for August 15
Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

What is there left to say about Mary?

She is called by so many titles, depicted in so many works of art, celebrated on multiple feast days and the subject of two infallible papal teachings, one on her freedom from sin, and the other, recalled today, that “having completed the course of her earthly life, [Mary] was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”.

The danger in all of this attention is, ironically, that we lose sight of who Mary is, and of what she means to us as followers of her Son.

The ways we see Mary often depicted today are healthy correctives to so many images of a fair-skinned, blue-robed European woman with her eyes downcast. In recent years, we are more likely to see Mary as young, poor, a refugee, a woman of dark beauty. In past times, Mary seemed not just our intercessor par excellence, but practically a meddlesome nag to her Son. Today we are more apt to see her as the woman of today’s apocalyptic first reading: a woman well-acquainted with struggle and pain, a woman who faces down evil and who is destined for a place that God has prepared for her.

Such contemporary images of Mary are more human, more accessible than the plaster saint that many of us grew up with—or the impossible ideals of the virgin and mother that she was said to stand for. But I wonder if even these newer images still make Mary into too much of a flat icon, into someone we need her to be, not the person she herself was.

And granted, we know little about Mary from Scripture. The evangelist Luke tells her story for his own purposes; Mary functions for him as the ideal disciple. But if we look closely at today’s gospel, perhaps we can glean some hints about the particular woman at its heart.

Elizabeth’s warm welcome seems to reflect Mary’s own joy in the company of women, especially, in the women of her family and in that special companionship of women who are pregnant and expecting at the same time. Even Luke can see the Holy Spirit present and moving as Elizabeth and Mary greet one another.

Just as another Mary will be the apostle to the apostles, the first to proclaim the resurrection, in today’s gospel Mary of Nazareth also preaches powerfully. She proclaims that the power of God is on the side of the lowly, and she is not at all shy about her own role in God’s saving work.

Let’s pause here to savor this moment.

For as it was with Mary, so too will it be with us. In our particularity, in whatever unique ways and places that we recognize the presence of the Holy One, in the specific times that we cooperate with the work of the Spirit, so too will generations call us blessed.

That is what we celebrate on the feast of the Assumption. As Mary belongs wholly to God, body and soul, from the first breath of life to the last, so too do we. This is the promise God has made, and blessed indeed are we who believe it.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.