I very much appreciate the Assumption of Mary as a sign of our life with God as inevitably embodied or incarnated, and this includes our lives post death. It was wonderful to read Father John Klassen's reflection for tomorrow and the way he stresses the nature of the human person as embodied Spirit. Those who stress that we are called to live disembodied spiritual lives that contrast with embodied or "temporal" lives forget that we Christians believe in resurrected life, and resurrected life is bodily life. Sister Laurel, Er Dio
A Spirited Whole
This feast of the Assumption of Mary is a celebration of the totality of the Incarnation. To believe that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven, that Mary is the first human being to follow in the footsteps of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, testifies to the dignity of the body. The body is not the discarded and expendable husk of the Spirit. The body is a flesh and blood, bone and sinew reality. Through our bodies, we as human beings come to know and believe; in them we are known and come to maturity in Christ.
The Assumption of Mary testifies that the human person is not split between body and soul, but is a living, breathing, spirited whole, wholly loved, wholly blessed, wholly redeemed by God. Mary enjoys what each of us will one day know and experience. As we celebrate her Assumption, we anticipate and hope for our own.
The Assumption of Mary also tells us something fundamental about God. In imagining a way to fulfill the situation of creation, God always puts the response of human beings front and center. God never does an end run on the human condition. God does not give up on the experiment and walk away, as if it doesn’t matter. With all of our cloudiness of vision, our divided loyalties, our many loves, God never bypasses the human situation.
The most complete manifestation of this is the sending of the Son, born of Mary, born under the law, as St. Paul instructs in the letter to the Romans. This says to me that our response, like that of Mary, and all of our faith-filled forebears, matters.
Fr. John Klassen
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