Brothers and sisters in Christ.
A happy day today, to be able to come together and celebrate Mass on the occasion of this great feast of the Assumption of Mary. A solemnity of hope, and it’s celebration is more poignant today than it has been heretofore.
The times are so uncertain now, who can truly say what life in a month’s time, in two months, in a year. It is not something we are in this day and age and among us – for the most part well-educated and affluent people - not used to. Many of us pine for – or at least that’s what I hear people saying – a point in time where the pandemic and all its terrible side-effects – socially, economically - is “over”, and “normal life” will be back again.
This is very understandable I think but at the same time if we spend these months, this year, this new reality that we find ourselves in, if we spend it pining for something else we might miss an important point, a point bearing on this great Feast.
In this new situation where we find ourselves, we are perhaps coming closer to a world that is alien to us but not so strange to the great legion of the poor, the afflicted the indigent and the precariat. People who do not enjoy the luxuries of a stable existence, where plans and ambitions stretching out years into the future are smoothly rolled out.
In short, I think we are re-engaging slowly with a world that would be more familiar to the Holy Family in general, and the Holy Virgin Mary in particular. A world of plans interrupted, a world of breaks and fissures, a world where the people cry out in need of deliverance.
A world where there are dragons seeking to devour the innocent. A world that shows its true face, not as a comfortable, welcoming holiday park laid out to our benefit and ready to cater to our whims, but rather as a sometimes dark place where there is evil aplenty and the forces of good are small, weak and hard to discern and seemingly easily crushed.
And yet, such a world is the world that Christ came to save. And he will not save us without the cooperation of those people – be they small, vulnerable, weak perhaps according to the world’s measure – the first and foremost of which is the Holy Virgin.
We read in our Gospel of today the words of the Magnificat, words of joy sung out by the Virgin Mary
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
and has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
The Virgin is by the worlds measure small and unobtrusive, but she is great because she is unencumbered by sin and, hence, never distracted by her ego, has a great acuity, a great sense of how Gods plan is going to work. And work it will. Splendidly so in fact. And it fills her with joy.
She knows that the vagaries of this world are not as final or as important as the world often thinks. There is another story going on here and it’s the story of salvation. As yet a whisper, it will get stronger and stronger, and grow irrestitibly.
The Joy of Mary springs from her not being overly taken in by her own plans, but being fully open tot he plans of God. And the Virgin being the most open to Gods Plan guarantees that she is not only welcomed to Heaven but is rather, she and she alone, is taken up in Heaven body and soul.
Through faith we may join in her joy. We may learn that – though it would be nice if our plans came to fruition, there are other plans at work in our lives. More important plans. In a crisis, God may lead us to a habit of humility in that regard and in that humility become more aware of God’s work in our lives.
Times can be tough, and many people are hurting. But whenever danger grows, the force of salvation grows likewise.
May we come to discern those forces now and evermore.
Amen.
