Where did the Feast of the Assumption come from?

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Mary’s Tomb, Jerusalem

We celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven August 15th. It’s the most important feast of Mary in the church’s calendar. Where did it come from?

There’s no account of Mary’s death or assumption into heaven in scripture. An account in the apocryphal body of literature called the Transitus Mariae, popular in the Christian churches of the east from the 5th century, describes the return of the apostles to Jerusalem for Mary’s burial and their discovery that her body was taken up to heaven. The writings attest to an early interest in the death of Mary in some parts of the early church.

The first liturgical celebrations of Mary’s death and assumption to heaven took place in Jerusalem at her tomb (above) on the Mount of Olives about the 5th century. The Roman Catholic Church draws her present belief from this early tradition and her conviction that Mary is “wholly united with her son in the work of salvation.” For scriptural support, the church looks to sources like Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians–the second reading at Mass for August 15th – to understand this mystery.

Paul wrote that letter about the year 56 AD to Corinthian Christians who had questions about the resurrection of Jesus. Their precise difficulty seems to be that they saw only the soul surviving death and not the body, a common conception of the Greek mindset of the day. That belief brought a low appreciation of the body and the place of creation itself in the mystery of redemption.  The created world wasn’t worth much and was passing away, so let it go.

Paul countered that opinion with the belief he received, a belief from the beginning:  “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15: 3-6).

Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, Paul affirms, and we will rise bodily too. Jesus is “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Mary’s bodily assumption follows the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Because of her unique role in the mystery of redemption she is among the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Her assumption is part of the mystery of the resurrection; it’s an affirmation we will follow Jesus who rose body and soul.

In her prayer, the Magnificat – the gospel read on the Feast of the Assumption – Mary accepts her mission from God to share in the mission of her Son, the Word made flesh, who came to redeem the world.

The church gradually understood the mystery of Mary’s Assumption over time. A rising Gnosticism in the 3rd and 4th centuries certainly promoted appreciation of this mystery. Gnosticism promised escape from the limits of bodily life through a higher knowledge. As a result, human life and creation itself didn’t matter.

Mary’s Assumption claims they do.

The Roman Catholic Church formally defined the dogma of the Assumption on November 1, 1959, on the Feast of All Saints, but the belief was firmly held for centuries before:

“…the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.” The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians: ‘In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death'” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 966).

Mary’s Assumption was defined in a century when human life and the planet itself were threatened. World War I ended in 1918 after four years when millions perished. World War II, ending in 1945, left the real possibility that war and nuclear weapons could bring about the destruction of the human race. The Holocaust seemed to prove the capability of human evil.

Threats to human life continue and creation itself is increasingly endangered by climate change and consequent poverty. August 15, the date for the celebration of this feast from earliest times, is the time of harvest for most of the Western Hemisphere. Our belief in the resurrection of the body sees creation itself promised a share in this mystery. The readings and prayers of the feast describe Mary in heaven as the woman clothed with the sun, the moon and the stars beneath her feet. (Revelation 11)

The Feast of Mary’s Assumption is the oldest and most important of Mary’s feasts in our church calendar.

Feast of the Assumption of Mary: August 15

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For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

St. Maximilian Kolbe

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Maximilian Kolbe
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Teresa Benedicta

A number of martyrs are remembered in our liturgy in mid-August. August 9, we remembered Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, who died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz August 9, 1942.

August 10th, we remembered Lawrence the Deacon, one of the most important martyrs of the early church. August 13 Pontian and Hippolytus.

August 14 we remember Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan priest, who died in Auschwitz about a year before Edith Stein, August 14, 1941.

Peter Brown, an historian of early Christianity, says it wasn’t the bravery of Christian martyrs that impressed the Romans. The Romans, a macho people, had war in their blood. They prided themselves on dying bravely.

Rather, the Romans marveled at how Christian martyrs approached death. They saw something beyond death. They considered themselves citizens of another world, who followed Jesus Christ in how they lived and believed in his promise of everlasting life.

Lawrence the deacon, for example, could have escaped Roman persecution, but he wouldn’t abandon the poor of Rome in his care. Jesus said take care of the poor.

