Dear Friends,
The summer games are now over until 2024. Thinking of the Olympics and para-Olympics this last month, we cannot help but savor how people make every effort to perform at a very high level. We were mesmerized by the human body with its sleek beauty, its ability to perform remarkable feats in record time. We have wanted these athletes, with their wonderful spirit and well-disciplined bodies, to succeed, because in some way, they represent all of our bodies and spirits.
In the context of this feast, you and I and every Olympian are important to God in the same way Mary is – as ourselves in all we are, body, soul and spirit, whether we break any world records or not.
By celebrating that Mary lives with God in her whole being, this feast reminds us that our human bodies, young and vibrant or marked with signs of aging, are redeemed. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses an attitude in the people of his time and ours that denied the goodness of the human body – the attitude that focuses only on the salvation of our souls. That idea lingers today, and today’s feast reminds us that it is not true.
It’s important to be reminded that our bodies are good. This is not obvious. Women’s bodies, men’s bodies, bodies that are beautiful, bodies of color, bodies that don’t seem to work very well, young and energetic bodies, bodies without certain limbs. They are all good.
Part of our Christian heritage is to treasure our bodies. They belong to us and they belong to God and at the second coming, each of us will rise in our own body: individual, recognizable and transformed.
To trivialize, misuse or neglect our bodies is to reject God’s gift of our whole selves.
Nowhere in the New Testament is the death of Mary, the Mother of God, mentioned, yet believers had an instinct for the truth of Mary’s life, death and beyond. The conviction became well rooted in the faith community that Mary went to God upon her death – whole and entire: body, soul, spirit, memory, thought and consciousness. Mary was not just her womb. All was taken up. All. With Jesus, Mary could expect nothing less. So today, let’s focus our attention on the homecoming of Mary. Let’s let our minds and hearts soar. Let us say thank you to God for her life and eternity.
When the Assumption was finally proclaimed as part of our faith, the psychologist Carl Jung was delighted. He saw this feast as the Church’s statement to the world that our bodies are part of our redeemable and redeemed whole. Mary is the first among all of us.
~Sister Joan Sobala
