Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 45
The Feast of the Assumption.
The Assumption of the Mother of God.
"Jesus entered into a certain town, and a certain woman, named Martha, received Him into her house" — Luke x. 38.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Mary's lowliness. II. Assumed, soul and body. III. Mary and Martha.
I. House built on faith: 1. One rock. 2. Indivisible. 3. Firm.
II. Walled with hope : 1. Sustaining. 2. True. 3. Practical.
III. Roofed with charity: 1. Mary's love. 2. Waiting. 3. Proofs of glorious assumption.
Per. : Exhortation to Faith, Hope, and Charity.
SERMON.
Brethren, the feast of the Assumption, celebrated last week, gives us for a subject this morning one of whom I love to speak, and one whose praises you love to hear — Mary, our Virgin Mother. As we struggle on through the spiritual life— on through temptation and sin — we naturally look for guidance and encouragement to those that have gone before. We look at Christ, and our souls recoil from the task of imitating Him; we look at the saints, and weak human nature rebels against the austerities they endured— and often, God knows how often! we are tempted to give up the struggle in sheer despair. But then we turn to Mary, and there we find consolation and support. For she — that little village maiden — she was neither God nor angel but a poor mortal like ourselves, the lowliest of the low — who trod our earth and hungered and thirsted as we do. Through the chilly winter and the sweltering summer, bearing her share of human ills, she lightly tasted our joys and drank deep of our woes. She is now high above the earth and skies — nearest to the throne and dearest to the heart of God. And not her soul alone, but her body too, has attained this exalted dignity, so that we hear her described by St. John as the " Woman [body and soul] clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of stars." And who, I ask, hath so exalted her? Her divine Son. And why? The Gospel of the feast tells us why, where it says: " One day Jesus entered into a certain town, and Mary and Martha received Him into their house." For Mary the contemplative and Martha the solicitous are together but a figure of this Virgin Mary, who received her Lord into the house of her virginal womb, when He came to His own and His own received Him not. Hence, since she made Him King of her house and her all here on earth, He, with equal hospitality, makes her Queen of His celestial mansions in heaven.
But what, you ask, was that house into which the Virgin Mary received her Lord here below? " The house of God," says St. Augustine, " is founded on faith, is built of hope, and roofed in with charity." The spiritual mansion into which the Virgin received her Lord, had for its foundation, faith; for its walls, hope; and for its roof, charity. That is why the Church, in the prayer of the feast of the Assumption, prays the almighty and eternal God to give us an increase of faith, hope, and charity, that by receiving Him into a spiritual abode here on earth, we may be received by Him into the mansions of bliss, hereafter in heaven.
Faith, therefore, was the foundation of the spiritual' mansion in which Mary received her Lord, and we, too, if we wish Him to visit and abide with us, must build Him an abode founded on faith. " Without faith," says St. Paul, " it is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him." This foundation must be laid, not on the earth or the shifting sand, but on the firm rock, and that rock is Christ Jesus. " No one," says St. Paul, " must lay any other foundation but that which has been laid, which is Christ Jesus." Heretics and Jews and even Pagans believe in the doctrine of good works, and some even have a smattering of faith, but still they do not please God, because their faith is not the faith of Christ. Our Lord does not dwell with them, because the abodes they offer Him are unstable structures with false foundations. But if perchance they believe in Christ still do they err in rejecting from their faith Christ's earthly Vicar. For although it is forbidden to lay any foundation but that already laid, Christ Jesus, yet Christ is, as it were, the solid bed of rock and Peter is the first stone laid thereon by Christ Himself when He said: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church." For we receive revealed truths relying on the infallibility of Christ; and when question arises which truth is revealed and which is not, we look for answer to Peter or his successor, to whom Christ gave authority to decide when He said: "I have prayed for you that your faith fail not, and you being confirmed in the faith, confirm the brethren." Nor must we reject a single truth from the faith of Christ — the foundation must be as broad as truth itself, else the superstructure erected thereon will be too small for the indwelling of the Lord. Our faith must be as lively as was Mary's, which merited from St. Elizabeth that high encomium: " Blessed art thou that hast believed, because these things shall be accomplished in thee that were spoken to thee by the Lord," because, being but a simple village maiden she readily answered to the angel's salutation of Mother of God: "Be it done unto me according to thy word." Our faith must be as self-sacrificing as was hers when, like another Abraham, she stood by and saw her only Son immolated to the will of His Father. Finally, our faith must be as firm as hers when she refused to accompany the other women to her Son's tomb, knowing well that the Lord was not there, but was already risen.
Faith, therefore, is the foundation. And as the walls rise from the foundation, so from faith rises hope, ever higher and higher, ever nearer and nearer, to God. Here I speak of a hope as strong and firm as was Mary's — a hope of which Isaias says: "They who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint " — a hope that sustains us as it sustained Mary through all the trials and hardships of this life, with the blessed prospect of enjoying God forever hereafter in heaven. Nor must we mistake false hope for the true — we must not be content with the hope of the fickle or the unjust. Of the former we read in the book of Wisdom that it is as " the smoke that is scattered by the wind, or as the recollection of a passing guest." In other words, there is nothing firm or lasting in the hope of the unjust — as the smoke goes through the chimney and then disappears, so the hope of the sinner goes with him through life, and no further, while the hope of the just rises to the very throne of God. Finally, our hope must be practical like Mary's, for God has commanded us not only to hope in the Lord but also has said: " Hope in the Lord and do good."