Centuries later, Maximillian Kolbe was a priest who wouldn’t abandon the vocation God gave him.

Before World War II, Kolbe was active as a Franciscan priest, promoting devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. He ran a large, successful Franciscan printing enterprise in Warsaw.

In 1939, after invading Poland, the Nazi arrested him and a number of other Franciscans and imprisoned them for some months. They ransacked their printing place, probably hoping to intimidate them. Then, they left them go.

Instead of being intimidated, Kolbe began to house refugees from the Nazis, some of them Jews. That got him into trouble, so he was arrested again, on February 14th, 1941, and sent to Auschwitz to do hard labor.

Concentration camps like Auschwitz where Maximillian Kolbe and Sr.Teresa Benedicta died are the nearest thing to Calvary in modern times. More than 1500 of them were spread mostly through German occupied territories in Europe. Twenty million people died in the camps in the Second World War, 6 million were Jews. 1.3 million people went to Auschwitz; 1,1 million died there.

Five months after Kolbe entered Auschwitz, in July 1941, a prisoner from his barracks escaped. In reprisal, the Nazis took 10 men from the barracks to put them to death by starvation. One of them cried out that he had a wife and children who would never see him again. Father Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take the man’s place.

He was the last of the ten men to die of starvation and an injection of carbolic acid two weeks later, on August 14, 1941.

Many stories of Kolbe’s ministry among the prisoners in Auschwitz were told after his death when Auschwitz was liberated. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 1983, who called him “Patron Saint of Our Difficult Age.”

He was a sign of God’s love in a place where God seemed absent.

Maximillian Kolbe’s death on the vigil of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven has been seen as a further sign. God’s hand reached into the dark horror of Calvary to save his Son. God reached out to Mary to bring her, body and soul, to heaven. God reached into Auschwitz and other camps of horror to bring suffering human beings to glory and peace.

Ezechiel, for those over Thirty

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We‘re reading the Prophet Ezekiel at Mass these days. Early Jewish scholars considered him hard to read; only those over 30 should read him, some said. We have the same difficultly. The lectionary for today, Friday in the 19th week of the year, offers a gruesome story of infanticide. A infant girl is thrown out to die. Not a pretty story to look at.

It’s a story harsh to hear and hard to understand. Infanticide, a form of abortion. child abuse,, prostitution, ingratitude, forgetfulness of God. Ezechiel describes his own society in dark terms. Yet, all the while God is there. We’re offered a shorter version in our lectionary to spare us some ugly details.

But don’t miss God’s intervention:

“You became mine, says the Lord GOD.Then I bathed you with water, washed away your blood, and anointed you with oil. I clothed you with an embroidered gown, put sandals of fine leather on your feet; I gave you a fine linen sash and silk robes to wear. I adorned you with jewelry… You were exceedingly beautiful, with the dignity of a queen.”

“But you were captivated by your own beauty,
you used your renown to make yourself a harlot,
and you lavished your harlotry on every passer-by,
whose own you became.”

“Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were a girl,
and I will set up an everlasting covenant with you,
that you may remember and be covered with confusion,
and that you may be utterly silenced for shame
when I pardon you for all you have done, says the Lord GOD.”
{Ezechiel 16, 1-69)

Ezeckiel’ story of the abandoned girl is a story of sin and redemption. All the while God is there.

Look at the hard times, don’t ignore or hide from them, but see them with the eyes of God, the prophet says. “Thus says the Lord GOD,” I swear I am coming… I will claim my sheep…I will save my sheep…I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” (Ezekiel 34,1-11)

Good words for us today?

 Pontian and Hippolytus

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 St Pontian, Pope and Martyr, and St Hippolytus, Priest and Martyr. August 13

Pontian and Hippolytu died in Sardinia in the persecution of Maximus Thrax about the year 235. No one escapted fromSardinia, the Roman penal colon, the Romans called it  the “Isle of the Dead.” 

