Transcript of Abbot Clement=s Homily on Monday, August 15, 2005,
Feast of the AssumptionThe liturgy asks us to look at this feast through the text of the Visitation. In this rather hospitable family life of Zachariah and Elizabeth, Mary greets Elizabeth and Elizabeth says:
ABlessed are you among women.@ AAnd blessed is the fruit of your womb.@ So she=s already aware of the blessedness of the Blessed Mother. Then she praises her as the mother of the Lord and praises God for the faith that the virgin of Nazareth has to receive the great mystery which is really inscrutable that God should become a human being. Then she says: ABlessed are you who has believed what was spoken to you by the Lord, which will be fulfilled.@So the text stresses very much faith. The faith of the Blessed Mother. That we are to see this feast in the light of that faith. Vatican II tells us that this faith of the Blessed Mother, starting especially at the Annunciation, continued to grow and develop and embraced her generosity to stand at the foot of the cross. Her fiat was fulfilled there and then beyond.
So what do we see in the life and the journey of faith of the Blessed Mother that throws light on this feast? There are two characteristics that faith awakens in us and that the Blessed Mother really lived fully. The first is was aware of, very concretely, that God loved her. That God was a God of love and goodness. Secondly, she overcame evil. Faith enables us to struggle and overcome evil. These are the two characteristics that flow from reflecting on this. And we see it.
But before I mentioned that, these things are connected. Satan has a hard time, in fact hates, to say that God is good. That God is loving. Because if he did then he
=d have to deal with his own evil. So faith is an awakening to the love that God has for us is also the faith that learns to struggle against evil and becomes victorious.So we see this in the response the Blessed Mother gives to Elizabeth the powerful, faith filled prayer of the Magnificat that we pray so often. What do we see? One of the lines is very powerful: The Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. Her faith is concrete. She knows and experiences the active love of God in the world. In creation, in redemption, in sanctification in her own life. It
=s not an abstract faith. It=s encountering the actual goodness of God in her life and so she=s filled with praise and thanksgiving and appreciation of God=s love for her and for the world, etc.We see that this is fully grasped by the Blessed Mother if we listen to the whole prayer it
=s what Paul said: Athat Jesus was rich but he became poor so that we would share his riches.@ In the Magnificat we have that passage that says the poor are filled with God=s riches and the rich go away empty.Then we see in the reading of the Book of Revelation that one of the signs is that Mary fights the dragon. That immediately calls to our mind Genesis where the woman is to crush the head of the serpent. So Mary is at the center of the issue of overcoming evil especially the ancient serpent. We see in her life not just the struggle and conquering of evil but a victory and this is what we celebrate. We celebrate that she has been victorious over all evil. And positively, of course, being totally open to God
=s plan for her so that she=s filled with the glory that God has planned for her from all eternity. Because St. John tells us that this is our victory, our faith. Our faith determines our growth and victory over evil. So this feast calls us to look at our journey of faith and how it is really growing, first and foremost of realizing God=s love for us and becoming conscious of it so that we can point out things and say this is a sign that God is loving me and to give God the praise and honor for that. Then of course to follow Mary means that we not just enter the journey but we begin to have her as the one who assists us and supports us on the journey so that we experience our faith as a rather powerful element in our life. A faith that can work against evil and a faith that becomes joyful in its victory over evil and therefore to rejoice in the great gift that we have.So the feast is an opportunity for us to refocus our journey of faith and especially our confidence that what God has begun in us he will complete.