The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Years ABC
Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
1st Corinthians 15:20-27
Luke 1:39-56
When people are angry, suffering, or afraid, they can lose their ordinary abilities at being reasonable, and can even embrace what in good times are extreme and crazy behaviors. This temporary emotional numbness helps them endure the immediate and inescapable pain of anger, hurt, or fear. Apocalyptic literature in sacred scripture provides a glimpse of such fantastic imaginations in times of persecution being a bit numb and disconnected from reality. Some of the imagery is remarkably consoling, while some is fantastically frightening and bizarre. All apocalyptic literature was originally meant to assist those struggling with impending persecution and sometimes even violent death. In times of peace and security, apocalyptic literature rightly takes on the appearance of weirdness, craziness, and unreasonableness. So, absent persecution, any who use apocalyptic literature to frighten believers are seriously misusing and abusing religious power. The Book of the Revelation of John (aka “The Apocalypse;” the word “apocalypsis” is the Greek word for “revelation”) was composed in the mid-90s AD, during a local persecution of Christians on the island called Patmos. It was addressed to and circulated among the Seven Churches (Christian communities in seven principal cities) of Asia Minor. The technicolor and surround-sound images used were meant to take the book’s audience out of their painful circumstance and move them along in spiritual and emotional terms, to survive, to believe, and to trust in God ever more fully.
Today’s first reading from Revelation begins with God in Heaven doing the most extraordinary thing imaginable: revealing the Divine Self, showing the perfect Ark of the Divine Covenant. While technically indescribable, in Heaven God can be appreciated in total fulness and glory. In this text the woman clothed with the sun was a metaphorical spouse of God, the heavenly collective New Israel. Catholic and Orthodox Christians have long interpreted her as Mary Theotokos. Indeed, as spouse of God she is Theotokos, the earthly mother of God’s son, the child in her womb. The huge red dragon is an image of the ancient mythic beast often used to portray evil from the days of Babylonian mythology, through the Canaanite era, and on into Greco-Roman mythology. In Greek mythology, Python (a great mythological snake) was sent to devour the soon-to-be-born child of the pagan god Zeus. When Zeus’ child, Apollo, was finally born, he in turn killed Python. In late 1st Century Roman pagan religious politics, several Roman emperors associated themselves with Apollo, so John the Christian Seer proposed that the genuine messiah was the Real Savior against all mythic evil, including imperial Roman paganism.
In any event, today’s feast on the Catholic calendar interprets the persona of Mary Theotokos into this imaginary vision. She and her child were saved by God’s direct intervention. A new golden era is announced “Now ... salvation ... power ... kingdom ... authority...” Mary is part of the story of salvation, the human participation of the highest and best sort, who responded “Yes!” to God’s offer of salvation in spite of the messiness and danger of living that invitation fully. Mary chose to live in confident faith of God’s power to save. This episode in the Apocalypse is a vision, so it occurs outside of the time and space in which we live, in an imaginatively spiritual realm where all is in an “eternal now.” So, in the mythic narrative the mythic battle between God and Evil has occurred already and God has definitively won. There is no future battle yet to come. Certainly there is no chance that Evil might yet prevail over God’s Goodness. God already was, is now, and will always be, triumphant! This certitude was intended by John to give profound consolation to the Christians of Asia Minor in the 90s AD when they experienced a very violent period of persecution. It must have truly been effective because the early church continued to make copies of the book. But merely a generation after its composition, the book fell into disuse for a full century. It seems that absent violent persecution, apocalyptic literature did not appeal to early Christians much – exactly as it ought to be.
In the second reading from 1st Corinthians, the conflict between God’s Goodness and all other inferior evil powers seems to be a future event. However, Paul was writing clearly from his current, human spacio-temporal chronology, a chronology in which the Second Coming is a much hoped-for event in the not-to-distant future of chronological Earth-time. Paul’s eschatology had a linear quality to it. He truly believed it to be so, but it was also a typically human approach to the mysterious reality of how and what God had already done, was then doing (in Paul’s present time), and was yet to do, so as to bring humanity along in this grand process of Salvation. After nearly 20 Christian centuries, we no longer await the Second Coming of the Risen Jesus in quite the same clear and historical terms as did our earliest Christian ancestors. We imagine the end times (the Eschaton) in terms of a much larger universe and a much bigger Divine Mystery, always hoping for a long and blessed life before our own individual deaths.
The Gospel for today is that very romantic narrative of the newly pregnant Mary to Elizabeth, the first action undertaken by the youthful Mary. In a sense, this was the first human scene in the Salvation story after the Angel Gabriel had announced her vocation to her. Mary, in effect, the first evangelist, went in happy service to Elizabeth, the miraculous mother of the final Old Testament and the first New Testament prophet, John the Baptizer. Mary’s task in loving assistance to the faithful and sage Elizabeth was the first act of Gospel ministry, just as the destruction of Evil by God in today’s first lesson was the final act in the mythic drama we know as Salvation History.
In any event, Mary’s “Assumption,” i.e., her being taken up directly to heaven without her body undergoing the corruption which death normally brings, might be considered an extraordinary act of honor, affection, and gratitude towards her by God for having been faithful and courageous enough to have said “Yes!” at the Annunciation. This liturgical festival is certainly a measure of the high esteem in which the Church has held Mary since the early Christian centuries. Today’s remembered event is the concluding act of Mary’s Earthly life. Anything else that occurs in the true Presence of God in the Kingdom is beyond our physical perception! But, all this is a prayerful facet of our hope in resurrection and life eternal!
