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The Assumption of Mary

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August 15th is the feast of the Assumption of Mary, i.e. Mary being taken, body and soul, Mary, Mother of Jesus into heaven. Setting aside all the theological jargon, what this feast speaks of to me is human longing—and how it is that Christ both shares that longing and fulfills it.

Most of us can recall a time in our life when everything came together—or perhaps we’d have to imagine such a time: a time when all the people we love were in the same place together, all of them healthy, all of them happy and everyone in right relationship. How good that would feel, how right. Times like that tell us that this is what we are made for. They are inklings, if you will, of God’s love. God’s desire for us is so great; God wants us to experience love and experience it in community.

But if we look at the whole of our life, we would have to say that it often falls short. These kinds of experiences, sadly, are few and far between. One of the great things about being a child is that we are, for the most part, surrounded by the people we love. That’s part of why we often look back on our childhoods with such affection and longing. But over time, as we grow older, distancing occurs. It can be the simple distance of geography, inevitable moving or growing apart, choices that alienate, illness or, even, death. There comes a time when we look around the dining table at Thanks giving and we set a place in our heart for whoever is not there.

Jesus knew that kind of human longing. He felt the sadness and anguish of separation. The gospels tell us how he cried at the death of his good friend, Lazarus, and of the time in Naim when he raised the only son of a widow. Without anyone asking him to do so, Jesus performed the miracle of bringing the son back to life and restoring him to the arms of his mother. Perhaps in that mother and son he saw a reflection of himself and his own mother.

That image is so beautifully portrayed in Michelangelo’s Pieta. When I was in high school, the Vatican loaned it to the New York World Fair and some of my sisters and I went down from Connecticut to see it. I stood in long lines on a hot, summer day three times to see it. It was so moving, so tragically beautiful to see Mary hold the body of her crucified son on her lap. The expression on her face, her posture in holding him, all of this spoke of great human longing.

I mention this because in the Feast of the Assumption we have the Pieta in reverse. this time the look of love and longing is on the face of Jesus as he gazes on his mother. Jesus so loved and longed for her that once her time and her task on earth were done, he drew her to himself, body and soul. What a sweet reunion that must have been!

In that reunion is our hope. Jesus knows what it is like to simply miss someone, to miss their physical presence. We have all been there—ached to be with someone, knowing they were in heaven but, somehow, that wasn’t quite "enough.” Jesus felt that too and in this reunion we celebrate, is the hope of the reunions that await us as well.  Mary is, after all, the First Christian. What Mary experiences is what we as followers of Jesus, can also hope for and expect. Her reunion with her son is a foretaste and promise for us as well.

That is what this feast celebrates, the sweet promise of something more. Yes, one day we will be fully and finally united to Christ and we will also experience the human joy of being reunited with those whom we love who have gone before. This is our Christian hope.