God comes down, and we go up

Saturday, August 15, 2020     Vigil, Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

                                                (today’s lectionary)   

God comes down, and we go up

Gabriel came to Mary with a message from God.

They brought in the ark of God.

Then they offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings to God.

When David finished the offerings he blessed the people in the name of the Lord.

Mary heard the angel out, carried baby Jesus to term and birthed him in Bethlehem. She and Joseph raised him, she made him bread and sent him to his lessons with the rabbi. She walked with him throughout Israel when he became an itinerant preacher and healer, taking her lessons, the rabbi’s lessons, and God’s lessons into his heart. None of us will ever be the same.

Mary insisted he do the right thing and turn their friends’ water into wine. She wept at the foot of Jesus’ cross, and made vigil at his tomb. She was just the kind of mother you’d think Jesus would have, and she adapted her relationship with him as he grew and became a man.

Mary made it possible for God to come down to earth. So it’s only fitting for the Church  to make it possible for God (Pope Pius XII making it official) to take her up to heaven. Right? I don’t know the technicalities, but I like the picture. Plus, I had no idea the word “assume” or “assumption” meant to be carried into heaven. It doesn’t mean that anymore! (Don’t make an ASS out of U and ME!)

Let us enter his dwelling

Let us worship at his footstool.

Today I am caught up, as Paul was, in the air. “And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Mary’s Assumption foreshadows our own. God comes down, and we go up.

When that which is mortal

Clothes itself with immortality

Then death is swallowed up in victory.

My cousin Mike mused with me about the intimacy of life and death, before and after in earth and heaven, standing in the presence of all of those we have loved, are loving and will love:

I find as I get older that I think more and more about the Body of Christ—all the people of all times and places who will spend eternity enjoying the company of each other and the Trinity. I find that when I remember specific people from across the years, in the many places I’ve lived (I think I’ve had 24 or 25 home addresses in 9 states), I have a strong sense that I can only describe as an admixture of empathy, nostalgia, appreciation for the person they were, regret that I didn’t get to know them better, and a yearning for the time when we’ll truly know each other because all the internal and external obstacles and distractions will be gone and we’ll never run out of time. So all my teachers, classmates, students, neighbors, pastors, coworkers, colleagues, friends, friends of friends, relatives, family members, all my acquaintances (no matter how fleeting), even people I’ve only heard or read about or seen on TV or in a movie or listened to on a CD (Jussi Björling!)—they’re all people I hope to know intimately in the company of the angels and saints. As I age, I seem to grow in the conviction that this life is mostly about getting introduced to, and learning how to value and love, a sample of the people I’ll be knowing forever in heaven. 

Mike, busy enough as a writer and professor just a few minutes across the river from Manhattan, regularly dedicates himself and his family to visiting relatives and friends around the country, often going far out of his way to do it. His commitment to this has been a blessing to me and many others. Listening to Mike’s voice inside my head, I think of something Ronald Rolheiser wrote in Holy Longing: “A Christian spirituality is always as much about dealing with each other as it is about dealing with God” (p. 99). Mike’s thoughts release me from under-defining that “dealing” only as selfish conflict, confusion and separation.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God

Who gives us the victory

Through our Lord Jesus Christ!

The Body of Christ (which Rolheiser insists we are part of now and always, on earth today as much as in heaven later) enriches us all in all ways, in the midst of suffering or success, famine or plenty. Twenty-four hour news cycles rarely probe the depths of these riches, spending so much time on the surface suffering and chaos. But the riches are there, more precious than silver or gold, visible whenever we look into someone’s eyes.

Margaret, who bridles when I insist that life is “fun,” knows that whatever we miss now will make us more appreciative of having it in heaven. But that does not prevent either of us from yearning for whatever of heaven we might receive now. I think God’s response to this prayer is to remind us that we are now and always part of the Body of Christ. This is our unending gift. We too can nurse at the breasts of Mary, just as Jesus did.

Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.

But Jesus replied,

Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

As Peter Kreeft says in Prayer for Beginners, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” Keep it simple, sweetheart.

            (1 Chronicles 15, Psalm 132, 1 Corinthians 15, Luke 11)

#