumed body and soul into heaven, through the gates opened by her Son in his mighty resurrection, and glorified her body as Mother of the Church.

 

So, we can say ‘I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’ looking forward to what Mary already enjoys in body and soul.

 

May Our Blessed Lady strengthen our faith and inspire and call us to join her and her Son, with all the saints, in the kingdom of the Father.

 

Come, let us adore the King of kings:

today his Virgin Mother was taken up to heaven.

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[1] From The Divine Office, Morning Prayer [Lauds], Antiphon to the Invitatory Psalm for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

[2] Fr Billy Swan, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/renewing-faith-in-the-resurrection/?utm_source=activecampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ECOWrapUP_8/9  10.8.23

[3] From the Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer III.

Transfiguration: identity fulfillment

Daniel 7.9,10,13,14

Psalm 97

2 Peter 1.16-19

Luke 9.28-36

 

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I wonder if you have seen either of the blockbuster films of the summer?

 

Yes, I am talking about Barbie and Oppenheimer!

 

I have to confess that I haven’t seen either film, and to be honest, whilst I am interested in them I am unlikely to.

 

So why refer to them today when we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord? After all this is a sermon not a film review.

 

The Transfiguration of Lord is the liturgical celebration of the event recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and, as we heard today, of Luke as well as a first-hand witness statement from St Peter, which made for our second reading today.

 

That event, known as the Transfiguration, is a wonderful and mystical theophany, a word meaning God-showing; so how could it possibly relate to the showing of two Hollywood films?

 

Well there is something of a strange connection between the two films and today’s celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and at the same time that connection helps us see some distinct contrasts.

 

These connections and contrasts hinge on change and light.

 

The Transfiguration of the Lord focuses on the change of his appearance:  ‘And while Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.’ (Luke 9.29).

 

The Barbie concept, I’m told, is that Barbie is essentially a doll who can be anything she wants to be and can change appearance and identity: the film amplifies that message by making the doll, Barbie, into a real woman. That’s about change but not about Transfiguration.

 

So what of light?

 

In the Transfiguration of the Lord there is a dazzling light: this is the uncreated light of God who said in the beginning, ‘let there be light’. (Genesis 1.3)

 

Today is the anniversary of the first detonation of Oppenheimer’s uranium bomb. It was the 6^th August 1945 when the bomb - with about thirteen kilotons of force - was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, home to over 280,000 men, women and children.

 

An atomic explosion is first marked by light, before the mushroom cloud. Thirteen kilotons of force is very abstract, but when we learn that the light of the bomb is comparable to the light of the sun, it brings it home.

 

The light of the atomic bomb is destructive, devastating and deadly.

 

Oppenheimer came to regret his involvement but his work, and the work of the Manhattan Project, was only ever going to end in the darkest light imaginable.

 

What a contrast to the light of God. Yes, God said in the beginning, ‘let there be light.’ But read on… ‘And God saw that the light was good’.

 

St John tells us, ‘In Christ was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’ (John 1.4,5)

 

This is the light ‘which gives light to everyone.’ (John 1.9).

 

This is the light and the glory revealed on the Holy Mountain of the Transfiguration.

 

The light of Christ shines in the darkness, but does not bring darkness, like Oppenheimer’s ‘deadly toy’.

 

The darkness does not and cannot ultimately overcome the light of Jesus Christ.

 

As the psalm puts it so beautifully, ‘with thee, O Lord, is the well of life, and in thy light, do we see light’. (Psalm 36.9)

 

It seems almost trivial now to return to Barbie, but there is something important going on here too.

 

It is in how we conceive of what it means to be human.

 

Barbie can be who she wants to be.

 

Bear in mind that Barbie is a doll and not a person, but the film and the messaging around it gives a particular understanding of what it means to be human, an anthropology that is not what we find in the gospels or what is revealed in the Transfiguration of the Lord.

 

Barbie does give a laudable message to women and girls that they should not be inhibited or restrained by what they imagine to be obstacles to living a fulfilled life, imposed by society or some men.

 

But there is another message underlying the Barbie view of being human that is more unsettling.

 

It suggests that the human body is like a blank slate, or moulded plastic, onto which we write our own story, ideals and aspirations, as if we are androgynous dolls who change who we are by changing our outward appearance.

 

This chimes with the tendency more and more to see human identity split between body and spirit.

 

This is known as dualism – the idea that there are two distinct or warring parts of being human: body against spirit.

 

This idea has been around for a long time, and something that Christianity resisted and resists.

 

That’s because the Christian vision of the human person is a holistic, holy, one, where body and soul are one, both in this life and in the resurrection: that’s why it matters that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, his spirit wasn’t ‘released’ from his body.

 

For the early Christians the struggle was against Manichaeism.

 

This is a form of dualism that says that there is a struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness.

 

For Manichees salvation is being lifted out of this murky world and for them it was abhorrent to think that God would love the world at all, and all the more that he might take on human flesh and die, in order to do so.

 

We see this in a new form today when we hear people say ‘I am in the wrong body’ or when they despise the biology of their body and seek to change it.

 

This is a hugely contentious issue of our times: I say this not to condemn, but to pity.

 

Not to be at home in one’s body, or to despise one’s own body - to go as far as physically changing it because of not being comfortable with who we are - must be a hard thing to bear.

 

Christians believe that God chose to make a home in the human body, in the person of Jesus Christ, born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and who through the Holy Spirt dwells with us now: God is at home in us, as he was at first at home in the womb of Mary.

 

We believe that the body, as God gives it, is a gift and to be cherished and honoured as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6.19).

 

So what then of the Transfiguration?

 

What does the Transfiguration say of who Jesus Christ is and who we are called to be?

 

The Transfiguration of the Lord shows a human body at its most alive.

 

The Transfiguration is a not an identity change but an identity fulfilment.

 

Jesus Christ is truly God; he is Son of God. Jesus Christ is truly human; he is Son of Mary.

 

Out of the human body shines divine light.

 

Your body, my body, the male body, the female body, is most itself when shining with Divine Light.

 

We see in the Transfiguration of the Lord that the human body is at its most fulfilled when subsumed with Divine Light, a light that illuminates who we are and does not destroy us.

 

At the Eucharist we come to be transfigured, transformed, as we stretch out our hands to receive into our bodies the very Body of Christ.

 

In so doing we are drawn to the Holy Mountain shining out to the glory of God the Father, the one who says of Jesus Christ, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him’.