The Assumption

In the nick of time, for the Octave of Our Lady's Assumption...

THE ASSUMPTION

by Father Edward Yarnold SJ

Venice is one enormous art gallery. In all that magnificent collection, the most spectacularly placed and probably the most looked at picture is the painting of the Assumption by Titian. As you enter the Frari church after paying your hundred lire, you turn left past the porter's enclosure, and there it is, in the place of honour and prominence over the high altar, skilfully floodlit to bring out its triumphant reds and its other-worldly gold — Mary, with the ties of earth and the clutching hands of the apostles unable to hold her down as she makes her glorious ascent to the embrace of her divine Son.

This representation of the Assumption is unique only in its expressive power: the ascending Mother of God has been a favourite theme of western religious artists. The iconographical tradition of the east, however, has preferred to imagine the scene differently. We see Mary on her death bed, surrounded by the apostles, and her divine Son over her carrying what appears to be a baby, but is in fact his mother's soul which he is welcoming to heaven. The eastern Orthodox speak of the Dormition, the falling asleep of Mary, rather than her Assumption; we should not, however, be misled into thinking that underlying the difference of terminology and iconography there is also a difference of understanding. Both sides of Christendom believe that Mary was received body and soul into heaven to be reunited with her Son in glory.

Let us return to Titian. That painting of his seems to me to be not only the most powerful and spectacularly placed of all the paintings in the world: it also seems to possess to an almost unequal degree the quality of numinousness. By this I mean that the artist (helped by the exhibitors) succeeds in conveying a sense of the power and the glory of God. We find ourselves caught up in the exultation of the moment. We may not understand that artist's conceptual grasp of the Assumption. That does not matter. A painting is not a theological treatise. But we are moved and attracted by his vision of a spiritual reality which is deeper than any conceptual formulation in words. It is on this intuition into the Assumption that I wish to concentrate. The Assumption is a mystery. We experience it even if we do not understand it. By speaking of the Assumption as a mystery, I mean that it is something given, a revelation of God's goodness and power, something precious given to us by God's self-communicating love, which we must first accept in gratitude before we can attempt to clarify to ourselves its meaning more rationally.
This is not true of all parts of revelation. A doctrine like the Incarnation, which asserts that Jesus is truly God and truly man, is one which we can understand, partly at least, before we confess our belief in it. Some doctrines, on the other hand, work the other way round. We believe them before we understand them. This is true, I suggest, of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Most people, I think, would be totally unable to explain in what sense they believe that God is one, in what sense three, and if they attempted an explanation, I suspect it would more likely than not be wrong. We accept the doctrine as the truth because it is part of revelation, and through making our prayers on the basis of it, we learn to experience the Trinity more deeply, even if we still cannot give a rational account of it. Such a doctrine we call a mystery — meaning by that term not an insoluble problem, but a truth which is too deep for conceptual analysis, which is open to experience and prayer rather than rational definition. We must not discard the mystery, trying to replace it by some more immediately comprehensible form of words. If we do, we will almost certainly discard some of the depths of the mystery. We need our speculations but we can never be sure how far and in what way they fail to do justice to the mystery. So we must retain the mystery — contemplating it whenever we make the sign of the cross and say the grace.

Some mysteries are of a different kind. They are not statements about facts like the assertion of the threeness and oneness of God — but about events — for example, Jesus was transfigured; Jesus descended into hell. Such statements are not primarily historical — as is the doctrine that Jesus died on the cross, or that he spoke of God as his Father, and taught a new law of charity. In the Transfiguration and the Descent into Hell there is a mixture of literal narrative and symbolic elaboration. There is an element of myth — meaning by myth not a fictitious legend, but a belief couched in partly symbolic, figurative terms, which express a truth which is too deep for conceptual analysis. As with the other sort of mystery, e.g., the doctrine of the Trinity, we have, as thinking beings, the duty to reflect on the myth, to incorporate it into our prayer, and to try to give to ourselves a rational understanding of it. But the mystery is always greater than our analysis. We dare not discard the myth and substitute our intellectual translation of it. Let us then, before attempting to analyse the meaning of the Assumption, reverently accept the mystery — standing, so to speak, in the church at Venice, looking up at that artistic and religious miracle of red and gold.