They’re considered important martyrs in the early church and their bodies were taken back to Rome by Pope Fabian. Pontian was buried in the chapel of the popes in the cemetery of St. Callistus. Hyppolytus was buried in a cemetery along the Via Tiburtina.

 

Via Appia to the Catacomb of St. Callistus
Pontian, Cemetery of Callistus

Originally Pontian and Hippolytus were honored separately in our liturgical calendar, but our 1969 calendar after Vatican II gave them a feast together. One reason was that they were rivals for power in the Roman church and were reconciled as they faced death together. Forgiveness is always identified with martyrdom. Forgiveness leaves judgement to God.

They also give us a picture into the early development of the papacy in Rome. It was not the smooth process often pictured in church history books. . 

The early church in Rome emerged from the large Jewish community in that city. Its house churches emerged from Jewish-Christian synagogues. The process was not easy.

 Historians like Eamon Duffy say that the house churches in Rome were less centrally organized than the communities in Antioch.“To begin with, indeed, there was no ‘pope’, no bishops as such, for the church in Rome was slow to develop the office of chief presbyter, or bishop.” (Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, New Haven, USA, 1997 p 7)

That’s not say that the Roman church wasn’t looked up to. From earliest times the Roman church was seen as the church founded by two great apostles, Peter and Paul. It was also the church of Rome, seat of Roman government. Some of its members served in Caesar’s household.

The papal office developed in response to heresy. Rome was a magnet drawing teachers like Marcion who came to Rome in 140 and wished to do away the Old Testament and all Jewish teaching. About the same time, Tatian and the gnostic Valentinus visited Rome. They had to be dealt with too.

That’s where figures like Hippolytus come in. He was a brilliant theologian and champion of orthodoxy. Yet, according to some sources he thought he should be bishop of Rome rather than someone like Callistus, a former slave whose abilities he considered far inferior to his own.  The papacy at the time was far from the well-ordered institution we know now.

The saintly martyrs we honor today didn’t live or die in a vacuum. They were fully involved in their own, unsettled times. Did Pope Fabian, a peacemaker, bring back the remains of Pontian and Hippolytus to Rome as examples of peace and reconciliation for a church dealing with heretical teachers and periodic outbursts of persecution.

Living in your own times is always a form of martyrdom.  

Listen to Ezechiel

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The Prophet Ezechiel, Rubens

We usually look to the New Testament for wisdom day by day. The Old Testament readings in our lectionary don’t seem as relevant as the New; the words themselves– “Old,” “New”– suggest that. The Fathers of the Church, though, preached and reflected on the Old Testament a lot, more  than we do. For one thing, they saw in the Old Testament their mission to be involved in the world of their day.

During his ministry Jesus was cautious about saying anything the Romans and those occupying Palestine might see as meant for them. He’s careful about social or political statements that could end his ministry quickly. Look what happened to John the Baptist, for example. In an upcoming gospel reading (Matthew 19,23-30) Jesus tells his disciples, with Peter as their head, that the rich will find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. He’s cautious about indicating who the rich are.

The Prophet Ezechiel (Ez. 28,1-10) in our Old Testament readings, however, speaks out against the rich and powerful of his time by name. He inveighs against the Prince of Tyre, a small Phoenician kingdom entrenched along the Mediterranean Sea, where Lebanon is today. Smart traders and skillful politicians, they saw themselves as a model society for that part of the world.

Ezechiel like so many of the prophets was a social critic. He’s warning  the Jewish ruling class in exile in Babylon about seeing Tyre as their model for rebuilding Jerusalem. He sees too much of Tyre’s unjust ways and arrogance to buy into becoming a nation like them.

In our own time and place, we shouldn’t lose our voice for criticizing social issues, prophets like Ezekiel say. While we struggle with our own personal sins and failures, we need to keep promoting a just society throughout the world. God calls us to work for issues of social justice, like immigration and poverty, for example.

We need to listen to Ezekiel and the prophets like him.

The Humble Flowers and Plants

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St. Augustine, commenting on the feast of St. Lawrence which we celebrated the other day, says you don’t have to be a martyr to follow Jesus Christ. You can be who you are, where you are, by following him in his humanity. We all have our place, like the many flowers and plants in a garden.

