One of my heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor whose efforts opposing the Nazi regime in his country eventually led his execution. While he was in prison awaiting his fate he penned many letters. One in particular from 1944 stands out. He wrote: “I remember a conversation I had with a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely he did become one.) At the time I was impressed , but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint or a converted sinner. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane.
Holy Mary was a woman of “this worldly” faith, as Bonhoeffer described it, not the plaster statue piety has transformed her into. Her hands were not delicate and refined but rough and calloused as she navigated a difficult life as a working mother. She had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy while she was a teen and unmarried. She fretted over her aunty Elizabeth who has having a rough time. She had to deal with homelessness while waiting to give birth. She was forced to become an immigrant in the strange land of Egypt fleeing from political violence. She had to cope with a pre-teen age son who had a mind of his own and an adult son who did not make time for her. She worried about her friends being embarrassed at their wedding party. She buried her husband and, saddest of all, cradled her dead son in her arms. In addition to her personal “duties, problems, experiences and perplexities” she was part of a system which stressed her daily life. The mighty from their thrones oppressed her. She desired that the hungry would be filled with good things. The rich were hogging all the resources and her nation, Israel, was saturated with dissension and discord. With that she had to go through, Mary would have felt right at home on the south side. She is, in the phrase of a prominent theologian, “truly our sister.”
What made Mary a woman of faith was not that she had to endure all these things. Those kinds of things come to all of us willy-nilly. Her faith came in what she did when the troubles of this world came at her like bugs smashing into a windshield. She threw herself completely into the arms of God, focusing not on her own suffering but God’s presence and action in the world. As Pastor Bonhoeffer suggests, her prayer was the same as the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane: Heavenly Father, if it is possible let this cup pass me by but let it be as you would have it, not as I. (No doubt Jesus learned his prayers at his mother’s knee as we have all learned our prayers.) That is why, from the earliest days of the Church, Christians have held up our Lady as our model and icon of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
Today’s feast, the Assumption, provides the occasion to reflect on the supreme moment in Mary’s life – the moment of her death. Death is when we throw ourselves completely into God’s arms, dragging all that has been part of our place in this world with us. Since the Bible doesn’t speak of the death of Mary many legends and stories have filled in the gaps. The point of the feast is that Mary’s death was a triumph, catapulting her into her rightful place in heaven. I have a pianist friend who plays all the most difficult pieces in the classical music repertoire – Chopin, Rachmaninov. She practices hours every day and observed that she puts particular attention into practicing the final movements of the piece. This will be the last thing the audience hears, she observed, so make the ending glorious and that’s what they will remember. Mary made the ending glorious.
Of course, we don’t remember this feast simply as a way of recalling what happened to Mary in the long ago and far away. Christians are not about nostalgia but current events. Mary serves as our model – as she is so we shall be. The challenge of the feast of the Assumption is to acquire the faith of Mary in our “this worldliness” as she did in hers. The key to doing so is hearing addressed to us the word that Elizabeth addressed to her: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Of course the word spoken to Mary was that of the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” That’s what Mary believed, that was her blessing, that’s what got her over the rough side of the mountain. At our baptism the Lord proclaimed the same thing to each of us: no matter how things are going: we are full of grace and the Lord is with us. Our blessing comes when we trust in that word as Mary did — even when it all starts crashing around us. No matter what – family difficulties, health crisis, financial woes – the Lord is with us, we are full of grace because of God’s presence. Mary believed that and it let to her Assumption into heaven. When we believe it we share her faith and in God’s time will share her destiny.
