It was 1870
It was 1870. One hundred forty five years ago. The fathers of the First Vatican Council
declared that the Pope, whenever speaking “ex cathedra” – “from the chair” – on
matters of faith and morals, speaks infallibly.
Meaning that when he so speaks, when he so teaches, he does so without error,
we can be confident that he infallibly speaks the truth.
Now infallibility gets a lot of
press even to this day, but in that one hundred forty five years, we’ve had
twelve popes but only once…once…has any Holy Father ever taught “ex cathedra” –
ever taught infallibly. And that is the
dogma we call to mind and celebrate today – Mary’s Assumption into heaven.
What Pope Pius XII declared in 1950,
what we believe, what to be Catholic we must believe, is that Our Blessed
Mother was assumed, body and soul, into heaven at the end of her earthly
life. That her virginal body, conceived without
stain of sin, her sacred womb having served as a living tabernacle for the Son
of God, would not and could not and did not undergo the corruption of the grave
which awaits all of our earthly bodies.
That God willed that she did not have to wait until the end of the ages
to experience the redemption of her body.
To be sure, the Pope didn’t have to
worry about opposition to this teaching from the faithful, as the Church has
believed in the assumption of Mary since its earliest centuries. But proclaim this teaching, and proclaim it infallibly,
he did.
And I think it was prophetic of Pius
XII to do so. Inspired by the Holy
Spirit, perhaps he could foresee what changes were coming to our culture,
changes that cause us to shake our heads as we look back but which we continue
to experience. Perhaps God gave him an
inkling of how the sexual revolution would lead people to ever more greatly devalue
and objectify the human body. He surely
wanted this teaching to uniquely stress the sacredness of the human body, how
we are not merely souls, or even souls with bodies, but we are body and
soul. And how at the end of time, our
resurrection will be of both body and soul.
And might the Holy Father have
foreseen a world in which so many proclaim “it’s my body and I’ll do what I want
with it?” In a world steeped in that
attitude, we celebrate today this simple woman’s triumphant entry into heaven,
made possible because by her fiat she said to God not “it’s my body” but rather
“may it be done unto me according to your will.”
And could the Holy Father have
foreseen a world hellbent on rejecting all authority, a world ever more
disobedient. We celebrate the heavenly
reward bestowed by Our Blessed Lord on His immaculate mother, by whose perfect obedience
to the Father’s will, we have the hope of salvation.
Yes, this is a powerful,
counter-cultural feast we celebrate this day, because it is a counter-cultural
woman we celebrate today. And perhaps
the most important part of this feast, the greatest reason to celebrate is this
– we rejoice today that this most holy of women is with her Son in heaven, interceding
with her Son in heaven on our behalf. There
she is cooperating in our salvation.
We have in Mary a sure guide, a sure
help as we navigate through the troubled waters of this fallen and sinful world
toward our own heavenly homeland. With a
mother’s tender love, she beckons us to come close to her merciful Immaculate
heart, and she takes us by the hand and leads us to her Son, Our Blessed
Lord. As her children, if we entrust
ourselves to her loving care, we have her assurance that she will protect us and
never let us go astray.
It’s what Mary is all about – always
leading us to her Son, always pointing the way to Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Always leading us so that as she so
perfectly glorified God by her life, we, too, may glorify God by our lives.
Always guiding us so that as she
brought forth, by her “yes!” the fruit of her womb, the very salvation of
humankind, we too may, by the devotion of our lives and our “yesses” bring
forth good fruit for the advancement of Christ’s mission.
Always interceding for us so that as
she was welcomed triumphantly into heaven, body and soul, we too may one day
experience the glorious resurrection of our bodies and life everlasting.
So let us praise and celebrate our
Blessed Mother and invoke her powerful intercession: Hail Mary…
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