Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Lectionary: 622

Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through man,
the resurrection of the dead came also through man.

As Saint Paul sought for the meaning and significance of the Lord's life, death, and resurrection, he gave little thought to the life of the Mother of Jesus. He first had to think about Jesus. 

A passage from the Book of Leviticus came to him:

Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you come into the land which I am giving you, and reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest, who shall elevate the sheaf before the LORD that it may be acceptable on your behalf. 

On the day after the sabbath the priest shall do this.

That festival day came to be known as Passover, which was made more solemn by an additional sacrifice:  

On this day, when your sheaf is elevated, you shall offer to the LORD for a burnt offering an unblemished yearling lamb.

As the Apostle announced the Gospel to Jews and gentiles and they flocked into his congregation,he saw a great, apocalyptic harvest which signaled the end of ordinary human history and the coming of God's kingdom. Jesus was the firstfruit ["first sheaf" in the NABRE] of God's springtime harvest, and it promised a far more abundant harvest throughout the coming summer. His sacrificial death on the cross was the priest's elevation of the sheaf before God the Father. 

The Apostle to the gentiles might have seen the resemblance between a congregation with their hands, hearts, and voices raised before the Lord and a vast field of ripened grain blowing in the wind. Anyone who has seen a field of high grass blown by the wind, and heard its sybillant roaring whisper, must notice how an ecstatic congregation does the same thing. 

The harvest is clearly God's gift. God's faithful people do not dare to eat it without first pouring out prayers of thanksgiving before the living God who provides for his people. The gift of a single man like the single sheaf or a beautiful, perfectly-formed lamb, promises a superabundant yield in the very near future. 

And then, as Saint Luke presented the story of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; and the Evangelist John recalled her standing with the Beloved Disciple and Mary Magdelene on Calvary, the Church recognized her also as a first fruit, the most blessed of all women. She too was lifted up before Almighty God in her Assumption into Heaven. 

Could anyone even suppose that the Mother of God should be only a common sinner like the rest of mankind? Rather, God intervened -- as He has every right to do and no one can gainsay that! -- and preserved her innocence from her conception. And by courageous, simple obedience she grew from grace to grace until she was worthy to be assumed directly into heaven. Her body, elevated like the sheaf in the hands of the priest, would not be subject to the consequences of sin, corruption and putrefaction, 

On the Solemnity of the Assumption the Church celebrates the gift God has given to our Mother, Daughter, Sister, and Friend. She is, to use Wordsworth's lovely expression, "our tainted nature's solitary boast." Her Assumption into heaven is a promise of our elevation of before God in hymns of praise. Though we are, by our own estimate, unworthy of her presence and God's gift, both are given to us. And we are grateful, glad, and confident of superabundant mercy. 

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost

With the least shade of thought to sin allied.

Woman! above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature's solitary boast;

Purer than foam on central ocean tost;

Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn

With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon

Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;

Thy image falls to earth.* Yet some, I ween,

Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,

As to a visible Power, in which did blend

All that was mixed and reconciled in thee

Of mother's love with maiden purity,

Of high with low, celestial with terrene! 

William Wordsworth 1770—1850

*"Thy image falls to earth" recalls the sad story of English reformers stripping their churches of Mary's statues. The poet, himself a Protestant, laments that irrational mob action and believes the suppliant who turns to Mary is "not unforgiven." As he admits, heaven and earth and all sin are reconciled in the mother's love and maiden's purity.