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.
[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.
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