Thursday in the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time, August 20,, 2026

Matthew 22, 1-14

Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people in parables saying, “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come. A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’ Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Whereas the Parable of the Generous Landowner in yesterday’s Gospel reading speaks of the mystery of God’s generosity, the Parable of the King’s Feast, our Gospel reading for today’s Mass, tells of the mystery of man’s lack of generous response to God’s invitation.  

“He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come.”  The wedding feast had been announced well in advance and the guests had already received their invitations.  The summoning here is a formality.  The servants making the summons were attired in festal clothing.  The guests consisted of lesser nobles and wealthy landowners.  The invitation to the son’s wedding feast provides the local gentry an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the king as well as their good wishes for the newly married couple.  The invitation is also a sign of the king’s favor.  All of this apart from the food, the entertainment, and the chance to renew relationships with neighboring nobles and landowners.

“Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.”  The behavior the Lord describes here is outrageous.  In its way, it is as bizarre as the Lord’s telling of the half a billion dollar loan a king made to his servant, in another parable (Matthew 18, 22-35).  The outlandish nature of the actions of the invited guests tells us that the Lord wants us to pay close attention to it.  This is the central point of the parable.  

“The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.”  While the king’s reaction may seem extreme, in the context of the Ancient Near East, it is perfectly logical and foreseeable.  The invited guests — important, wealthy, and influential people within his realm, sent a message to him with their behavior: they spurned him, held him in contempt, and showed disloyalty.  The next step for them would be open rebellion, perhaps inviting a neighboring king to invade the land.  This disloyalty presented a threat to the king’s reign and to his life, and he immediately sends out his army to destroy his enemies.

“Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.”  Now begins what is almost a second parable.  In it, the king dispenses with the idea of inviting his fellow rich friends to the wedding feast and now simply wants to fill his hall.  He will take anyone in: “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests.”  The Lord notably describes the guests in moral terms: “bad and good alike”.  “When the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.”  The king, having made his official entrance and words of welcome to the guests, makes his way among them, “the bad and the good alike”, and he meets up with a bad guest, one not wearing the wedding garment — either his own or one provided for him by the attendants.  This is an insult to the bride and the groom as well as to the host.  The king could throw him out at this point but instead he engages the fellow in conversation, as though to draw him into awareness of his improper dress: “My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?”  The Greek text does not have the king addressing the man as “friend” but as “comrade” or “companion”.  We should note here that the king is addressing in this manner someone gathered from the highways and byways, treating him as an equal.  Perhaps it is this generosity that causes the man “to be silenced”, as the Greek says.  That is, the man knows full well that he is without a wedding garment.  He is showing contempt through this.  And yet the king speaks to him, and speaks to him in this way, as though they had been on terms of intimacy for some time.  The silence, however, is the final sign of insolence, and the king has him put out.  And not just put out: “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Harsh though the punishment may be, it is commensurate with the crime.

The actions, in the parable, of the invited guest and the guest without his wedding garment defy reason.  When a person desires to do another a good turn, it is not natural to insult him for this desire.  To do this is indicative of great hatred within the person.  Even so, a person ought to see that it is in his own best interests to receive the good, whether or not he cares for the person that offers it.  It is simply perverse to do otherwise.  The incandescent hatred of God and of religion, especially in our society today, is a mystery, but it is very real.  What drives a person’s hatred of God?  Ultimately it is pride, but it is still hard to understand the level of pride that results in such fury.  We should take great care in our lives not to give in to the temptation to see ourselves as independent, “autonomous”, and masters of our own destiny.  This can begin with such a petty thing as vanity or coveting an object possessed by another, and this can spin out of control very quickly — even so that a person is unaware of it — into a ferocious pride that can hardly abide any other individual, and God least of all.

The Lord concludes his parable, saying, “Many are invited, but few are chosen.”  That is, all are invited, but few choose to go.  Let not pride bind us and keep us in the darkness outside.

