Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Assumption of Our Lady (B)
August 14, 2021
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as we celebrate with joy the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, body and soul into heaven.
- The Gospel for the Feast is taken from the scene of the Visitation of Mary to her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, when Jesus was just a few days old in Mary’s womb. We’ll get to why that Gospel was chosen shortly and ponder together some aspects of it. But insofar as our weekly custom is to enter into an impactful dialogue with Jesus’ own words, I hope that you’d permit me to start by mentioning a conversation Jesus had with the apostles on Holy Thursday, because it sets the scene very well for what the whole Church celebrates on the Assumption.
- At the beginning of the Last Supper, Jesus told those closest to him, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” Jesus, through his passion, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, was preparing for us a place in the Father’s House, from which he would return to take us with him, so that we might be with him forever. His desire is for us to be with him always. He wanted us to believe in this reality, starting the conversation, “You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” And he would finish by indicating to us the means by which he would fulfill that desire: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He is the way for us to follow to the Father’s house. His truth sets us free to be able to follow. His life is the one we embrace even now and, since his life is eternal, death becomes for us just a passage into a new, fuller sense of life.
- If Jesus was doing this for every believer who follows him as the Way, Truth and Life, for everyone who has faith in God the Father and him, we can certainly see how these words apply to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is praised by Saint Elizabeth in the Gospel this Sunday, “Blessed are you for your firm believing that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Mary is the foremost woman of faith, whose whole life was a commentary on her words to the Angel at the Annunciation, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” She trusted that Jesus was indeed going to prepare a place for her, that he would come back to take her to himself, so that where he had ascended she might also be. This Sunday we celebrate the fulfillment of that promise in Mary’s life.
- In the Gospel we’ll hear at Church, we will ponder Mary’s famous Magnificat, her hymn of praise to God in her cousin Elizabeth’s home. Mary exclaims, “The Lord has done great things for me,” and our first reaction is to praise God for all of the blessings he has given Mary over the course of her life. We see these “great things” of the Lord in her being preserved from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception, in her singular privilege of becoming the Mother of God, and, later, in the fact that at the end of her life the Lord did not allow her body to see corruption, but took her up into heaven body and soul. Thus our first response on this great Solemnity is to join Mary in having our whole being “magnify the Lord” and “rejoice in God our Savior” for all of these blessings he has given to her, and through her, to the human race.
- Our second reaction is to venerate Mary herself for her continuous holy response to these divine graces. Mary stated that because of God’s grace, “All generations will call me blessed,” and today we unite with generations before us and after in so extolling her.
- But the main purpose of this feast — the reason faithful Catholics mark it each year no matter what day of the week on which it falls — is to help us apply the lessons of Mary’s life and assumption to heaven to our own. And this is what Mary herself wants to help us to do. Saint John Paul II said in his beautiful apostolic exhortation on Mary, The Mother of the Redeemer, that Mary’s assumption into heaven did not take place so that she could enjoy a happy retirement or to party in celestial celebration until the end of time. Crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth, he said, for her to reign is to serve. True devotion to Mary means allowing Mary to reign as our Queen and that means to allow her to serve us as Queen. And she wants to serve us by helping us to become more and more like her Son, to follow him as the Way, Truth and Life, to have faith in Him as we do in God the Father, so that we might be able to enjoy his love and friendship in this world and come to experience eternal joy with him in heaven. Mary is like a mountain climber who after having scaled the heights of the Heavenly Jerusalem seeks to return from the celestial apex to show us the way, to guide, exhort and encourage us to follow her in following her Son all the way to that place he has prepared for us.
- And so Christian piety says to her, in the Salve Regina with which we finish the Rosary, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy. … Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Jesus, who always honored his mother on earth, wants us to honor her, and the best form of veneration is imitation. He praised her as one who, far beyond her biological relationship with him, shows us how to hear the Word of God and observe it. In her we see what it means to have a consequential conversation with the Word of God in such a way that that word can take on our flesh and totally transform our life. And so on this Solemnity, as we ponder Jesus’ words that he has gone to prepare a place for us and will come back again to take us to be with him, so that we may be with him always, let us ask the Mother God the Father chose for him and he from the Cross chose for us, to pray that we might have faith in his promise as she did, so that we might come to that place Jesus has made ready in the Father’s house where we will have the awesome privilege to join with her as our souls magnify the Lord and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior forever.
The Gospel passage on which today’s homily was based was:
Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”
And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
and has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.”
Mary remained with her about three months
and then returned to her home.
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