The garden of the Lord includes – yes, it truly includes – not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings who need to despair of their call; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all  to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.

  So let us understand how Christians ought to follow Christ, short of the shedding of blood, short of the danger of suffering death. The Apostle says, speaking of the Lord Christ, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. What incomparable greatness! But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man. What unequalled humility! (Augustine, On the Feast of St.Lawrence)

I notice in our garden these days some little plants and flowers I don’t know. There they are springing up unannounced and unnoticed. I don’t know their names or what they’re good for, but they bring their own beauty and completeness to our garden.

St. Francis de Sales used this same analogy to describe the various ways of holiness. So let’s notice and let’s learn from the humble flowers and plants in our garden. Not crabgrass, though. I don’t think it’s humble.

St Clare of Assisi. August 11

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St. Clare, Simone Martini, c.1300

August 11 is the feast of St. Clare of Assisi, an important saint in the 13th century Franciscan movement that had a profound impact on the Christian world. Besides her example of faith, Clare was a woman who advanced women’s rights, changing the society she lived in.

Clare came from a powerful aristocratic family of landowners who held extensive farmlands around Assisi in Italy and controlled the peasants working them. A private army of knights protected and advanced her family’s interests. 

Clare, like Francis of Assisi, came from a family of merchants intent on bettering themselves by exploiting the new trade routes linking Italy to the rest of Europe, but Clare felt called to another way of life. She wished to follow Jesus Christ.

She left her wealthy family as a young woman of 18 to embrace a life without property. “Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have their nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” Jesus said. Like Francis, who encouraged her, she began searching for treasures of another kind. 

As she wrote to Agnes of Prague, princess of Bohemia:

“Happy is she who clings with her whole heart to him whose beauty the hosts of heaven admire, whose tenderness touches, whose contemplation refreshes, whose kindness overflows, whose delight overwhelms, whose remembrance delightfully dawns, whose fragrance brings the dead to life again, whose glorious vision brings happiness…

He is the radiance of eternal glory, the brightness of eternal light and the mirror without blemish.

Gaze on the mirror each day and study your face in it…Indeed in that mirror blessed poverty, holy humility and inexpressible charity shine forth.” 

Assisted by Francis, Clare and some young companions, including her sister Agnes, moved to the abandoned church of San Damiano outside Assisi after Holy Week in 1212.There they renounced a life of privilege and properties to live humbly and simply, following Jesus Christ.  

The community she founded would be known later as “The Poor Clares.” It drew together women from the ranks of royalty to the poorest peasants.

Clare and women like her were part of an important spiritual movement in medieval Christianity which enriched the church with new forms of religious life and devotion. They were young people reacting to a world in love with success and insistent on class.  In a time of violence and competition, ruthless pursuit of wealth and privilege, they pursued another way:

“You are the spouse, and the mother and the sister of my Lord Jesus Christ.” It came down to that.

Saint Lawrence, the Deacon

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August 10th is the Feast of St. Lawrence, the deacon, who ranks after Peter and Paul as a patron of the Church of Rome. The Emperor Constantine built a church honoring him on the Via Tiburtina, near one of the major gateways to the city in the 4th century. Lawrence was a Christian martyr, but he was something more.

Lawrence was a deacon of the Roman church in the middle of the 3rd century when Rome began experiencing wars and political instability. Gothic tribes breached the Roman lines along the Rhine River and the Persians invaded in the east.

The only thing to do was expand the army, and that’s what the Emperor Valerian did. He built walls and expanded armies. That cost money, of course, and in Rome the burden fell heavily on the poor. Famine and plague only worsened their situation.

The Christian church stepped in to help. Christians were still relatively few in numbers then, not wealthy, but they gave generously to the poor, and the Roman people admired what they saw.

Lawrence, the deacon, was behind this extraordinary Christian effort. After all, Jesus said: “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, you gave me to drink; I was sick and you visited me.”