 This is the link to the first session on Hebrew.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HEWRoM7-vZO1qIUrAtyiC6Yi2eBzk6Ge/view?usp=drivesdk

Handouts:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12B7Fj3eEUiTGgt3VYlD8Gm0aQtFL8Tyv/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HIztlfpB0KfA8lpw1hbWVd5q_c9HYiCC/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nq1CWPjICfFJMrmChYPowfvCYIt8knh0/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HhMtvh2j1KlgC1vo0xncang5Qasfj5im/view?usp=drivesdk

Wednesday in the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time, August 19, 2026

Matthew 20, 1-16

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Over the last hundred years, various theories have arisen to explain how our solar system came to be.  One of the first of these held that a passing star drew out enormous amounts of energy and mass from our sun and that over time these settled into the planets and moons.  Later came the idea that the sun came into being through a gradual accumulation of gases, and that the planets resulted from streams of these gases that remained outside the core that became the sun in a rather orderly manner.  Lately, a theory holds that the gases that eventually coalesced into the sun originated from the explosions of other stars, and that the planets and moons we know today are the result of multiple titanic collisions, and that rogue bodies roaming the galaxy may have joined it.  Similarly, one theory has replaced an earlier theory in trying to explain such things as the origin of the universe.  Each theory has its day in the sun and everyone knows that it is the final word, and then a scientific discovery provides more or better data and the old theory has to be modified or discarded for a newer one.  Right now, the so-called Big Bang Theory is promoted as explaining the origin of the universe, but some scientists have recently begun to challenge it.  The universe is so vast and either so simple or so complex that it is not easy to understand, despite all we think we know.

If this is true of the natural world, how much more it is of the supernatural world.  St. Thomas Aquinas famously declared that it is easier to say what God is not than what he is.  We can rule out, for instance, that he is a physical body or that a human can hide something from his knowledge.  We do know that he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and infinite.  This makes him so utterly different from us that we must admit that we cannot know how he thinks.  And this is confirmed for us when the Lord reveals to us in the Scriptures that, “My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways . . . for as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55, 8-9).  Try as we might in our pride, we cannot guess his thoughts nor anticipate his ways.

The Lord Jesus makes this clear in his Parable of The Generous Landowner.  The landowner has his own system of payment to those whom he hires.  He is responsible to no one for how he elects to pay his workers, for it is his own money.  He pays them all the same wage regardless of how long they worked.  He is eminently fair, paying the accepted daily wage of the time in exchange for their labor.  Some of the workers register complaint because they think they should get more than that for which they agreed, but they are themselves unjust in this.  At the conclusion of the parable, the landowner states that he has acted out of his own generosity.  Yet his generosity seems absurd.  If the landowner had come to the workers and told them that he was going to give them extra wages because of the unusual heat of the day, that would be generous.  But to give the same payment to a worker who put in two hours as one who had worked all day is beyond generous.  It does not seem to make sense.  It is extraordinary behavior.

The ways of Almighty God are always extraordinary as we tend to measure them.  How do we explain the Father sending the Son to die for us?  How do we explain the Son’s zeal to die for us?  How do we explain how God loves even the worst sinner with a love beyond all telling?  How is each of us so important to him that he counts the hairs of our heads?  

If we cannot understand the universe, we can scarcely imagine that we understand God, who created it.  We stand in awe and gratitude before the mystery, knowing that the fact that there is mystery tells us much about our God.

Personal Note: The Tuesday Evening Bible Study began a multi-part look at the basics of Biblical Hebrew. The link to the audio recording will be posted Wednesday morning, and the handouts we used will be available for download.

Tuesday in the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time, August 18, 2026

Matthew 19, 23-30

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

“It will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  The sense of the Greek text is “next to impossible”.

In the Mosaic Law, the Lord says, “If you walk in my precepts, and keep my commandments, and do them, I will give you rain in due seasons. And the ground shall bring forth its increase: and the trees shall be filled with fruit. The threshing of your harvest shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land without fear” (Leviticus 26, 3-5).  Other verses follow these in which the Lord promises peace and victory over enemies.  At the time of Jesus, the Jews believed from this that the possession of wealth signified God’s blessing and future salvation for that person.  However, while God does promise blessings to those who obey his commandments, it does not follow that all who possess wealth are righteous or are destined for a happy eternity.  As the Lord said, “[The Father] makes his sun to rise upon the good and the bad; and rains upon the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5, 45).  Wealth comes to the good and the wicked and can be gained honestly and dishonestly.  Nevertheless, the belief had become so deep-seated that the Apostles reacted strongly when the Lord contradicted it.  He seemed to them to say that no one, not even those whose salvation seemed assured by the evidence of their prosperity, could be saved.  “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, ‘Who then can be saved?’ ”  The Greek text actually translates as, “They were exceedingly thunderstruck.”  Jesus answered them, “For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”  He is telling them that a person cannot buy eternal life with his riches; only God saves.  Peter, deeply shaken and confused, asked, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”  He is saying that if the wealthy — those whose wealth seemed a sign of their future blessing — could not be saved, then what chance did they have, who had become poor in order to follow the Lord?  Jesus assured Peter, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”  While Peter would have felt glad to hear these words, his confusion remained.  Was the Lord saying only the poor would enter heaven?  But poverty was a sign of God’s displeasure.  How could this be?  

