Homilies to Read - "A Thought" by Fr Russ Harbaugh

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      Well, today should be the 20th Sun of OT and we should be hearing, again, from the Bread of Life Discourse, Ch 6 of John.  Instead, we are celebrating a Holy Day which just happens to fall on a Sun: The Solemnity of the Assumption, Aug 15.   We need to keep in mind that Sundays, “Dies Domini,” the Day of the Lord, are the center of the liturgical calendar, the foundation of the liturgical Calendar. 

    For the Bishops to set aside a Sunday liturgy means that whatever takes its place better be very important.  And of course, it is.  It is also a day that is very important to me since I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.  (A little American church history) Baltimore was the first diocese in the English-speaking Americas.  It was also the first Archdiocese.  John Carroll, related to the signer of the Declaration of Independence who was the only Catholic to sign and the richest man in the colonies at the time, was the first Bishop/Archbishop.  The first Cardinal: John Gibbons, was the Archbishop of Baltimore.  It was the place where the first general Councils in our country were held and where the “Baltimore Catechism,” (remember that?), was written.  The first Cathedral in English speaking America was the Basilica of the Assumption in downtown Baltimore. Designed by Latrobe who designed Wash, DC.  (Keep this in mind as I talk about today’s Solemnity.)

In Nov of 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary to be a dogma of faith: 

“We pronounce, declare and define it to be divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory.”  While it may have been the mid-20th century that this dogma was “officially” proclaimed, its origins go back centuries.  We know that the feast was celebrated in the 5th century in Palestine; there were copies of homilies about it from the 6th century; the August 15th date was fixed in 6th century; it was fixed on liturgical calendar in Rome in 7th century and the universal calendar by the 8th century.  It was celebrated under various names by the Greek Orthodox Church from early times.  So, you see the faithful believed in the truth of this Solemnity long before the dogma was proclaimed. (Remember the name of my Basilica back in Baltimore!)

The CCC explains a concept called: “sensus fidei,” the sense of the faith.  

The idea is that the “whole body of the faithful… cannot err in matters of belief.”  All faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. (That means you and me not just the bishops.)   We share in Christ’s prophetic function in the Church by virtue of our baptism.  Jesus did not leave us orphans but left the Holy Spirit to guide His Church.  In relation to the Assumption, the faithful believed it and applied it to everyday life long before Pius XII proclaimed it!  

There is an expression the Church has:” Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi,” “the law of praying is the law of believing.”  In other words, we pray as we believe.  Our great Eucharistic prayers and Presidential Prayers (Collects) at mass are full of what we believe.  I urge you to listen to them closely.  Often, they express what the faithful believed long before any dogma was officially declared, like today’s Mystery.

The lag between the liturgical observance and the dogmatic declaration merely shows that the liturgy doesn’t celebrate dogmas, as such.  But, the best way to understand the liturgical celebration of any feast is to look primarily at its prayers and readings, and not to impose on the language of worship the subtleties of dogmatic declaration.  We just remembered St John Vianney, the patron of Diocesan priests.  If you read the Collects for his Memorial, they will tell you why we should use him as an example of leading a good Christian life.  Or for example, today’s feast not only celebrates Mary, but also the lot of all Christians who share her faith in the Lord and who will one day share with her the joy of heaven. It is the feast of the destiny of the Virgin and our eventual destiny with her.  In the Presidential Prayers, what we used to call the “Collects,” we hear how we can share her glory and reach our goal of eternal life in heaven.  It is a sign that our true home is with God.  It is a Feast of hope for all of us.  We want to be where Mary is.

I spent over 50 years in the pews as a lay person (I am a third career priest).  I always found it hard to pick up the content of the Collects.  Do you remember  the “Opening Prayer”?  “Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of Your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that always attentive to the things that are above, we may be sharers of her glory.  Through… ever and ever.  Amen.”  What does that mean?  Well, that Mary was given a special gift by her Divine Son and if we are attentive to doing the right things, we can one day be like her.  The Nicene Creed ends with “the Resurrection of the Body and life everlasting Amen.”  The Prayer over the Gifts reminds us that Mary was assumed into heaven and didn’t ascend; it was an act of God and a special blessing for her and should make us long for being with God like her.  Then, the Prayer After Communion asks that “we may be brought into the glory of the Resurrection.”  The Preface says that Mary is the image of the Church “coming to perfection.”  We should yearn for the same, and gain “hope and comfort” from what Jesus did for her.

