+ A blessed solemnity of the Assumption to you and to your families. May God bless you and your families and your homes this day and always.
As we begin our reflection on the Assumption, that is, the moment when God the Father brings Mary, our Beloved Mother, body and soul into heaven, it is important to distinguish this moment from Jesus’ Ascension. In the Ascension, Jesus Himself, as He is God, goes to heaven by His own power. But in the Assumption, Mary is drawn, lifted to the Father. It is not by Mary’s own power, but by the Father and the Son. They lift her up.
And they do so in the very moment when death was about to inflict its curse. Mary is saved from the taste of death. In the Eastern Catholic churches, this moment is called The Dormition—the falling asleep. As Mary starts to fall asleep into death, she is spared and is instead brought up to heaven. Death no longer has any sting.
There is a beautiful logic to Jesus and the Father’s love in this. Not only do they show that Mary is definitively the New Eve and has undone her curse, but also that Jesus and the Father love Mary. That is to say: if you had the power to save your mom from death, wouldn’t you do it if you loved her? This is precisely what Jesus does.
It fulfills what Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians: “Christ, the first-fruits” is brought to heaven and “then each in their proper order.” So, after Jesus enters heaven, then most certainly must come His Mother, the Queen Mother.
All of this is to simply show that there are good and beautiful reasons for this Solemnity of the Assumption.
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But why does this Solemnity matter? What relevance does it have for today?
Very recently there was an article in a pretty popular periodical called The Atlantic. In the article, it advanced the argument that those who pray the rosary are radical—Rad Trads—and, even worse, those who pray the rosary may actually be white supremacists, racists, terrorists! What reason does the article give to make such a claim with breathless hysteria? Well, because we speak of the rosary as … a weapon!
Ultimately, what has been forgotten by many Catholics and never understood by society at large is that we are in fact in a war. There is a battle. And where there is a battle, there must necessarily be weapons. We do believe that there is a devil. And we do know, at the very least from experience, that he does have his own weapons. And it would be quite naïve if we said that there wasn’t a war going on.
I mean, how many statues of Mary have we seen decapitated in the past few months? How many statutes have been tipped over and destroyed? In my brother’s city of Denver, no less than three parish churches have been shot at because of their faith and their work with women. One parish has been shot at twice in just three nights. That parish is, coincidentally to our solemnity today, the Parish of the Assumption of Mary. And this is to say nothing of the other persecutions—and even self-inflicted wounds—that we have had to endure in recent memory.
Paul, once again, notes this reality when he says that powers and principalities will be put under the feet of Christ. And “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
You see, this solemnity today serves as a proof of this victory—and of this battle. As Mary is brought into heaven, we see definitively the victory. Which is why the devil is so mad! Nothing makes Satan more mad that when a soul is safe forever in heaven. Mary is home—like a child playing tag, she can yell “base!” or “free!” And will never be tormented by the devil. He hates that.
And what’s more: Mary can see the entire battlefield now. She has the high ground—which is the most powerful ground. She can be the greatest of field generals and, as we weave those bouquets of roses for her, she can dispense the gifts of those rosaries to those on the battlefield who need it most. Yes, the Rosary is our weapon. And our Blessed Mother Mary is the most powerful weapon of all!
Sure, this may sound like a weird way to talk about Mary. But any mother who sees her child in danger knows that power that can be unleashed in that moment. When I was hiking in the wilderness, we saw a cub and its mother. And do you know what? We stayed as far away from that cub as possible! Why? Because the mother bear would have killed us!! So too, those who mess with Mary’s children will get Mama Bear.
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Perhaps, then we should turn our thoughts to prayer.
On this solemnity, my first thought goes to our bishops. So often, we are told to think of Sunday obligation not in terms of obligation, but as the opportunity it provides—really, we are to think of Holy Mass as a grace and a way to become truly free.
That is correct.
But the bishops have not treated Holy Days of Obligation as sources of grace and freedom. Rather, they get rid of them willy-nilly because of a Monday or a Saturday. Instead of having the effect of freeing, such lukewarmness actually reinforces the idea that these Masses are just a binding obligation.
If feasts like the Assumption and the Ascension and others like St. Joseph and Saint Peter and Paul—if these feasts are feasts of grace and freedom, then wouldn’t we want more, not less, attending?
The “dragon’s tail wiped out a third of the stars in the sky” we hear in the first reading from Revelation today. Spiritually speaking, the stars are the descendants of Abraham. So what does this mean? It means, spiritually, that in the last days, a third of the people of God will lose their faith, their light.
Look around you. We’ve lost more than a third.
People have forgotten about heaven. And our Blessed Mother. And about the battle.
And there is no easier way to be a causality of war than to wonder aimlessly, naively, on the field of battle. There are many causalities around us. And the bishops have a duty to help us.
Let us pray for them that they start reinstating Holy Days and treating them as important reminders of faith and sources of grace!
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A second point of prayer—and my final thought in this homily—are for those who have fallen away from the faith. We pray for them particularly this day. I know you are worried about them because you love them.
Give them confidently to the Blessed Mother. What does Genesis 3:15 say? The woman will “crush the head of the serpent.” This is not a dainty thing to do! Mary does it with great force—one may say with great ferocity!
Pray the Rosary every day for your friends and family who have fallen away. And believe, believe very truly that, in the hour of their death, Mary will do everything she can to bring them home.
Even if you don’t see their conversion
before you die, believe that they will come home. For what do you pray at the
end of the Hail Mary? “… pray for us sinners now… and at the hour of our death…”
Mary, under the patronage of Our Lady of Fatima, replies by saying, “Yes, my Immaculate Heart will Triumph.”
And Our Lady of Guadalupe, a great image of our Lady of the Assumption, crowned with the stars in the sky, says, “Let nothing—nothing—depress you or cause you anxiety… am I not here who am your mother?”
In the last hour in this great battle, Mary will come to your beloved friends and family and say, “I am here. Your mother is here….”
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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. +
