ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

I believe in the resurrection of the body

Readings: Rev 11:19; 12:1-6,10; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Lk 1:39-56

In today’s culture, the new taboo is death: finding no meaning in it, people push it away, thus reaching their own passing with a tragic burden of dismay and anguish. Often even believers fall short when faced with this topic. Cardinal Poletto wrote: “There are many people, even among the baptized, who have many doubts or even do not believe at all in the possibility of life after death” (Domenica senza tramonto, 2005, no. 1).

But today we are invited to reflect on that “resurrection of the body”, which is one of the essential statements of our faith proclaimed in the “Creed”, contemplating in Mary our blessed destiny. If bodily decay is a tangible sign of our sin (Gen 3:19), the Church, which proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of Mary as a dogma under Pius IX in 1854, consistently affirmed her Assumption into heaven, body included, under Pius XII in 1950. Today the liturgy presents Mary to us, a “woman clothed with the sun”, through whom “salvation and the kingdom of our God are accomplished” (first reading: Rev 11:19; 12:1-6,10), as a figure and anticipation of the new Israel, of the Church, of all of us.

In the texts of the Old Testament there are only a few insights into a life beyond death (Job 19:23-27; Wis 2:22-3:10…). Thus in Jesus’ time only the Pharisees accepted it (Mt 22:23-28). But for Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is the central event of faith, the “kerygma”. Paul proclaims: “If Christ has not been raised…, your faith is futile” (1 Cor 15:3-22). And from Jesus’ resurrection flows our own resurrection: “Concerning those who have died…, do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thess 4:13-14). “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…. All will be made alive in Christ” (second reading: 1 Cor 15:12-23).

Paul proclaims the resurrection not as required by a presumed immortality of the soul (the “body-soul” division is foreign to Scripture and is purely of philosophical derivation), but by God’s love for humanity: “The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor 6:13). It is a concept that gives us chills: God Himself loves and sanctifies our body, called to immortality, a member of Christ’s very body, a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:13-19).

We need to forcefully proclaim the resurrection of the body in this age, which is not only overwhelmed by the terror of death, but in which the body is often exploited and tarnished in a commodified sexuality reduced to pure pleasure, in which life is despised in genetic manipulation or in the suppression of its beginning or terminal phase, in which torture and the death penalty are still practiced, and in which the bodies of so many brothers and sisters are allowed to suffer torn apart by hunger, wars, or many illnesses that are left untreated because the rich do not share their wealth…

Looking at Mary assumed into heaven with her body as well changes our vision of death and thus of our entire life, as well as our approach to all material reality.

“Through the Eucharist we assimilate the «secret» of the resurrection. Therefore Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as the «medicine of immortality, antidote against death»” (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 18). Cardinal Poletto also wrote: “Let us make every Eucharist of ours become a sincere act of faith and love toward the Lord…, to live committed to our daily duty, but also to know how to stand «awaiting his coming»” (Domenica senza tramonto, 2005, no. 6).