We ought to understand that it is not wealth itself that condemns the rich, but the attitude and actions that very frequently result from it.  We see in the Parable of the Rich Farmer (Luke 12, 16-21) that the farmer brings in an enormous harvest.  He thinks he is set for life, and he plans to enjoy himself.  He does not thank God, nor does he intend to use any of his new wealth to attend to the needs of the poor.  His motto is, “Take your rest: eat, drink, be of good cheer” (Luke 12, 19).  The Lord comes to him that night and judges him.  Jesus concludes the parable, saying, “So is he that lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God” (Luke 12, 21).  If the farmer had been zealous in the service of God as all believers are called to be, he would have given thanks, and then decided how his wealth could serve the Lord.  Indeed, he could have given the bulk of it away and simply planted another crop the next Spring.

We should also consider the word the Apostles use, “to save”, as in their question, “Who then can be saved?”  They equate the Lord’s “enter the Kingdom of heaven” with “to be saved”.  The Lord’s phrase and that of the Apostles are two ways of saying essentially the same thing, but there is a different emphasis in each.  In the Lord’s phrase, the Kingdom of heaven is a proper destination that a person can arrive at.  When the Apostles say “saved”, they are supposing “to be saved from” something, in this case, hell.  They might also suppose “to be saved for”, which would be the Kingdom of heaven.  The Lord speaks of the reward, the Apostles speak of being saved from punishment, with those being saved entering the Kingdom.  To be saved from hell we must be free from the blindness and complacency that wealth brings in its wake, and to enter the Kingdom we must use the wealth with which the Lord entrusts us for his purposes.

Monday in the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time, August 16, 2021

Matthew 19:16-22

A young man approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

“What good must I do to gain eternal life?” The possibility of eternal life with Almighty God in the company of the angels and the saints should overwhelm our minds when we think of it. The human body can seem very strong when taken care of properly, but only in comparison with other human bodies not so well cared for, or which are older or infirm. In fact, it can be felled by creatures that can be seen only in microscopes. Ultimately, as Psalm 90, 10 reminds us: The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. So if the body is so frail — made of dust, as Genesis teaches — how strong can the human soul be? How can we possibly aspire to eternal life? 

God created man as a composite of physical body and spiritual soul: “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2, 7). God first created the body, but the body did not become alive until God breathed “the breath of life” into him. This “breath” is the soul, and the soul remains staunchly attached to the body until it dies. But the soul does not doe with the body. God created the human soul in a separate distinct act according to Genesis. This reaches us that the soul itself is distinct from the body, and whereas the body will die because it is made from what is physical, the soul will not because it is not made of that which is physical. The soul does not die, the soul lives forever. But through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our bodies will be reconstituted by the angels and our souls rejoined to them, never to be separated in death again. Those who lived according to faith in Christ will enjoy everlasting happiness while those who rejected the love of God will suffer in eternal hell. 

So the soul, once created by an act of God, lives forever because it consists of spirit and not anything physical that will eventually fall apart and disappear, it is made in such a way that hat it cannot stop existing.

Jesus answers the young man’s question: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” How simple the answer is! And these commandments are known, there is nothing secret about them that we should worry about breaking one without knowing it. Furthermore. the Holy Spirit provides us the grace we need in order to follow the commandments perfectly throughout our lives. And within the life of each believer in Jesus there is a further call to perfection, a constant pull or tugging to some particular work the Lord wills for us to do. In the case of the young man, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Others may be called to marriage and raising a family and to some particular life-long work, or to live the single life, glorifying God in the practice of the virtues and in Christian witness. We are tugged, but not forced, and as the young man does, we can walk away. But walking away from Christ does not bring the soul to eternal happiness.

