• Fr Benny Nalkara CMI
  Provincial Superior, CMI Sacred Heart Province, Kochi

Mary,

You are called Queen of Heaven.

You knew from Gabriel that Jesus was special.

But doesn’t every mom know that their child is special?

And like every mother,

You wished happiness for Jesus.

You hoped that he would be shielded from misfortune and pain.

You hoped that he would make friends and find a loved one.

You hoped that he would have a better life than you and Joseph.

You hoped that his hair would turn grey.

You hoped that he would have life.

“Be it done unto me according to Thy word.”

So noble, Blessed Mother.

You did not lie.

These lines from the poem, A Mother’s Hope by Zen Kuriama, the Japaneese – American Poet and Musicologist depict how Mary, the Blessed Mother hoped against hope and became a mother of hope for all. As the Scripture testifies, Mary’s life-journey was a pilgrimage of hope from Annunciation to Assumption in every sense. The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a celebration of hope. A celebration of hope that God rewards his faithful servants who cooperate with him to fulfil the salvific plan of salvation.

Assumption as the Reward for the Hope of Mary

Pope Francis has declared the year 2025 as the Jubilee Year in the Church and has taken the motto, The Pilgrims of Hope for the Jubilee year. He has promulgated a Papal Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee year, namely, SPES NON CONFUNDIT- “Hope does not Disappoint.” According to the Pope, hope finds its supreme witness in the Mother of God. In the Blessed Virgin, we see that hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life.  For Mary, hope was not merely a noun but a verb! Actions of hope shaped and guided her life. In the travail of that sorrow, offered in love, Mary became our Mother, the Mother of Hope. As Pope Francis notes, it is not by chance that popular piety continues to invoke the Blessed Virgin as Stella Maris, a title that bespeaks of the sure hope that, amid the tempests of this life, the Mother of God comes to our aid, sustains us and encourages us to persevere in hope and trust.

“The Assumption of Mary is like a text book for us in our pilgrimage towards heaven. It enriches and empowers in our journey of hope amidst the uncertainties, anxieties.”

The dogma of Assumption of Mother Mary teaches us how the Virgin Mary, having completed her earthly stay, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. The Servant of God Pope Pius XII interpreted the deep theological meaning of this mystery on 1 November 1950 when he pronounced the solemn Dogmatic Definition of this Marian privilege. In this Papal document, Munificentimus Deus, Pope Pius XII gives four reasons for our belief in the Dogma of Assumption of Mary.

1. The uninterrupted tradition about death and the Assumption of Mary starting from the first century.
2. The belief expressed in all the ancient liturgies of the early Christian Church.
3. The negative evidence — the absence and veneration of a tomb of Mary while most of the apostles have their tombs.
4. The possibility of bodily ascension in the Old Testament without corruption of the body, in the cases of Enoch (Genesis 5:24), perhaps Moses (Deuteronomy 34:5), and especially Elijah (II Kgs 2:1)
5. Pope Pius XII declared: “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 splendour at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages” (Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus: AAS 42, [1 November 1950]).

Mary, the Mother of Hope

The Assumption of Mary into heaven is the reward of Mary for her faithfulness to the will of the bountiful God, Munificentissimus Deus. Mary’s act of hope started with the moment of Annunciation. Her question to the angel Gabriel, “How can this be?” (Lk 1:34) and the subsequent response from the angel that “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1: 35) made her to say “fiat” and believe with hope that “whatever is promised by God will happen.” Mary went through more than one dark night on her journey as a mother. It was not easy to answer “yes” to the angel’s invitation: yet she, a woman still in the flower of youth, answers with courage, despite knowing nothing about the fate that awaited her.

As an ordinary human being, Mary had no reasons to be hopeful in her life. Her life experiences were contrary to the expectations and paradoxical to the promises. Like every mother, whenever Mary looked at her Son, she thought of his future. Surely she kept pondering in her heart the words spoken to her in the Temple by the elderly Simeon: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk 2:34-35). Along with Joseph, Mary had to flee to Egypt to “save” the Saviour of the World! Often the responses of Jesus to Mother Mary were not a hope-giving one at all. At Cana, he asked her, “what is between us?” But she kept her hope intact. She had to feel with a son who was misunderstood, misjudged, and humiliated in public. But she accompanied and followed from a distance with hope. She continued to be hopeful without an unfading hope.

“Today, in a post-COVID world marked by all kinds of anxieties and irregularities, a world under the pressure of the wars, a world under the crises of the challenges created by migration, climate changes, environmental exploitation, communal violence, drugs, cybercrimes etc, Mary, assumed into heaven, continues to inspire us in our pilgrimage of hope. In a broken and wounded world, where hopelessness prevails, the Mother of Hope, comforts us with the assurance of hope.”

At the foot of the cross, Mary witnessed the passion and death of Jesus, her innocent son. Overwhelmed with grief, she nonetheless renewed her “fiat”, never abandoning her hope and trust in God. In fact, the Passion of Christ was also the Passion of Mary! When her son suffered physically, she underwent all kinds of mental agonies. Amidst all the odds, Mary cooperated for our sake in the fulfillment of all that her Son had foretold in announcing that he would have to “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days’ rise again” (Mk 8:31). A mother being witness to the cruellest passion: that of an innocent man who dies on the scaffold of the cross and to be there in the last moments of her son’s life.   The Gospels record in a simple verb the presence of the Mother: she “stood” (John 19:25). They say nothing of her reaction: whether or not she wept… nothing; not even a brushstroke to describe her grief. But the Gospels just say, she was “standing”. She was there, in the worst moment, in the cruellest moment, and suffered with her son. “She stood”. That standing was a standing with hope!

