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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
Homily on the Assumption
"Nothing of What is Precious and Loved will be
Ruined"
Church of St. Thomas of Villanueva, Castel Gandolfo
August 16, 2010
zenit.org
Eminence, Excellency, Authorities,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today the Church celebrates one of the most
important feasts of the liturgical year dedicated to
Mary Most Holy: the Assumption. At the end of her
earthly life, Mary was taken in soul and body to
heaven, that is, to the glory of eternal life, in
full and perfect communion with God.
Celebrated this year is the 60th anniversary since
the Venerable Pope Pius XII solemnly defined this
dogma on Nov. 1, 1950, and I would like to read --
although it is somewhat complicated -- the form of
the dogmatization. The Pope says: "Hence the revered
Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden
way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of
predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most
perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble
associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a
complete triumph over sin and its consequences,
finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her
privileges, that she should be preserved free from
the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own
Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up
body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as
Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her
Son, the immortal King of the Ages" (Apostolic
Constitution "Munificentissimus Deus," 40).
This is, hence, the nucleus of our faith in the
Assumption: we believe that Mary, as Christ her Son,
has already conquered death and triumphs now in
heavenly glory in the totality of her being, "in
soul and body."
St. Paul, in today's second reading, helps us to
throw some light on this mystery from the central
event of human history and from our faith: that is,
the event of the resurrection of Christ, who is "the
first fruits of those who have died."
Immersed in his Paschal Mystery, we have been made
sharers in his victory over sin and death. Herein is
the amazing secret and the key reality of the whole
of human history. St. Paul tells us that we were all
"incorporated" in Adam, the first and old man, we
all have the same human inheritance to which he
belongs: suffering, death, sin. However to this
reality that all of us can see and live every day he
adds something new: We are not only in this
inheritance of the one human being, begun with Adam,
but we are also "incorporated" in the new man, in
the Risen Christ, and thus the life of the
Resurrection is already present among us.
Hence, this first biological "incorporation" is
incorporation in death, incorporation that generates
death. The second, the new one that is given to us
in baptism, is "incorporation" that gives life. I
quote again today's Second Letter; St. Paul says:
"For since death came through a human being, the
resurrection of the dead came also through a human
being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ
shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper
order: Christ the first fruits; then, at his coming,
those who belong to Christ" (1 Corinthians
15:21-24).
Now, what St. Paul states about all men, the Church,
in her infallible teaching, says of Mary, in a
precise way and meaning: the Mother of God is
inserted to such a degree in the mystery of Christ
that she shares in the resurrection of her Son with
her whole being already at the end of her earthly
life, she lives what we hope for at the end of time
when death, "the last enemy," will be destroyed (cf.
1 Corinthians 15:26); she already lives what we
proclaim in the Creed "I look for the resurrection
of the dead and the life of the world to come."
Hence, we can ask ourselves: What are the roots of
this victory over death anticipated miraculously in
Mary? The roots are in the faith of the Virgin of
Nazareth, as attested in the passage of the Gospel
we heard (Luke 1:39-56): a faith that is obedience
to the Word of God and total abandonment to divine
initiative and action, according to what the
archangel announces to her. Faith, hence, is Mary's
greatness, as Elizabeth joyfully proclaims: Mary is
"blessed among women," "blessed is the fruit of her
womb" because she is "the mother of the Lord,"
because she believes and lives in a unique way the
"first" of the beatitudes, the beatitude of faith.
Elizabeth confesses it in her joy and that of the
child who leaps in her womb: "And blessed is she who
believed that there would be a fulfillment of what
was spoken to her from the Lord" (vs. 45).
Dear friends! Let us not limit ourselves to admire
Mary in her glorious destiny, as a person who is far
from us: no! We are called to see what the Lord, in
his love, also willed for us, for our final destiny:
to live through faith in perfect communion of love
with him and thus to truly live.
In this connection, I would like to pause on an
aspect of the dogmatic affirmation, where it speaks
of assumption to heavenly glory. All of us are
conscious today that with the term "heaven," we do
not refer to some place in the universe, to a star
or something similar: no. We refer to something much
bigger and more difficult to define with our limited
human concepts. With this term "heaven," we mean to
affirm that God, the God who has made himself close
to us, does not abandon us, not even in death and
beyond it, but that he has a place for us and he
gives us eternity; we want to affirm that there is a
place for us in God. To understand this reality
somewhat more, let us look at our own life: We all
know that when a person dies he continues to subsist
in the memory and the heart of those who knew and
loved him. We could say that a part of that person
continues to live in them, but it is as a "shadow"
because this survival in the heart of his loved ones
is also destined to end. God instead never passes
and all of us exist because of his love. We exist
because he loves us, because he has thought of us
and called us to life. We exist in the thoughts and
love of God. We exist in all our reality, not only
in our "shadow." Our serenity, our hope, our peace
are founded precisely on this: on God, on his
thought and on his love, it is not only a "shadow"
of ourselves that survives, but that in him, in his
creative love, we are kept and introduced with our
whole life, with our whole being into eternity.
It is his love that conquers death and gives us
eternity, and it is this love that we call "heaven":
God is so great that he also has a space for us. And
the man Jesus, who is at the same time God, is for
us the guarantee that being-man and being-God can
exist and live eternally in one another. This means
that each one of us will not continue existing only
in a part that has been, so to speak, wrenched from
us, while the rest is ruined; it means rather that
God knows and loves the whole man, what we are. And
God receives in his eternity what now, in our life,
made up of suffering and love, of hope, of joy and
sadness, grows and comes to be. The whole man, the
whole of his life is taken by God and, purified in
him, receives eternity.
Dear friends! I think this is a truth that should
fill us with joy. Christianity does not proclaim
merely a certain salvation of the soul in some
imprecise place beyond, in which everything in this
world that was precious and loved by us is erased,
but it promises eternal life, "the life of the world
to come": Nothing of what is precious and loved will
be ruined, but will find its fulfillment in God. All
the hairs of our head are numbered, Jesus said one
day (cf. Matthew 10:30). The final world will also
be the fulfillment of this earth, as St. Paul
states: "creation itself would be set free from
slavery to corruption and share in the glorious
freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).
Understood therefore is that Christianity gives
strong hope in a luminous future and opens the way
to the realization of this future. We are called,
precisely as Christians, to build this new world, to
work so that it will become one day the "world of
God," a world that will surpass everything that we
ourselves could build. In Mary assumed into heaven,
fully sharing in the resurrection of her Son, we
contemplate the realization of the human creature
according to the "world of God."
Let us pray to the Lord to make us understand how
precious our life is in his eyes; may he reinforce
our faith in eternal life; may he make us people of
hope, who work to build a world open to God, people
full of joy who are able to perceive the beauty of
the future world in the midst of the cares of daily
life and, with this certainty, live, believe and
hope.
Amen!
Look
at the One they Pierced!
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Mary