Additionally, the Assumption is the sign of God’s mercy being fulfilled.  Mercy, in the Gospels, is shown not only by the forgiveness of sins but also the fulfillment of promises.  The Solemnity celebrates the “great things” that God has done for Mary like lifting up His lowly servant, Mary.  God is faithful to His promises.  He is faithful to His promises to us, as well.  Thus, the Assumption celebrates the mercy of God.  Mary’s Assumption foreshadows the destiny of all “those who belong to Christ.”  Salvation is the concrete realization of Divine Mercy.

In our news-dominated culture, we tend to view events historically.  In this approach, the Assumption celebrates what happened to Mary in the past.  Yet, liturgy does more than recall a past event; it draws us into the divine mystery where the event is present here and now.  

This is the Good News contained in today’s Feast.  First, Mary was taken body and soul into heaven.  Second, Mary’s assumption reminds us that we too will someday join Mary in heaven.  [Think Nicene Creed] Third, Mary is not only the mother of Jesus, but also our spiritual mother.  She prays for us daily that we persevere in our struggle to win, as she did, the reward of eternal life.  This is the Good News that we celebrate today.  This is what we pray; this is what we believe! - Fr Russ Harbaugh Rector emeritus of St Faustina Shrine

              The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been around for a long time in the Church. More attention was brought to it in the 1600’s when John Eudes went around preaching about the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But it really took off after the miraculous medal apparitions to Catherine Laboure and then more recently the message of Fatima.

At Fatima, Mary appeared to the three children and said: “to save poor sinners, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart” & then at a later time Jesus told Sr. Lucia “I want my Church to put the devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to my Sacred Heart.”

This statement was not meant to take away from attention or pride of place we should give to our Lord in our lives, but it really adds to it. No one was more united to Jesus during his earthly life than his mother; from her he received his body and blood. She was the one that nurtured and cared for him as child and suffered with him during his passion and death. It is her heart that he wishes every disciple to have, because the Immaculate Heart is the perfect heart of the disciple.

There are a few things that we can take away from the Immaculate Heart. If we look at scripture there are at least two places in the Gospel of Luke where Luke speaks about Mary’s heart. The first is just after Jesus’ birth, and the other is in our Gospel today when Joseph and Mary find Jesus in the temple. In both we’re told that “Mary kept all these things, the mysteries of her Son, & pondered them in her heart.” Her actions teach us that our interior life consists in remaining close to our Lord by continuously meditating on the mysteries of His life.

We also learn that Mary’s heart was an open heart. It was from this heart that she gave her fiat, and grace was brought into the world as Christ was conceived in her womb. Hers is a heart that is open to the will of God & fully devoted to God, and she wants us to have this same heart.

I was reading about the image of the Immaculate Heart, and someone wrote that her heart is outside her chest in the image and that Mary is pointing at it as if she wanted to give it to us; to share her heart with us, so that we can have the same virtues, the same purity and love for God that she had.

We heard about a new creation in our first reading, at Baptism we’ve each become a new creation, and in this new order of grace Mary is our mother, the mother of the Church. Her heart not only burns for love of God, but it burns for each one of her children as well, meaning all of us. 

As our Mother her wish and plea to us is that all her children will repent and turn to God, and then make reparation for the sins against her Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We can do this with her help by asking Mary to give us a heart like hers; an open heart, a pure heart, a heart filled with love for God, so that as God the Father gave Jesus to us through Mary, we likewise can respond and return to him through Mary and her Immaculate Heart. 

         Today we remember the first holy martyrs of the Church; those children or holy innocents Herod had killed in Bethlehem. Herod’s not so different from Pharaoh in the book Exodus. Both men had power and authority over their kingdom and lot of wealth. When God’s plans interfered with their plans rather than humble themselves and do as the Magi did, who visited the Lord and gave praise and honor to God, they felt threatened and gave into sin & death.

  Pharaoh had all the males born to the Hebrews thrown into the Nile, and Herod had male children age 2 and under killed in Bethlehem. One thing we learn is that temptations, especially ones based on irrational fears, try to convince us that we’ll gain something by giving in, but in reality it takes everything away from us – and separates us from the one who gives us everything. We see a strange turn of events in the story of Herod. He thought he would secure his kingdom and his title as King by slaughtering the infants. Eventually he died, and it’s the very ones who were murdered, the infants who gained the true kingdom of heaven & whose blood bears witness to Christ.

We too called bear witness Christ by our lives. The stories of Pharaoh & Herod show us that there will be persecution and struggles along the way, but if we remain faithful to Christ and with His help resist our daily temptations then we’ll have everything because we’ll have the Lord. Today we ask the holy innocents to pray for us, that we may always be kept innocent from serious sin so that one day like them we may inherit the true kingdom of heaven.