Today we celebrate the feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Though the early Church knew she was assumed body and soul into heaven, and there were accounts of this event reported in apocryphal narratives, the Church waited until the 20th century (our time!) to state this as a dogma. Pope Pius XII declared Mary’s assumption as doctrine in 1950. Surely there was at least one witness of this moment. John, for example, who was assigned by Jesus to take her into his home, must have been there—he never left her. And, perhaps a few others from the Ephesus Christian community were there as well. I wonder what impact it made on that group.
John who lived closer to Mary than any other member of the Church, was so affected by Mary’s presence that his spirit had a capacity for prophecy never paralleled in the Church. The Holy Spirit was able to show him the future of the Church till the end of time, and he wrote prophetically about this in the Book of Revelation. For Mary was the Church “in miniature.” He was one of the few to know Mary as the simple disciple of Jesus who, with other women, ministered to the needs of Jesus. He was one who heard Mary cry while they stood together at the foot of the cross. More than likely he sat next to her in the Upper Room as they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit. He accompanied her to the prayer meetings that took place in Ephesus, and then beheld her (my opinion) as she was taken up into heaven. He was witness of her entire story. Looking into the eyes of Mary, John read the entire story of the Church.
Then he told her story in prophetic form. Revelation is the story of Mary embodied in the Church. And, so it becomes our story because we are the Church.
Mary is heavenly (Revelation 11:19, 12:6,10):
“A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and her head a crown of twelve stars.”
She was heavenly queen, served by sun, moon, and stars. The “twelve” decorated her tiara. She was glorious and bigger than human life.
And, Mary was earthly as well.
“She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon…Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod.”
She “wailed aloud” as she struggled to give birth to her son, who would in time rule all the nations. She yielded her son to God even as the dragon tried to devour him. Then she fled away from the world of the dragon to a desert place.
“The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God.”
It is for us to interpret this as the Church’s story and, in turn, our story. We are more human than heavenly. We relate better to the simple teenage Mary who ran off to visit her cousin Elizabeth, than we do to the woman clothed in the sun. As part of the Church we share in the intense labor pains of Mary as she continues to release her son into the world. We, as the Church, have been ripped away from the dragon’s grip and taken into a safe, desert place where God reigns on earth.
Once connected with Mary, we are magnetically drawn to where she is, and so we are also heavenly. In Baptism we were given to her as children for her to care for. Dwelling with her we begin to resemble her and realize that we are part of her story. Close to Mary we begin, like John, to develop a new capacity to experience God and realize what he is doing on the earth. We become part of a Church that awaits its turn to be assumed into heaven, and in some way, are already experiencing the assumption of ourselves into heaven. In Mary, we begin to see the future that awaits us—how our story will end.
We thank God today for the Church which reminds us through so many Marian feast days, to be devoted to our heavenly Mother. We are not surprised today if we experience ourselves being assumed with her in spirit as we hold onto her outreached hand.
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for he subjected everything under his feet” (1 Corinthians 5:27).