Over the foundation and the walls of our spiritual mansion we lay the roof of charity — charity, whose proper function it ever is to shield and to cover — charity, which holds the highest place among the virtues; and charity was possessed by Mary in an eminent degree. For if the highest charity knows not fear, look at Mary among the soldiers at the foot of the cross and learn how much she loved. If to lay down one's life for one's friend is the supreme test of love, judge the extent of Mary's love who gave up her only Son, dearer to her than life, and that, too, for His enemies and her own.
Such was the temple of faith, hope, and charity that Mary erected to her Lord, and therefore did He choose her for a habitation for Himself — and since Christ has promised that whosoever ministers to Him on earth shall be honored by His Father in heaven, therefore was the Virgin, at the close of her life, taken up to Christ's heavenly house and made the queen thereof. We can imagine how she spent her time after the Resurrection of Our Lord, visiting again each spot hallowed by His presence; visiting the homes of His youth and manhood, and going over the sad scenes of His Passion and death and burial, while all the time she sighed in spirit to be dissolved and go to God. As the stag thirsts after the fountains of water, so did her soul long for God. At length the happy day came when she heard the summons: " The winter is passed, and the snow is melted and gone; arise, My beloved, and come." Because she was a poor child of Eve like ourselves, and so subject to the death from which not even her Son was exempt, therefore at the call of God she sank into the painless sleep of death. But not for long, for though it is a general law of humanity that each soul, on coming, find a body here and, departing, leave that body behind, still neither the King of men nor the Queen His Mother, are bound by the laws framed for their subjects. Hence, just as Christ arose body and soul, after three days, from the dead, so Mary, after a brief space, arose body and soul and was assumed into the home of her Father. For how can I believe that that body of Mary which bore and nourished the Saviour Himself — that body, of which Christ's body was bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh — that body which is so intimately connected with Christ my Lord that His flesh and blood in the Holy Sacrament of the altar can almost be said to be the flesh and blood of Mary herself — how, I say, can I believe that that body was one of those of whom God said: " Dust thou art and into dust thou shalt return 99? Or if it did return to dust; if it awaits, like other mortals, the general resurrection, is it not reasonable to suppose that God would have done as much for it as He has for so many others of the saints, and miraculously preserved it from corruption and decay? The Catholic mind, instinctively almost, rejects the thought that the body of Mary — the temple of the Lord — should ever be the food of worms, but believes, rather, that it was preserved as free from corruption as was the soul that animated it. Now if it was so preserved, where, I ask, does it now rest? The whole world knows where lie the bodies of the Apostles and the principal saints, but who will tell us where lies the body of Mary? Surely it is unreasonable to suppose that almighty God, while providing, in a wonderful manner, for the preservation and veneration of the bodies of His saints, should allow the body of that saint of saints — His own Mother — either to return to the dust from which it sprung or to lie in an unknown and an unhonored grave. No. I prefer, rather, to believe what our Catholic faith suggests, and what reason and the traditions of our Church confirm, that soon after Our Lord entered into the home of His eternal rest, turning to His Mother He said with the Psalmist: "Enter thou, also, into thy rest, thou and the ark of thy sanctification." As Solomon, who was a figure of Christ, introduced the ark of the Covenant into the temple of God amid the rejoicings and thanksgivings of the entire people, so did Christ introduce into heaven, Mary, body and soul; Mary, the ark of the New Covenant, amid the joyful acclaims of the whole heavenly court. Who can imagine the splendor of that scene — the myriads of the angels and the blessed whom eye hath not seen; the sweet strains of their celestial chant which ear hath not heard; and the glory of her divine Son which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive! And who shall describe the emotions of Mary as, standing by her Son, glorified and immortal, she compares the misery of the past with the joy of the present; her former lowliness with her present exalted dignity! The wound made by the sword of sorrow that pierced her heart is now healed by the blessed balm of heavenly peace — and the obscurity that has hitherto enshrouded her is now dispelled by the voice of God proclaiming through heaven: " Come forth, ye daughters of Sion, come forth and see your Queen with the diadem wherewith her Son hath crowned her."
Brethren, if we wish one day to imitate the Virgin Mary in her glorious Assumption; if we desire to enter the kingdom of God, into the rest and the joy of Our Lord, to do homage to our crowned Queen, we must first learn to imitate the example of her life. Our faith must be strong and not carried hither and thither by every new doctrine; our hope must be firm, having for its object not the uncertainty of worldly things but the living God; and our charity must be of that true kind described by St. Paul when he says: " Let us love one another not in tongue or in word, but in deed and in truth." We must build, as Mary did, a spiritual abiding-place for the Lord in our souls, and as we go on building it we should always remember that, of ourselves, we can never complete it — because, unless the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. Hence we should frequently pray Our Lord to assist us with His grace and Mary to help us with her prayers in following their example and virtues. Thus we will erect a temple to the Lord as near as possible after the pattern of Mary's, and like her, we will experience the twofold joy of having Our Lord abide in our souls continually here on earth, and being permitted to abide with Him forever, hereafter, in heaven. Amen.