Assumption of Mary

Assumption of Mary
August 15, 2004

"A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Rev 11) "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord... for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant... He has scattered the proud in their conceit. .He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty." (Luke 1:39-56)
St. John's vision of the great struggles of the Apocalypse includes Mary triumphant in heaven victorious over the forces of evil. It is the source of many artistic renderings of Mary over the centuries.
St. Luke's portrayal is much different. This is the story of Mary meeting Elizabeth and Elizabeth's greeting recognizing her cousin's central role in the history of salvation which we pray daily as the "Hail Mary". The "Magnificat" is her hymn of acceptance sung in the daily prayer of the church at Vespers. Here Mary is a humble person of obscure origins directing our attention away from herself and toward the Most High, emphasizing once again the great reversal of fortunes in the kingdom of heaven. The rich, proud and powerful will be brought low, the poor, humble and powerless will be raised to the highest rank and filled with everything good.
The image of Mary triumphant in her humility exerts a powerful spiritual attraction. We would like to be able to go straight for the triumph part of the experience and bypass the humility part. What does it mean to embrace humility? It is simply a recognition and acceptance of the truth about ourselves. We possess the means for our undoing as well as the means for our spiritual perfection. Most of us tend to be led in one of two directions, over emphasizing either our power or our insignificance. Humility takes us in both directions at once.
I was reminded recently about this, during a visit from my four-year-old granddaughter (with her beautiful mother). She and I have developed a most wonderful and intimate relationship, almost entirely initiated by her on her own terms. As we converse and play our nursery rhyme word games I am drawn into the extraordinary richness and power of her small world, and the powerlessness of my own. Most of us parents recall the spiritual impact of our infant children upon us. How can someone so apparently small and powerless exert such power in our lives? These surely are experiences here and now of much more to come in the kingdom of heaven.
This celebration of Mary reminds us that her destiny is waiting for every one of us, especially the most powerless, needy and insignificant. We are all in our own ways chosen to be bearers of God when we follow her example and embrace our poverty and emptiness as well as our richness and power.