Homily

Sunday, August 15, 2008, Solemnity of the Assumption
Assumption Grotto Parish, Detroit

Mary’s Victory over Death

Most men fear death. Some do not, because they are fools and rash. Some do not fear death, because they are holy. But in general, we fear death. Death is not a good thing. Yet we fear death less because it is death, and more because of our life. We fear death, because in our living days, we are attached to the world. We fear death, because while we live, we sin, and our guilt accuses us, and we dread our final judgment. We fear death, because our salvation at this moment is not certain. (1) No, we don’t fear death because of death, we fear death because of how we live our lives.

Attachment to the world, the dread of divine judgment and the uncertainty of our salvation: these are the three things, as St. Alphonsus de Liguori teaches, which make death bitter. St. Alphonsus, Doctor Zelantissimus, Doctor Most Zealous, also teaches that from this trinity of bitterness, Mary was free; and that such is a great lesson which the Assumption teaches us.

It was on November the first, 1950, when Pius XII published Munificentissimus Deus, the encyclical wherein he defined the dogma of the Assumption. He wrote, “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” Pope Pius XII also wrote in the same encyclical, “Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from [the] general rule [that all flesh should corrupt after death]. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.” Several Church fathers assert that she did in fact die, not willing to be different from her Divine Son even in this matter, but her death was more like a sleeping. Hence, the Church universal refers to her “dormition,” and not her death.

Now, none of us here could ever dream of being as Mary, that is to say, completely Immaculate and free of blemish of all sin, both actual and original. Yet all of us can hope for heaven.

Now I said that three things make death bitter: the attachment to the world, the dread of judgment and the uncertainty of our salvation. At the Assumption, Mary was perfectly detached from all creatures, so she did not feel the sadness of breaking with a world to which she was attached. At her Assumption, Mary felt no dread of judgment, as she was the Immaculate Conception. At her assumption, Mary felt no uncertainty of salvation, but instead, was in perfect union with God, and hoped with absolute abandonment. Death for her was not bitter; grace, in her, overcame death. In her, death had no victory, death had no sting. (2)

Yet God has a second plan for us sinners, so that we should not give up hope. And he has given us this plan because he loves us. We were not immaculately conceived, and God’s foreknowledge of our proud, sensual and greedy sins proves Him right, for none of us had such a perfect love to correspond with such a gift, as did Mary. Yet still he wants us to be saved. For this, he sent his Only Son, Eternally Begotten, to be a sacrifice of redemption for our sins. And if our foolishness, for falling into sin I mean, has disposed us to fear death, he has given us a reason to overcome this fear with hope. That is, God offers man the forgiveness of his sins.

After baptism, and after a good confession, a soul has been separated from the world by the cleansing waters of the blood of the Son of God. After a good confession, a soul need not dread punishment, for God has pronounced, through his priest, a judgment of mercy and not of damnation, and He will never go back on his word. And after a good confession, we duly prepare ourselves to enter into eternal life should we die the very next instant.

I say all of this because the world, indeed our parish, as every parish under the sun, every parish of every age, always has its fair share of those who are tempted to despair, those who wonder what good their lives are, those who dread God because of the great sins they have committed. Such souls need to put their faith in Jesus Christ and regain their hope. The Blessed Virgin today, the day of the Assumption, shows us that God is victorious over sin.

Let God work in you at least to some degree in the way he worked in Mary. Let him free you from the world, let him wash away your sins and let him unite you to himself especially through the cross. In that way you too, by God’s grace and by Mary’s intercession, will be victorious even over death. In the words of St. Paul, in whose Holy Year we now find ourselves, we find a truth infinitely manifest in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” And by our closeness to Mary, we shall strengthen our hope. Amen.