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death!
1st Corinthians 15:20-27
Luke 1:39-56
When people are angry, suffering, or afraid, they can lose their ordinary abilities at being reasonable, and can even embrace what in good times are extreme and crazy behaviors. This temporary emotional numbness helps them endure the immediate and inescapable pain of anger, hurt, or fear. Apocalyptic literature in sacred scripture provides a glimpse of such fantastic imaginations in times of persecution being a bit numb and disconnected from reality. Some of the imagery is remarkably consoling, while some is fantastically frightening and bizarre. All apocalyptic literature was originally meant to assist those struggling with impending persecution and sometimes even violent death. In times of peace and security, apocalyptic literature rightly takes on the appearance of weirdness, craziness, and unreasonableness. So, absent persecution, any who use apocalyptic literature to frighten believers are seriously misusing and abusing religious power. The Book of the Revelation of John (aka “The Apocalypse;” the word “apocalypsis” is the Greek word for “revelation”) was composed in the mid-90s AD, during a local persecution of Christians on the island called Patmos. It was addressed to and circulated among the Seven Churches (Christian communities in seven principal cities) of Asia Minor. The technicolor and surround-sound images used were meant to take the book’s audience out of their painful circumstance and move them along in spiritual and emotional terms, to survive, to believe, and to trust in God ever more fully.
Today’s first reading from Revelation begins with God in Heaven doing the most extraordinary thing imaginable: revealing the Divine Self, showing the perfect Ark of the Divine Covenant. While technically indescribable, in Heaven God can be appreciated in total fulness and glory. In this text the woman clothed with the sun was a metaphorical spouse of God, the heavenly collective New Israel. Catholic and Orthodox Christians have long interpreted her as Mary Theotokos. Indeed, as spouse of God she is Theotokos, the earthly mother of God’s son, the child in her womb. The huge red dragon is an image of the ancient mythic beast often used to portray evil from the days of Babylonian mythology, through the Canaanite era, and on into Greco-Roman mythology. In Greek mythology, Python (a great mythological snake) was sent to devour the soon-to-be-born child of the pagan god Zeus. When Zeus’ child, Apollo, was finally born, he in turn killed Python. In late 1st Century Roman pagan religious politics, several Roman emperors associated themselves with Apollo, so John the Christian Seer proposed that the genuine messiah was the Real Savior against all mythic evil, including imperial Roman paganism.
In any event, today’s feast on the Catholic calendar interprets the persona of Mary Theotokos into this imaginary vision. She and her child were saved by God’s direct intervention. A new golden era is announced “Now ... salvation ... power ... kingdom ... authority...” Mary is part of the story of salvation, the human participation of the highest and best sort, who responded “Yes!” to God’s offer of salvation in spite of the messiness and danger of living that invitation fully. Mary chose to live in confident faith of God’s power to save. This episode in the Apocalypse is a vision, so it occurs outside of the time and space in which we live, in an imaginatively spiritual realm where all is in an “eternal now.” So, in the mythic narrative the mythic battle between God and Evil has occurred already and God has definitively won. There is no future battle yet to come. Certainly there is no chance that Evil might yet prevail over God’s Goodness. God already was, is now, and will always be, triumphant! This certitude was intended by John to give profound consolation to the Christians of Asia Minor in the 90s AD when they experienced a very violent period of persecution. It must have truly been effective because the early church continued to make copies of the book. But merely a generation after its composition, the book fell into disuse for a full century. It seems that absent violent persecution, apocalyptic literature did not appeal to early Christians much – exactly as it ought to be.
In the second reading from 1st Corinthians, the conflict between God’s Goodness and all other inferior evil powers seems to be a future event. However, Paul was writing clearly from his current, human spacio-temporal chronology, a chronology in which the Second Coming is a much hoped-for event in the not-to-distant future of chronological Earth-time. Paul’s eschatology had a linear quality to it. He truly believed it to be so, but it was also a typically human approach to the mysterious reality of how and what God had already done, was then doing (in Paul’s present time), and was yet to do, so as to bring humanity along in this grand process of Salvation. After nearly 20 Christian centuries, we no longer await the Second Coming of the Risen Jesus in quite the same clear and historical terms as did our earliest Christian ancestors. We imagine the end times (the Eschaton) in terms of a much larger universe and a much bigger Divine Mystery, always hoping for a long and blessed life before our own individual deaths.
The Gospel for today is that very romantic narrative of the newly pregnant Mary to Elizabeth, the first action undertaken by the youthful Mary. In a sense, this was the first human scene in the Salvation story after the Angel Gabriel had announced her vocation to her. Mary, in effect, the first evangelist, went in happy service to Elizabeth, the miraculous mother of the final Old Testament and the first New Testament prophet, John the Baptizer. Mary’s task in loving assistance to the faithful and sage Elizabeth was the first act of Gospel ministry, just as the destruction of Evil by God in today’s first lesson was the final act in the mythic drama we know as Salvation History.
In any event, Mary’s “Assumption,” i.e., her being taken up directly to heaven without her body undergoing the corruption which death normally brings, might be considered an extraordinary act of honor, affection, and gratitude towards her by God for having been faithful and courageous enough to have said “Yes!” at the Annunciation. This liturgical festival is certainly a measure of the high esteem in which the Church has held Mary since the early Christian centuries. Today’s remembered event is the concluding act of Mary’s Earthly life. Anything else that occurs in the true Presence of God in the Kingdom is beyond our physical perception! But, all this is a prayerful facet of our hope in resurrection and life eternal!
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death!