Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The problem with today's feast is to do with language.  There's the language of what we call it.  Common worship rather coyly calls is The Blessed Virgin Mary.  In the Scottish Book of Common Prayer, today is referred to as The Falling Asleep of the BVM.  That's close to Eastern Orthodoxy's The Feast of the Dormition of the BVM.  In the Western Church, generally the Feast is called The Assumption of the BVM - which is guaranteed to raise various parts of the anatomy, from eyebrows to hackles!  

And it is true that we can get carried away with exalted language in this area of theology.  S. Thérèse of Lisieux - the Little Flower - spoke of her frustration with sermons on the subject of the Blessed Virgin.  I tried to find the exact quotation, but couldn't.  But it was along the lines of sermons about Our Lady make one feel so full of Oh's and Ah's (as at a firework display) that very quickly one has had quite sufficient of them.

I always remember those words - not least when faced with this particular festival, when it is very easy to get carried away!  

But words there must be and should be as we celebrate the life of Blessed Mary, the Mother of the Lord, the Mother of the Word Incarnate.  

There are, of course, different ways that we use language. Particularly how we use it in two distinct ways as description and as representation.  Obviously, the two overlap a great deal, but we need to recognise which kind of language we are using.  And also, because language is not an exclusive possession of human beings, what kind of language is being 'spoken' to us.  For ultimately all material reality communicates something from the ultimate Being of God.  All situations express a word from God.  

Now, this should not surprise us.  So what word from God does the situation of Blessed Mary's life after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection and her final dying express?  What do we hear from God in and through this inevitable part of Mary's own journey, her pilgrimage of faith?  

And again, the first thing to notice is the kind of language.  This is absolutely not descriptive language.  Any more than talk in the Old Testament about Elijah's assumption or that of Enoch is descriptive language.  Even Elisha the prophet on whom Elijah's mantle fell was stuck for words, muttering something about the Chariots of Israel and its horses.  So, if we speak of Mary's Assumption (and this word goes back at least to the fourth century when referring to her death) we are using language not in a descriptive way but in a representative way.  We are using words to connect us with a profound reality that defies description.  

But before we get too philosophical let's think what Mary's death/dormition/falling asleep/Assumption actually is saying.  Or rather, what is God saying through this to us?  What do we hear from God in this situation?

Well surely part of what we hear is about our own ultimate destiny.  Although - and this is the kind of thing that really irritated Thérèse of Lisieux - although we are inclined to put Mary onto such a high pedestal that she can hardly be described as a real person at all, the reality is that Mary is one of us.  

Even more mysteriously, we are to be like Mary.  Not in her physical childbearing of course, but in the way in which, open to the work of the Holy Spirit, we may give birth spiritually to Christ within us and through us in our world.  That is the vocation of every Christian - each in her or his own way.  To so respond to the life and gift of the Holy Spirit that Christ is formed within us, and that presence is thus continually enfleshed, celebrated and acknowledged in our world.  

How can the contemplation of Mary's departure from this world assist us in this?   What word does this speak from God?  We come back to those two different ways of using language.  Thinking about Mary's Assumption into glory and her coronation in heaven is not descriptive.  Mary at the end of her life did not evaporate into thin air!  But talk of her Assumption (which goes back as I mentioned to at least the fourth century and S. John Damascene) is representative language, symbolic language which takes us into the reality of an actual physical life, Mary's life, crowned with God's grace.  Here is someone who has so given herself fully - by the merits of her Son - fully to God's loving purposes for our world.  And yes, the joy of such a life is far beyond the descriptive powers of language to even begin to think about.  So we think of what such a crowning with grace means.  It means a sharing in her Son's Risen life in the fullest possible way.  A way that - in the language of symbol - we describe as assumed into glory.  And all we mean by that is that Mary enjoys that ultimate destiny for which the Risen Christ shows us we are all bound.  Sharing in his resurrection life.  As the saintly Anglican Bishop, Thomas Ken, wrote in his hymn Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced, Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed; And here below, now she's of heaven possessed, All generations are to call her blest.  (I am sorry to say that the hymn book you use doesn’t have this, or pretty nearly any other hymn which refers to the BVM in it.)

Yes, it's right to think about Mary's death bringing us help and hope and joy.  These days we are encouraged to think of our own death in a very negative way.  And of course we would be seriously deluded if not ill to wish for our own death to come upon us. But whether we wish for it or not, it will come to each and everyone of us.  And when it does, to have a picture before of us of a life crowned with grace and shot through with God's glory is the greatest of all encouragements.  For God's sake, we need as Christian people to have confident joy in the face of the darkest of moments.  Not that the pain of the loss of our loved ones diminishes by that.  But to see our ultimate fulfilment as something that lies beyond this world - with all its successes and failures.  Mary's Assumption into glory reminds us that the last word on our lives belongs not to us, or to those around us - but to God.  And it is a word of sheer grace - and unspeakable joy.  A word that takes us beyond words, indeed beyond understanding, but into the glorious vision of God.