Entrust your Entire Salvation to the Blessed Virgin Mary

Homily

Solemnity of the Assumption, Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Emmett; Sacred Heart Parish, Yale

            Let us imagine for a moment an inveterate sinner, on his deathbed, filled with dread of the judgment of the Son of God which is to come upon him. For when a person dies, his soul is separated from his body, and instantly that person is judged once and for all by Almighty God.

            What is he to do? How can he obtain hope? What means is left for him to overcome his despair? What instrument of mercy has the Lord left to him as a last instance for his salvation?

            The answer has to do with today’s solemnity.

           For today we celebrate the Assumption of our Lady. At the end of her earthly life, Mary, the Mother of God, was carried body and soul into the glory of heaven. Pope Pius XII taught this, which was always the faith of the Church, in a definitive and dogmatic form on November 1, 1950, in his encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus.

            We know this happened because the Pope teaches so, and that it is part of our faith, so we know the teaching is infallible. We know, because the apostles were there, and passed their testimony on to us.

            It is most appropriate that Mary be raised into heaven. First of all, because it stems from her Immaculate Conception. [Explain what this means; Pius IX, Dec. 8, 1854, Ineffabilis Deus.] Death comes as a punishment for original sin, for Adam and Eve forfeited their praeternatural gifts, and did not pass them on to us. Yet Mary had no original sin, from the very moment of her conception. Therefore, it is right and proper that her body should be free from corruption, and already enjoy the happiness of heaven.

            Furthermore, Mary committed no actual sin. So great, so perfect, so selfless was her love, that she always said yes to God. She is the co-mediatrix, she is the co-redemptrix.

            Still more, it is appropriate that Mary be in her body in heaven, because she is our Mother, as Jesus made her at the foot of the cross. Now in heaven, she can love us with her real womanly heart, a living female heart. She can also shed tears for us, her children, and real tears from real, beautiful eyes, for our spiritual wounds by our venial sins, for our spiritual death by our mortal sins, and even for our sufferings of which we are not culpable. All these move her to tenderness, and to intercede before God for us.

            If this is how things are with Mary, in her we find the answer to the question of today’s homily: how can even the sinner have hope, even in the most extreme situation of despair? The answer is this, for the aforementioned inveterate sinner, and also for each one of us: turn to Mary, and entrust your entire salvation to her. God will not deny her anything, so if you give yourself to her, by your prayers and efforts to imitate her, she will take care of you.

            I wish to offer the example of one person who was dying, and turned to Mary, so you may be inspired by what you know. The example is that of none other than St. Alphonsus de Liguori, a doctor of the Church whose teaching is trustworthy. Towards his death, in 1787, he suffered very much. [Explain the imagery of him with his head bent and why.] He wrote many books, one of which was The Glories of Mary, which some of you may have already read, and which the rest of you, I hope, will read before long.

            While he was approaching death, he was seen often in prayer, and sometimes in ecstasy. One day, he was in bed and ill. “One day a brother [of the community he founded, the Redemptorists], read to him a glowing passage concerning [Mary, the Mother of God]. ‘What book is that?’ he asked. ‘It is your book,’ was the answer, ‘on the Glories of Mary.’ At these words, he broke out in a prayer: ‘O my Jesus, how I thank Thee for having made me compose that book in honor of Thy Mother. Oh! how sweet it is at the hour of death to think that I have been able to do something to inspire devotion to Thy Mother in men’s hearts.’”[1]

            I hope that you too can pray such a thing at the hour of your death, that you have helped your neighbor know, love and imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary. Therefore, I invite you, I plead with you, and I beg you to love Mary, and even to become her apostles in the world. Pray to her, pray the Rosary, resolve to love her especially by imitating her.