Sunday the 16th of August 2026 - The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Transferred)

Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10/ Ps 45(44)/1 Corinthians 15:20-27/ Luke 1:39-56

In the 1940s, Pope Pius XII authorized excavations deep beneath the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Archaeologists dug through an ancient Roman cemetery, and in 1950 the Pope announced that the tomb of Saint Peter had been found, where Christian memory had always said it was. The early Christians marked the martyr’s tombs with reverence. They gathered at graves, celebrated the Eucharist over the bones of saints, made pilgrimages to holy places, yet nowhere in the ancient world do we find the tomb of Mary. No shrine over her body, no relics, no grave. For a woman so beloved and revered, so central to the memory of the first believers, that silence tells us something.

That same year the same Pope solemnly defined the doctrine of the Assumption, that Mary was taken up, body and soul, into heavenly glory. In one year, a tomb found, and another tomb declared never to have existed. Because for all the relics and shrines and pilgrim routes of the ancient world, nobody ever pointed to a grave and said, ‘Here lies the Mother of God.’ There is something missing at the heart of today's feast, an empty space where something should be. The Church could not venerate Mary's tomb because there were no remains to venerate. What the Church has always believed, and what Pope Pius XII solemnly defined in 1950, is that Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

One of the criticisms levelled at us Catholics is that we worship people other than God. The example often given is our apparent worship of Mary. The truth is that we worship only God alone. We do however have a devotion to Mary and to other great holy people acclaimed as having lived heroic Christian lives. We honour these people not because of who they are but how they lived their lives. Mary holds a special place in our faith because she said yes totally and freely to the will of God for her. In so doing she became the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God. This is an extraordinary honour for a human being. The God who created Mary from nothing chose to be knitted together in her flesh, to be nourished by her body, to be carried under her heart for nine months. Her womb was a tabernacle. God would not permit that flesh to be subject to decay.

There are several reasons why Mary would attain the gift of redemption at the end of her physical life. The official proclamation explains that because Mary was herself conceived immaculate, that is without original sin, she could not be subjected to the bodily decay associated with sin and did not have to wait until the end of time to experience the redemption of her body. The proclamation avoids making a definitive comment on whether Mary experienced physical death choosing to use the phrase, ‘having completed the course of her earthly life’. The question of Mary’s death is not important but rather that she was assumed body and soul into heaven at the end of her life on earth and was not subject to the corruption that physical death normally brings. By being the physical mother of Jesus their bodies became intrinsically linked which must surely mean that the earthly body of Mary was so precious that it had to be taken into heaven uncorrupted by death.

We see Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, the God Bearer. She conceived the Word of God which became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Mary is the New Eve replacing the old one through which sin, death, and decay came into creation and replacing it with the redemptive power of God brought to us by Jesus. There has never been such a highly honoured human being as Mary who was chosen to be the partner with God in his redemptive action. God drew Mary to himself after her life on earth was complete and it is only right that if God honours Mary in such a way, then we should do likewise.

In the Gospel passage Luke tells us how Mary travelled to the hill country of Judah carrying the Lord within her. Her cousin Elizabeth cried out, "Blessed are you among women." The child she was carrying leapt in her womb. This reflects the Old Testament account of King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant as it too was carried into the hill country of Judah. The message of this Gospel is that Mary is the new Ark, the living vessel who carried not stone tablets, but the Word made flesh. The first reading confirms this in the words describing heaven being opened revealing the ark of his covenant. The great sign of the woman clothed with the sun. The Woman, the vessel that held God enthroned in glory.

Where are we in all of this? Paul tells us the answer in the second reading today. Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. First fruits imply a harvest still ongoing. Christ is first, Mary next, then, those who belong to Christ. Mary is not the exception to our destiny, she is the preview of it. The Church teaches that the Assumption of Mary is a participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of our resurrection. When we look at Mary today, we are looking at where God intends to take us, body, soul, and glorified. The glory of Mary did not come from grand achievements, it came from a simple but profound ‘yes’. A quiet, hidden, complete surrender to the will of God, repeated day after day, all the way to Calvary where she stood at the foot of the Cross. That same yes is for us to say as well. Probably not in a dramatic way but in the small daily surrenders to God's will. The patience we did not feel like offering, the forgiveness we gave, the prayer we said when things looked hopeless.

In the Eucharist we do what Mary did, we receive the Body of Christ into our body. What Mary carried in her womb, we receive and carry within us. Her flesh nourished Jesus, now his flesh nourishes us as the food of immortality. Today let us use the words of the Magnificat, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’. Let us ask Mary, whose body is already glorified, to pray for these bodies of ours, that where she has gone, we may someday follow.

God Bless Brendan