Solemnity of The Assumption 2009
Homily preached by the Abbot of Ampleforth on the Solemnity of the Assumption, 16 August 2009
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Dormition or the Assumption of our Lady. This doctrine has celebrated in the liturgy in both the East and the West since the seventh century and it states that at the end of her earthly life Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Pope Pius XII, the great pope whose encouragement of patristic, biblical and liturgical studies paved the way for the work of the Second Vatican Council defined this doctrine as an infallible dogma of the Church in 1950. It is, therefore, a feast day which is both old and new.
I think that it was timely that Pius XII drew attention to this feast because it speaks loudly to us – men and women who have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries. We can still recall as comparatively recent history the terrible genocides in Armenia between 1915 and 1918, in the Shoah in Nazi Germany, in the Gulags of Soviet Russia; the wholesale slaughter of the Chinese by the Japanese in the 1930s, of the Cambodians in the murderous regime of Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979, of the Tutsi and Hutu moderates by the Hutu militias in 1994. We continue to live with the silent genocide being perpetrated in abortion clinics in our western world and we live under the threat of a new genocide in the shape of the current enthusiasm for so-called ‘voluntary euthanasia’.
This appalling destruction of human lives is only possible because one group of human beings has designated another group of men and women as either sub-human or as living a life which is, for one reason or another, no longer worth sustaining. The perpetrators of genocide state in effect that human lives, human bodies are worthless and can be destroyed without thinking.
The feast of the Assumption of Mary teaches us the extraordinary value of human life and the sacred nature of the human body. Mary was an ordinary Jewish girl who was completely obedient to what God asked of her. Because of her obedience she actually became what all human beings are called to be: the temple of the incarnate God. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her and she gave human flesh to the second person of the Trinity: she made Christ visible to the men and women of her time and place. Having brought Christ to birth she nurtured the infant Word until Jesus possessed the human maturity needed to embark on the mission given to him by the Father. As he began his saving work she was at his side. As he wrought our salvation in his death on the Cross she was still there. With the apostles she witnessed to his resurrection and received a second outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. At the end of her life on earth, after her death, her body knew no decay but she was assumed body and soul into heaven, the first human being to experience the resurrection of the dead. Thus she has already received the gift which is promised to all of us: the resurrection of our bodies from the dead.
This feast teaches us that the human body of one who is faithful to the Father has extraordinary value because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As Mary is the model of the Church, it teaches us that our human bodies which constitute the Church are the means the Father has chosen to continue the saving work of his Son. Our human bodies continue to bring Christ to birth and make him visible for the men and women of our time; making him visible in the life, the preaching, the worship and the good works of the Church. Since Christ came to save all men and women, since all humankind are called to become temples of the Holy Spirit, we must assert that living human beings are, everywhere and at all times, to be respected and honoured. It is fitting, therefore, that the Assumption of Mary was defined in the first of two centuries where respect for the human body and for human life has been conspicuous by its absence.