In Mary’s body we see the total gift of God’s grace, elevating and glorifying our lower bodies to that “high goal” we cannot reach by our own strength. All the evil that consumes our bodies – our diseases, ailments, desires and addictions – is trampled down not by the abandonment of the body but by its glorification.
As a child, I often stood in the dim light of the supermarket and shouted that dreaded one-word question, which immediately turned into a scream: “Mommy? Mommy! MOMMY!!”
A lost child is not a pretty sight (and usually not a pleasant one either). The child longs to hold his mother’s hand as he walks the aisles of Stop & Shop. And how symbolic of that child’s life! Without parents, without a guiding principle, good decisions are much harder to make: Should it be the vegetables or the Twinkies? Should it be a stable family life or a holiday dinner? How is the child supposed to get home where he is supposed to be without Mom? Without her, he might as well conclude that he must make do with whatever he wants. Lord of the Flies-style and spends the rest of his life in the supermarket: a lavish buffet that ends up in the garbage container behind the house.
So, where is mom? No, not your mom or my mom, but our Mama. The Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven to be with her ascended Son. But where exactly is that? If they have bodies, they must somewhere. Ever since Jesus left Earth, theories have popped up: Are they in a glowing, fiery realm beyond the boundaries of a Ptolemaic universe? Or perhaps in a multiverse dimension that’s theoretically possible in general relativity? I want to hold Mom’s hand – what rocket ship do I need to build to get there?
The rocket ship, of course, has a name and it is more effective than any other ship that man can build: grace. And this grace touches us to our very core: not as soulless statistics in the business meetings of large corporations, but as persons, made of flesh and soul, nourished by the hands of our mother, just as the baby Jesus was nourished by Mary. This maternal wrapping of grace gives us hope against the pessimism about the materialism of our time – the human material body is neither a playground nor a cage, but a creation of God through which He is glorified. In his 1950 document Munificentissimus DeusPope Pius XII defines the Assumption of Mary into Heaven as follows:
“While the illusory doctrines of materialism and the consequent corruption of morals threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and ruin the lives of men by sowing discord among them, in this wonderful way all may clearly see the sublime end to which our bodies and souls are destined” (Munificentissimus Deus42).
In Jesus, who is both God and man, this glorified body makes sense. Of course, God incarnate should have a resurrected and glorified body. But in Mary’s body we see the total gift of God’s grace, elevating and glorifying our lower bodies to that “high goal” that we cannot reach on our own. All the evil that consumes our bodies – our diseases, ailments, desires and addictions – is not trampled upon by giving up the body, but by glorifying it.
The question of the exact Where of Jesus and Mary is still worth asking, but perhaps the best answer is not always speculative. We can hold the Rosary as a prayer, meditating on the concrete lives of Jesus and Mary on earth and in heaven—a physical guide to a spiritual goal. Furthermore, on the Feast of the Assumption, the friars of our province make their vows when asked by the superior, “What seek you?” Our answer is, “God’s mercy and yours.” With these words, the Dominican confesses the hope of the Assumption—just as God grants Mary to be full of grace, both physically and spiritually, so we seek to share in that fullness through the wise and guiding hand of our superiors. In this way, while still in the fluorescent glow and buzzing hum of the supermarket of life, we tangibly hold our mother’s hands, one on the Rosary and one in obedience to our superiors, crying “Mama! Mama! “Mama!” – our mommy, who will always find us and bring us back home.
Republished with permission from Dominicana (June 2023).
This essay first appeared here in August 2023.
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The image uploaded by Sailko is “Assumption of the Virgin” by Francesco Botticini. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