However, there is perhaps one other question we ought to ask ourselves before we begin our task of penetrating a little into this mystery, and that is: "What are the grounds for accepting it at all?" If it is a mystery, we do not accept it because it is plausible, but because it is given. Here at once we must acknowledge that the mystery of the Assumption stands on a different footing from those other mysteries we have considered, viz. the Trinity, the Transfiguration, and the Descent into Hell. These three mysteries are clearly part of scripturally based revelation: the Trinity and the Descent being included in creeds; the Transfiguration being narrated in the synoptic gospels. But the Assumption is not part of any Christian creed. Nor is it recorded in the New Testament; the compilers of lectionaries have to use some imagination and ingenuity in finding readings for the liturgical feast. There is, of course, the glorification of the woman crowned with the stars in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. However, many scholars have maintained that she is purely a symbolic figure representing the church, and is not meant to be identified with Mary. I personally find this view unconvincing. It seems to me implausible to suggest that the mother of the messiah ("he who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron") must bear no correspondence with the Virgin Mary. I suggest that this is a place at which theological suppositions have coloured exegesis. But granted that the Woman is a symbol which includes reference to Mary among its many layers of meaning, her taking up into heaven and her glory are still less precise expressions of doctrine than either the western Assumption or the eastern Dormition, both of which emphasise her bodily share in the glory of her Son.

If then the mystery of the Assumption is not expressed explicitly in scripture which is not to say that it is contrary to scripture — what is our justification for regarding it as given?

First we can say that the two most numerous churches in Christendom, the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches, are committed to belief in the mystery. Moreover, many Christians from other churches also give assent to it. It can therefore plausibly be said to represent a part of mainstream Christian tradition, guaranteed by the Spirit of truth who leads Christ's followers into all truth and reminds them of his teaching. The mystery is no product of post-Tridentine doctrinal exuberance or of mediaeval counterfeiting of evidence: it can be traced back to Byzantine homilies of the sixth century, and by the eighth century finds classical exposition in the works of the great Greek doctors, John Damascene and Germanus of Constantinople. I have not verified my statistics, but it must be true that at least three-quarters of the Christians in the world are committed to the doctrine; and that even in England the largest group of regular churchgoers is committed to it. And in any event I suggest it is true that if we accept that Christian bodies come to their beliefs not out of malice or ignorance but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Christians should accept one another's mysteries, though not necessarily one another's interpretations of the mysteries. The task of interpreting our mysteries we need to perform together.

Belief in the Assumption, then, cannot be dismissed as a monophysite apocryphal legend (John Saward refutes this view in his paper on the Assumption, published by the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to which I acknowledge a great debt). But neither is it right to postulate some unwritten tradition deriving from the apostles which emerged into written form in the sixth century. Rather we should think in Newman's terms of a development of doctrine. The mystery came to be expressed in the sixth century because the seeds of it were already present in the original scriptural revelation. The Church at every age knows Christ at first hand. "You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know... You have no need that anyone should teach you..." (1 John 2. 20, 27). It is this living relationship with Christ which enables the teaching authorities in the Church to judge that some statements of belief are true accounts of the faith while others are not—i.e. to formulate doctrine and to reject heresy. The same living experience of Christ which all Christians share leads the teaching authorities in the Church to formulate mysteries like the mystery of the Assumption. The Church saw that the mystery corresponds to its experience of Christ in the work of salvation he accomplished in and through Mary. Because it is a mystery its meaning is greater than the conceptual accounts of it which have been given by the Church either then or now. But it is up to us, while accepting the mystery gratefully, to try reverently to penetrate its meaning more deeply and to crystallise that meaning in words for ourselves and others.

What then—at last we come to the question—is the meaning of the mystery? It puts before us the consequences of Mary's unique relationship with her Son. The early accounts of the Dormition, John Saward tells us, 'stress constantly the proximity of Mother and Son in Incarnation, the beginning of redemption, and thus also in resurrection, its consummation; indeed, Damascene applies to Mary a text from the Canticle — "she who is near to me", proximo mea; Mary is the one who is close to the God-Man' (loc. cit., p. 2). In similar vein a contemporary writer, St Germanus of Constantinople (d.733), represents Christ as saying to his Mother, 'Where I am, you shall be also, Mother inseparable in her inseparable Son' (ibid.).

But it would be a mistake to think that it is by the fact of being his Mother that Mary is' near' her Son and 'inseparable' from him. This understanding of the uniqueness of Mary's spiritual relationship to Jesus is not present in the Gospels. When the woman cries, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you!', Jesus replies that all can be equally blessed in hearing God's word and keeping it (Luke 11. 27-28), thus referring to all believers the words spoken to Mary by her cousin, 'Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord' (Luke 1.45). When told that his family are waiting for him, Jesus replies, 'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it' (Luke 8. 20-21) — not excluding Mary, but extending her position to all the faithful. At Cana, when Mary presumes on her relationship to draw her Son's attention to the lack of wine, Jesus rebuffs her with the severe words, 'O woman, what have you to do with me?' (John 2.4 — though other interpretations are possible). When on Calvary, Jesus once more calls his mother 'woman', it is this time to give her the special role of mother of the Church, of which the Beloved Disciple is the symbol: 'Woman, behold, your Son' (John 19. 26); but even here, though she is given a unique role, nothing is said to suggest that she is to possess a spiritual relationship with her Son which is different from that of other Christians. It is true that Elizabeth calls her 'the mother of my Lord' (Luke 1.43), awarding her the kind of reflected honour that we pay to the Queen Mother; but Mary's immediate reaction, expressed in the Magnificat, is a disclaimer of any special privilege arising from that position. 'He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree' (Luke 1. 52).

