August 16, 2020

August 13, 2020

If the Feast of Mary’s Assumption means anything it is an assertion of faith that there is a heaven which is the culmination of the salvation won for us by Jesus Christ, which is the goal of human life. It is not a theory, not wishful thinking, but a fact realized bodily in the Virgin Mary. That is what the Church asserted in proclaiming her Assumption as a dogma of faith. “The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, 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.”

In one of his sermons, St. Augustine pointed to Mary taken up bodily into heaven and exclaimed: “Behold, there is the symbol of our resurrection.”

In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus has definitively brought human nature into the glory of God. Humanity which Jesus caused to rise from the dead and has taken into heaven has, in Him, been transfigured, made capably of eternity. That is the ultimate vocation of every human being—to have eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.

Only one person, Mary, conceived without sin, has been able, at her death, to enter into the life of heaven, body and soul. The human flesh that Jesus received from Mary was a part of his risen body. Mary’s body, taken into heaven is the same flesh as that she had given her Son. In this shared human flesh of Christ and his Mother, there is solidarity, a continuation of the union between Son and Mother. It had to be that, at death, Mary joined her Son in the life of heaven.

Every man, woman, and child who, in the Church, becomes a follower of Jesus begins, with Mary, to share in his risen ascended life which is the life of heaven. Mary had already entered body and soul into the fullness of that life; we shall begin to experience the joy and glory of it only when we pass through death to new life in Heaven.

Heaven is our future. Because Jesus, our risen and ascended Lord, is already with us in the Mass, in the sacraments, and in the life of the Church, because Mary in heaven is Mother of the Church, the life of heaven, like a seed buried in the earth, has already begun in us. As those who belong to Christ, we have already one foot in heaven; as those who acknowledge Mary to be our Mother, we can find our way, through her, on the path that will bring us to be with her Son forever.

When we look to Mary in her Assumption, we can recognize the heavenly state that is implicit in all creation, that is begun in us more profoundly by grace, that for all creation and for us is the destiny God wills us to have - salvation.
Bishop Basil Meeking is the retired bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand. This article excerpt is made available courtesy of the Catholic Exchange web site.