A Homily for the Feast of the Assumption
Readings:
Vigil: 1 Chronicles 15:3-4, 15-16; 16:1-2 1 Corinthians 15:54b-57 Luke 11:27-28
Mass During the Day: Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab 1 Corinthians 15:20-27 Luke 1:39-56
Not so long ago, the phrase “control of the narrative” was meaningless. Today, it is viewed as a fundamental principle of political, cultural and even religious life. Who sets the parameters of the discussion? Who can seize the issue, choosing the constantly repeated line or visual image that effectively curtails other perspectives?
The beautiful mystery proclaimed on the Solemnity of the Assumption needs to be set free from an all too narrow narrative. Catholic and Orthodox Christians need to feel no chagrin for celebrating a “non-Scriptural” teaching. They are doing no such thing!
[Related: The problem with saying ‘Scripture says…’]
Catholic and Orthodox Christians submit to a narrow narrative when they depart from official church teaching—such as “Dei Verbum,” the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation—and speak of two distinct sources of authority, sacred Scripture and tradition. The church does not have two separate sources of revelation, one of which some Christians reject. No, “Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church” (“Dei Verbum,” No. 10). To bring a visual image to the narrative, we do not have two drawers from which we pull truths, one labeled “sacred Scripture” and the other “sacred tradition.”
Here is a better narrative. God is sovereign over revelation. What we know of God and of his relationship to us is entirely dependent upon God’s own decision to reveal himself in the person of his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Ultimately, there is only one author and one subject of revelation (No. 2).
Second, from the opening page of Genesis to the last line in the Book of Revelation, God reveals himself to a people. Inspiration is a communal event, not the possession of an individual. It is certainly true, as the church teaches, that God directly reveals himself to individuals such as the prophets, but what God says to them is directed toward the community of faith. It finds its ultimate vindication, its binding authority, only when it has been accepted by that community (No. 8).
Community and text stand in an ongoing, evolving circle. One or more members of the community, imbued with its self-understanding and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—better to say that the community’s understanding of itself is the primary work of the Holy Spirit—produces a text that is subsequently accepted, interpreted and proclaimed by the community as constitutive of its self-understanding, its reception of God’s revelation.
All this being understood, as the church passes through time, its possession, its reception of its own Scriptures, deepens. This ecclesial teaching is based upon an all-too-human reality: We understand ourselves, our stories, ever more deeply as we pass through time. “For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (No. 8).
Emily Dickinson has a lovely little poem that well expresses this truth. The individual soul calls out to the ocean that is God, begging to be received, promising that, if she should be, she will bring her own rich appropriation of God’s revelation, God’s truth.
My River runs to Thee –
Blue Sea – Wilt welcome me?
My River waits reply,
Oh Sea – look graciously!
I’ll fetch thee Brooks
From spotted nooks –
Say Sea – take me?
All the above is laid out to challenge the controlling narrative about the Assumption. The mystery we celebrate is not an addendum to revelation, one coming out of a drawer labeled “tradition.” No, it is an adornment, a deepening, of revelation, one produced from prayerful pondering.
Consider a single stanza from a stunningly beautiful chain of such, written by the Anglican priest and poet John Donne (1572-1631). It is from “La Corona,” his “crown of prayer and praise” to the Virgin.
Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which alwayes is All every where,
Which cannot sinne, and yet all sinnes must beare,
Which cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die,
Loe, faithfull Virgin, yeelds himself to lye
In prison, in thy wombe; and though he there
Can take no sinne, nor thou give, yet he’will weare
Taken from thence, flesh, which deaths force may trie,
Ere by the spheares time was created, thou
Wast in his minde, who is thy Sonne, and Brother,
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceiv’d; yet thou art now
Thy Makers maker, and thy Fathers mother;
Thou’hast light in darke; and shutst in little roome,
Immensity cloysterd in thy deare wombe.
The church proclaims that, come the close of her earthly life, the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul, in imitation of her own resurrected Son, into heaven. She did not “suffer death” as we do.
This teaching does not deny sacred Scripture, nor does it create an addendum to it. It is simply the fruit of the church moving through time, reflecting upon the Christ event that is revelation, bringing in her own “brooks from spotted nooks,” as Dickinson might say.
“That All, which always is All every where…yields himself to lie in prison, in thy womb.” Christ does not come into the world like some visiting celebrity, interacting with a few folk and then returning heavenward. No, he assumes our flesh in the Virgin. He “imprisons” himself in her, so thoroughly does divinity enter our humanity. And yet here, through his own prevenient, overflowing but never overpowering grace—God never seizes our freedom—God woos our wills.
Christ does not address the world with only a teaching. If that were so, then where he came from and to where he goes would make no difference. No, he redeems the world, he sanctifies our flesh when it becomes his own divine self. Mary is no more, or less, than the point of “first contact.” Yet because she is not a passive object but a willing disciple, she rightly receives the graced outcome of her cooperation. She is received, body and soul, into heaven because she gave herself to him, her nascent Lord, when she received him, body and soul, into her flesh.
Ere by the spheares time was created, thou
Wast in his minde, who is thy Sonn, and Brother,
Whom thou concev’st, conceiv’d; yea thou art now
Thy Makers maker, and thy Fathers mother.
One might ask: But how do we know the difference between exploring and expounding the depths of sacred Scripture—I’ll fetch thee Brooks / From spotted nooks—and arrogantly adding an all-too-human addendum to divine revelation?
Our Savior answered that question when he told us that “by their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:20).
Compare Donne’s poem to another song about Mary, and ask yourself, which is more beautiful, more true, more life-giving when we ourselves enter the silence of prayer, the ultimate womb of divine revelation?
Mark Lowry wrote a contemporary, deeply non-Catholic and unbiblical Christmas hymn, “Mary, Did You Know?” To minimize her significance, to create a Mary who does not even know, much less cooperate in, what is happening to her, Lowry must ignore the very words of sacred Scripture, for the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary who is entering the world through her consent. “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31-32).
Then return to John Donne’s Blessed Virgin Mary, whose very ensouled flesh is inseparably united to her Son in both his death and his resurrection.
And though he there
Can take no sinne, nor thou give, yet’will weare
Taken from thence, flesh, which deaths force may trie.
Now ask yourself, which is the deeper brook from spotted nook?
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