Of course, she remains in heaven the Mother of Jesus, who is both man and God. 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord... for their deeds follow them' (Revelation 14. 13). What we become in this life, we remain, transformed and purified, in heaven. Mary is eternally the Mother of her Son. But, since the Gospels imply that Mary's blessedness is not unique in kind, but is shared by all who hear the word of God, it seems to follow that she was assumed into heaven not because she is the Mother of God, in which she is different in kind from all other Christians, but because she was uniquely obedient to God, in which she differs from other Christians in degree. That is the fundamental way in which she is 'near' her Son.

Or, to say the same things in different terms, God released her from the power of death because she was free from the source of death, namely sin. But in this respect, too, she differs from us, in degree rather than in kind. The sinlessness with which she was endowed in her lifetime, will be ours eventually, after purification.

Therefore Mary in her Assumption symbolises the destiny of the Church. The Preface for the Mass of the Assumption in the Roman Catholic liturgy thanks God because 'today the virgin Mother of God was taken up into heaven to be the beginning and the pattern of the Church in its perfection'. Mary is the type or model of the Church, the archetypal redeemed human being. I say 'redeemed', because in our devotion to Mary we must never forget that the archetypal human being tout court is Jesus, 'the last Adam'. It is through participation in his human life in its total dedication to his Father, in drawing life from him who is our Head, that we, the cells of his body, are redeemed. His humanity is the source of redemption. Mary' s humanity is the model of redeemed humanity, the sign that the redemption brought by her Son is effective.

Mary's Assumption, then, her final entry into the glory of her Son, is the sign of our future glory. It is only in this way that the Assumption can be held, not only as a pious opinion, but as essential Christian truth of universal validity expressed in a figurative form. In the words of Donal Flanagan, 'All truths about Mary are expressions of aspects of the mystery of Christ and his Church, of the mystery of God's saving presence in and with man, and the form this takes. They are not pieces of Christian information, which have no relevance to our understanding and living of our Salvation' (An Ecumenical Future for Roman Catholic Theology of Mary, published by the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, p.8).

What then are the aspects of the mystery of Christ and his Church which the Assumption expresses? Two, I believe, in particular.

First, the Assumption represents Mary's final share in her Son's resurrection, when death is conquered and she enters eternally into the glory of her Son. The same life-giving action of God made us too 'alive together with Christ... and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus' (Ephesians 2. 5-6).

Of course, Mary is unique in that her Assumption presents us with the mystery of one who is already in glory in the fulness of her humanity, body and soul, whereas for us the resurrection of the body (another mystery whose depths cannot be fathomed) is an eschatological event to which, as we state in the Creed, we 'look forward'. Her anticipated glory is a guarantee of our glory. In her Son we see the glorification of the humanity of God incarnate; in Mary we see the sign that the glorification of humanity is achieved also in human beings who are not God incarnate, but simply sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

Secondly, Mary was assumed into heaven in the fullness of her humanity, body as well as soul. To us too salvation comes as human beings, compounded of matter as well as spirit, and not to souls imprisoned in a corrupting, confining or alien body. Death is not liberation, it is disintegration. But heaven involves the restoration of wholeness, the glorious transformation of complete human beings in their compound spiritual and corporeal natures.

Life on earth is our growth to the maturity that God wants of us so that when we die we can receive 'what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him' (1 Corinthians 2.9). Mary's bodily Assumption proclaims the fact that all human values contribute to this process of maturing. It is not only the pagan poet who can say that nothing human is alien to him. Christian life is this-worldly as well as other-worldly. Whatever is not a distortion of human nature is cherished by God's grace, and finally transformed in the likeness of Mary's Assumption by sharing in the Resurrection of her Son. The Assumption is above all the feast of the secular dimension of Christianity.

Mary is the symbol of our destiny. She is a fellow climber who has reached the summit and sends down to us signals that the ascent is possible. Christian devotion may call her in the words of the Salve Regina 'our life' and 'our sweetness', but Christian faith recognises her also as the embodiment of 'our hope'.