Mary is not a woman who is discouraged by the uncertainties of life, especially when nothing seems to go in the right direction. Nor is she a woman who protests with violence, who inveighs against the destiny in life that often reveals a hostile face. Instead, she is a woman who listens: do not forget that there is always a great relationship between hope and listening, and Mary is a woman who listens. Mary welcomes existence just as it is given to us, with its happy days, but also with its tragedies we would never have wished to encounter. Mother Mary is definitely the Mother of Hope. Because she teaches us the virtue of waiting, even when everything seems to be without meaning; she is always trustful in the mystery of God, even when He seems to be eclipsed by the evil in the world. In moments of difficulty, Mary, the Mother always be able to sustain our steps, by saying to our heart, “Arise! Look ahead, look to the horizon.”

Absence of Mary at the Tomb of Jesus: Ultimate Sign of Mary’s Hope

It’s often observed that nothing is mentioned about the death of Mary in the dogma on the Assumption. Though the Scripture or the traditions keep silence about it, this gives us an insight to us, namely, both in life and in death Mary was with God without any distinction. Christ adorned his most faithful disciple and Mother of hope with such a unique reward. It’s the unparalleled reward for those who believe and hope in the promises.

We also come across a stunning fact in the Gospels that Mary was not present at the tomb of Jesus on the third day along with the other women. Humanly speaking, a loving mother cannot be absent from the tomb of her son who had an untimely and inhuman death. Mary, who made it sure that she was present in all the important and vital moments of her son’s life, decided not to make it at the tomb!  Why this conspicuous absence? It’s only because of the reason that she was the mother of hope. May knew than anyone else that her son would rise on the third day. This faith and hope made Mary to remain at home rather than striding in the early morning to the tomb. It was also the fulfilment of Elizabeth’s pronouncement about Mary, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45).

This strong faith and firm hope in the promises of God, made Mary a woman of faith. Her faith and hope was so deep that it made her to think beyond death. We find a foreshadow of her blissful Assumption in her absence at the tomb of Jesus. In her life, she too was exalted by God to a life beyond the tomb.

Assumption and the Lessons for the Pilgrimage of Hope

The Assumption of Mary into heaven with body and soul is a feast with many implications for us Christians and our Christian life in general. The Assumption of Mary is like a text book for us in our pilgrimage towards heaven. It enriches and empowers in our journey of hope amidst the uncertainties, anxieties. Our faith in the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ is the fundamental biblical reason for the belief in the Assumption of Mary. The Assumption of Mary reminds us that, as believers, we will be able to have a share in the resurrection of Christ. The whole point of the Dogma of the Assumption is the emphasis on the bodily assumption of Mary into Heaven. It tells us that God’s salvation is holistic in body, soul, mind and spirit. Assumption of Mary reminds us of our ultimate destiny. We are heaven-bound and all our thoughts, words and deeds should be heaven – the ultimate union with the Triune God oriented. It points towards the reward for the perfect example of a Christ-follower. How faithfulness will be rewarded by a bountiful God. She leads, directs and shows us the best way to obey and please her Son: our Lord and Saviour till the last breath of life. The Assumption of Mary makes it possible for us to imagine her as being in the fullness of the (heavenly) presence of Christ – the ideal state of a disciple. The Assumption ensures that she has none of our human limitations. But this was the result of the stance she took at the time of her limitations as a human person. She achieved this through her persistent obedience to the will of God. She urges us always to do the will of her Son- “Do whatever He (Jesus) tells you” (John 2:5).  When the burden of sins oppresses us, the knowledge of our weakness discourages us, when we are beset by fear and temptation of every sort, when we are so attached to the things of this world, we, too are encouraged to take the same stance like Mary and thus to be glorified in life.

The Assumption of Mary is comparatively a newly promulgated dogma in the history of the Church. But it is not a dogma created by the Church fully in the modern era.  From the 5th century onwards we have the tradition of celebrating the feast of the Assumption in different parts of the world. The great Church fathers like St Gregory, St Germanous, St John Damascene, St Isidore, St Epiphanes, and the saints like St Victor Mary, St Antony of Padua, St Anselm, St Bernadine of Sienna, St Robert Bellarmine and St Francis de Sales have testified about the Assumption and have given beautiful theological reflections about it. But from a historical point of view, by the promulgation of the dogma in 1950, the Church gave a new hope to the modern world. This promulgation was given immediately after the two world wars, after the time of great economic depression, a time when the entire world was under the shadow of despair, anxiety and uncertainty. Official declaration of the dogma of Assumption- act of “the most bountiful God” on “the most faithful disciple,”- definitely gave a new impetus of hope to the Church in its pilgrimage.

Today, in a post-COVID world marked by all kinds of anxieties and irregularities, a world under the pressure of the wars, a world under the crises of the challenges created by migration, climate changes, environmental exploitation, communal violence, drugs, cybercrimes etc, Mary, assumed into heaven, continues to inspire us in our pilgrimage of hope. In a broken and wounded world, where hopelessness prevails, the Mother of Hope, comforts us with the assurance of hope.

Mother Mary, assumed into Heaven, accompany us in our pilgrimage of Hope!