Lawrence giving to the poor: Fra Angelico

Rome’s leaders became upset by the church’s growng popularity. They also wondered if the church’s money couldn’t be channeled towards their war effort. And so, in 257 an edict was published to imprison church leaders and confiscate church money. A second edict in 258 caused blood to flow. Pope Sixtus II and four deacons were seized in the catacombs of St. Callistus and executed on August 6th. Lawrence, the deacon, was seized and executed on August 10th. That’s why his feast day is today.

Popular stories later offered a colorful account of Lawrence’s martyrdom shaping his story and the way artists pictured him:

The Roman prefect, anxious for the church’s money, promised Lawrence freedom if he would transfer it over to him. Lawrence asked for three days to get the church’s treasures together for delivery to the prefect’s house. Then, after distributing the church’s monies to the poor, he gathered them and brought them to the prefect’s door. “Here are the church’s treasures,” he told the official, “ – the blind, the lame, the orphans and the old.”

The prefect ordered Lawrence burned alive on a gridiron. Those witnessing his execution said the saint went to his death cheerfully, even joking with his executioners. “Turn me over, I’m done on this side.”

After these events the Roman church gained a flood of converts. Respect for Christianity grew, not just because of its brave martyrs, but because of its outreach to the poor.

Constantine honored Lawrence, not just because he died for his faith, but because of his care of the poor. He would rely on the church, not just for its political support, but for its care of the poor.

Wherever you go in Rome, you are going to find Lawrence. There are other churches honoring him; he’s often pictured with Peter and Paul, the founders of the Roman church; Michelangelo has him among the blessed at the last judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Lawrence represents something important in the church.

A large fresco of the saint stands at the entrance to the Vatican Museum’s Chapel of Nicholas V with its priceless works of art. Lawrence seems blind to the riches all around him as he boldly proclaims the message inscribed beneath his feet: The Poor are the Treasures of the Church.

They should always be the treasures of the church.

Here’s a video on St. Lawrence

Saints and the Mystery of the Church

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August is a month we celebrate a variety of saints from different times and places. The month offers a short course in church history. Consider the saints we celebrate this week.

Pontian and Hippolytus are early 3rd century Roman martyrs. Sixtus II and Lawrence come from late 3rd century Rome. Clare comes from 12th century Italy , Jane Chantal from 17th century France and Teresa Benedicta and Maximilian Kolbe from our own time. Each one sheds light on the mystery of the church in time.

Pontian and Hippolytus offer a picture of the early development of the papacy in the 3rd century.

St. Lawrence was a deacon who served the poor in the latter days of that century. What does he tell us? He is a witness to the enduring mission of the church to serve the poor. He also reminds us that the church, like Jesus Christ, dies and rises again. 

Four days before his death on August 10, 258, Pope Sixtus and four deacons were seized and executed in the catacombs of St. Callistus. Following their death, Lawrence. was put to death. The Roman government killed the church’s leaders and appropriated the church’s resources, leaving it leaderless and penniless. Yet the church emerged from that critical time stronger, attracting more members than ever before. 

The church shares in the mystery of Jesus Christ, dying and rising.

What does St. Clare tell us? She founded a religious community in the 13th century that drew together women from all ranks of society; from royalty to the poorest peasants. Historians see an early advocate of women’s rights in her.

What can we learn from her? The church engages the society it lives in. It gets involved in its issues and brings it her gifts.

What does Saint Jane Frances de Chantal tell us? Like Clare of Assisi, she founded a religious community for women, the Visitandines, influenced by St. Francis de Sales and his spiritual teaching in the 17th century.. As a widow with children she wished to explore a new model for religious life, one less rigorous than older models, where women together could pursue a devout life and serve their neighbor. Though she had to settle for a more structured church model, Jane Frances de Chantel brought new life to the church.

She reminds us the church is meant to explore new ways and new structures in its path through this world. 

What do SaintsTeresa Benedicta and Maximilian Kolbe, who died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942, tell us? The church always enters the suffering of its time, no matter how unexplainable or evil it is.

Our feasts and our saints connect us to the times we live in. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus, and August 9, the memorial of Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta.

The saints open the mystery of the church and the mystery of our world to us.