Homily for August 15th, 2014: Luke 1:39-56.
Mary, the Second Vatican Council
says, Ashines forth on earth, until the day
of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim
People of God@ (LG 68). Our pilgrim way is beset
with difficulties. We are reminded of them each time we read the morning
headlines, or watch the news on television.
On this feast of Mary=s Assumption we are reminded that
Mary also confronted difficulties on her own pilgrim way. What did Mary
understand about the angel=s message that even before her marriage to Joseph she was to
become the mother of God=s Son? She understood at least this: that in a tiny village
where everyone knew everyone else and gossip was rife, she was to be an
unmarried mother. Yet Mary responded without hesitation in trusting faith: AI am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say@ (Lk 1:38)
That act of trusting faith was not
blind. Young as Mary was B and the Scripture scholars think she may have been only
fifteen B she asked what any girl in her
position would have asked: AHow can this be, since I do not know man?@ (Lk 1:34) Even this question,
however, reflects faith. Mary was questioning not so much God and his ways as
her own ability to understand God=s ways.
Nor was Mary=s faith a once-for-all thing. It
needed to be constantly renewed. Before
her Son=s birth, Joseph wanted to break their
engagement. When the couple presented their newborn child to the Lord in the Jerusalem temple, Mary
heard the aged Simeon prophesy the child=s rejection and his mother=s suffering (Lk 2:34f). Three decades
later, after Jesus left home, he seemed on more than one occasion to be
fulfilling his command to his disciples about turning one=s back on parents and other relatives
(cf. Lk 14:26). At the marriage at Cana Jesus seemed to speak coldly to his
mother. She seems not to have been present at the Last Supper. Only at Calvary was Mary permitted to stand beside her now dying
Son, along with Athe disciple whom Jesus loved@ (John 19:26); deliberately unnamed,
many Scripture scholars believe, to represent the ideal follower of Jesus
Christ in every time and place.
The last glimpse we have of Mary in
Scripture is immediately before Pentecost. With the apostles and Jesus= other relatives, she is praying for
the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). Thereafter Mary disappears. Her
work of bringing Christ to the world was taken over by the Church.
How did Mary=s life end? We do not know. In
defining Mary=s Assumption on All Saints Day 1950,
Pope Pius XII said simply: AWhen the course of [Mary=s] earthly life had ended, she was
taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.@ The body the Pope referred to is
Mary=s new resurrection body: the body
with which Jesus rose from the dead B the heavenly and spiritual body
which, as St. Paul says, each one of us will receive in heaven (cf.1 Cor.
15:35-53). There Mary continues to pray for us on our pilgrim way. As the
Catechism says: AThe Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary
... and to entrust supplications and praises to her.@ (No. 2682).
For many Christians, however, and for
almost all Protestants, Catholic teaching about Mary, and our devotion to her,
are troubling. Especially troubling is the Catholic practice of praying to
Mary. Surely, Protestants say, we can pray only to God. Strictly speaking, they
are right. When we Catholics pray to Mary, or to any of the other saints, what
we are really doing is asking them to pray for us and with us. The conclusion
of the classic Marian prayer, the Hail Mary, makes this explicit: AHoly Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
now and at the hour of our death.@
If it makes sense to ask our friends
on earth to pray for us, doesn=t it also make sense to ask the prayers of our friends in
heaven, the saints? The Catechism says it does: ABeing more closely united to Christ,
those who dwell in heaven ... do not cease to intercede with the Father for us.
... We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.@ (No. 956 & 2683) Without Mary=s prayers, I would not be a Catholic
priest today. Let me tell you how I know this.
Before I was a Catholic priest I was
an Anglican priest, like my father and grandfather before me. Leaving the
church which had taken me from the baptismal font to the altar, and taught me
almost all the Catholic truth I know, even today, was the hardest thing I have
ever done in my life. Starting in 1959, and for almost a year, the question of
the Church, and of my conscientious duty before God, was not out of my waking
thoughts for two hours together.
One of the many obstacles to my
decision was the need to abandon, possibly forever, the priesthood to which I
had aspired from age twelve, and which had brought me great happiness, with no
guarantee that it would ever be given back to me. In Holy Week 1960 a Trappist
monk at St. Joseph=s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, himself a convert from
Judaism, who was helping me along the last stretch of my spiritual journey,
said to me: AWhy don=t you give your priesthood to Our
Lady, asking her to keep it for you, and to give it back to you when the time
is right?@ With his help I did this.
Had I known then that it would be
eight years before I could once again stand at the altar as a priest, I would
never have had the courage to go through with it. During those years I had many
difficulties B so many that well meaning
priest-advisers told me I should forget any idea of priesthood and embrace a
lay vocation. This I was never willing
to do. I knew that Our Lady was keeping my priesthood for me, and I was
confident that she would give it back to me one day.
After eight years, on January 27th
1968, I knelt before the bishop of Münster in northern Germany, where I was then living,
to receive the Church=s commission to stand at the altar once again, as a Catholic
priest. I had never told the bishop about entrusting my priesthood to Our Lady.
You can imagine my joy, therefore, when, at the end of the private ninety-five
minute ceremony in his private chapel, the bishop turned to the altar and
intoned the Church=s ancient Marian hymn: Salve regina, AHail, Holy Queen.@
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