mary-the-virgin-aug-15

Church

Homily – August 15:

Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

History

Assumption of Our Lady
This feast originated in Jerusalem before the fifth century as the “Falling-Asleep of the Mother of God.” It was adopted in Rome in the mid-seventh century and was renamed the “Assumption” in the next century. It celebrates Mary’s passing over, body and soul, from this world into the glory of her risen Son.[1]

Mostly a Catholic feast, although not exclusively so.

Like the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption was not always an official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church – not until Pope Pius XII ruled it so in 1950. It is, however, a pious belief held by some Orthodox Christians and some Anglicans. It is regarded as the principal feast day of the Virgin Mother. link

Catholics response:

are currently sensitive to the long tradition of devotion to Mary that looked and felt a whole lot like worship. I suspect there will be many homilies preached today that will be a little defensive about that past and will be quick to maintain that it’s really about Jesus, not Mary.

Creighton sermon: “It’s not about worshiping Mary” … [2]

He evokes a commonly found argument that the devotion to Mary increased as the exaltation of Jesus increased. In other words as the primary focus of our faith – Jesus – became more and more transcendent, distant from us, humans sought sacred figures that were closer to us.

I imagine that it was easy for believers down through the centuries to be certain that Mary, of all people on this earth, the one “full of grace,” would be the first to be carried home to the loving embrace of God. Andy Alexander, S.J

Others have also argued that Mary has provided a gender balance in the sacred figures of our faith. For many years, as I tried to focus my own devotion on loving Jesus (a man), I wondered what it was like for women. Women loving a man is a different dynamic that men loving a man. Clearly, it seems to me, the church has a long history of patriarchy that needs correcting.

Catholics and Anglicans each have their own axes to grind

Catholics have their prominent themes – on this day it is that we don’t worship Mary, it’s really … something else. Of course it’s all about Jesus – we’re Christians afterall, not Marianists but at times I think, “Thou protesteth over much.”

Anglicans have their prominent sermons. We don’t idolize the Pope. In fact we may despise everything the Pope stands for. In some sense the Anglican Way emerged out of a conflict over authority. But when it comes time to articulating our own theology of authority we are usually stumped. NB. in the Episcopal Church we just leaned back on the secular vision of the founding fathers of the United States of America.

Consider the drop off in Marian devotion after Vatican II by Catholics and the revival of contemplative Marianist devotion among protestants in the same years. Devotion to Mary is experiencing, I think, something of a revival in our lifetime. Not only Methodists teaching about the value of the Rosary in developing a spiritual prayer practice but also the Catholics recovering a balance of devotion to Mary because of our foundational trust in the saving work of Jesus the Messiah.

When St. Paul’s in Monroe said goodbye to Mary Pat and me, the church gave her a gift of prayer beads, together with a guide to their use. Just an illustration of a widespread recovery of Marian style devotion in the Anglican tradition.

I have followed a path wandering somewhere between the Catholic and the Protestant

My saying “Hail Mary” with my children at night –

I think I may have known early that loving children was a hopeless cause. As much as I try to protect them, one day they will have to cross the street on their own.

saying it when I approached a pastoral setting that I didn’t know what to do with

for 30 years I have found the strength to go into the unknown, the lost situation. Someday perhaps I could just privately catalog the amazing situations that a priest gets called to. It’s what the vocation is.

Let me share with you 2 stories that illustrate something of the way I have experienced Mary in the devotional life of the church.

Homily by Andrew Greeley 2005

*Background:
…Story*:
Once upon a time the Lord God went out on patrol of heaven just to make sure that it was still a city that worked. Everything was fine, the hedges trimmed, the grass cut, the fountains clean, the gold and silver and ivory polished, the mall neat (Of course they have a mall in heaven. Where else would they put the teenagers!). He stopped by to listen to the angel choirs sing and they were in great form. Then on one of the side streets he encountered people who had no business being in heaven, at all, at all. Some of them should have been serving a long sentence in purgatory, others would not get out until the day before the Last Judgement, still others would make it into heaven only on very special appeal. So he went out to complain to St. Peter. You’ve let me down again, he said and yourself with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I have not said St. Peter. Well, how did they get in? I didn’t let them in. Well, who did? You won’t like it. I have a right to know how they got in. Well, I turned them down and didn’t they go around to the back door and didn’t your mother let them in!

(Theologically this story of course is nonsense. But as a story it reflects Mary’s role as reflecting the maternal love of God).[3]

Mary’s presence and devotion to her helps the church to keep in mind our calling to radical compassion, to love seemingly as only a mother can love.

For me personally, Mary has been particularly present in times when I felt lost, unable to find my way forward, situations where “What would Jesus do?” doesn’t help me know what to do. Mary functions to remind me that I can go forward not knowing, but trusting, the way a babe in arms trusts the mother.

Barbara Brown Taylor

talks about how failure, like being lost, can

You will think of ways to get lost, or to accept that you really have gotten lost through no choice of your own. It can happen anywhere, in all kinds of ways. You can get lost on your way home. You can get lost looking for love. You can get lost between jobs. You can get lost looking for God. However it happens, take heart. Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too. All it takes is one of them to find you. All it takes is you to find one of them. However it happens, you could do worse than to kneel down and ask a blessing, remembering how many knees have kissed this altar before you. – Barbara Brown Taylor

For me, Mary has been the saint who has been most faithful in accompanying me in those times, the lost times, the hopeless times. We are beyond help. But she is there.

How does Mary fit in your devotion and faith?

Share?

Appendix

lectionary

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Magnificat

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1. catholic ireland  ↩

2. http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/081518.html  ↩

3. Creighton Center links: http://liturgy.slu.edu/AssumptionC081510/main.html  ↩