While we live in our bodies let us care for our souls, nourishing them with the sacraments and strengthening them through prayer.

The 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 16, 2026

Matthew 15: 21-28

At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The city of Tyre lies thirty-nine miles from the Sea of Galilee, and Sidon several miles north of Tyre, a fairly formidable distance on foot, with rugged country to navigate.  St. Matthew does not say that Jesus traveled as far as Tyre, but only to the region, so perhaps this journey did not go the full distance.  His destination in the region remains a mystery, unless he meant to visit a synagogue in a town of that country.  Matthew does say that Jesus “withdrew”, which is one of the two main ways to translate the Greek verb here.  Another way would be to say that the Lord “retired” there.  As Matthew tells it, Jesus and his Apostles went directly from Jerusalem to the region of Tyre and Sidon, “withdrawing” or “retiring” there.  It is intriguing that he did not simply “withdraw” back to Galilee.  Perhaps Jesus wanted to spend some time in a place where he would not be thronged by crowds of people.  His Apostles would have benefitted from the respite, and he would have the opportunity to teach them privately.  Matthew does not tell us how long he spent there.

Mostly, the inhabitants of that place worshipped a mix of the old Phoenician gods and the imported Greek gods.  Matthew does not call them “Gentiles” but “Canaanites”, an anachronistic term.  The equivalent would be to call the Jews of the Lord’s time “Hebrews”.  Matthew does this in order to point up the ancient enmity that existed between these descendants of the original inhabitants of the Promised Land and the Hebrews who entered it under Joshua.  This has implications for what follows.

“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.”  The reputation of Jesus has penetrated to this pagan land from Galilee, or perhaps Jesus had performed some miracles among the few Jews who lived in the area.  Whatever the case, this “Canaanite” woman is very certain that the Lord can help her.  She may not know his name, for she does not use it.  But she does call him “Lord”.  It is significant that she acknowledges this Jew as her Lord, for it shows the desperation of her situation.  The Phoenicians were a proud people with a long and storied history.  They regarded the Israelites as below them.  She shouts out for all to hear that her daughter is “tormented by a demon”.  This may mean that her daughter was suffering from a curse, an evil spell, or from demonic possession.  This latter was not confined merely to the Jews.  Matthew does not say that the girl was present with her mother and so we might surmise that she was confined st home.  

“But he did not say a word in answer to her.”  This lack of response from Jesus would not have surprised the Jews of the time, who mixed as little with the Gentiles as they could.  Even speaking with them was done only out of necessity.  “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”  The Apostles are annoyed with the shouting, or that it is a Gentile woman who is doing it.  We can see here two competing prayers made to the Lord.  Both are reasonable requests.  The woman earnestly desires her daughter’s deliverance, and the Apostles want to be free of an annoyance that could possibly draw an angry crowd against them.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Presumably Jesus answers her in Greek, which would most likely have her language.  In referring to the “house of Israel” Jesus uses a term found in the law and the prophets, but which had no real meaning at the time in which he was speaking: there was Judah and Galilee, but no Israel.  Again, this points out the conflict between the two peoples.  “But the woman came and did him homage, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ ”  First, she publicly calls this Jewish man “Lord”, and now she renders him homage, perhaps bowing low to the ground and even lying prostrate.  Her prayer becomes more direct: “Lord, help me.”

“It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  To us this seems a very harsh way to speak, but it reflects the attitude of a Jew of the time towards a Gentile.  We note here too that Jesus speaks to her as a haughty lord would speak to his slave.  He has accepted her naming him “Lord”, but he acts as though he were merely the Lord of the Jews.  “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”  The woman shows herself a quick-thinker with her clever rejoinder, but she has also humbled herself to the lowest point possible.  First, she calls him Lord; second, she renders him homage; third, she accepts his calling her a “dog”.  She is not even the slave of this Lord, but beneath even that.  With this admission, Jesus astonishes all by answering, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”  He credits her with faith, for only belief in him as Lord could result in such humility, and he delivers her daughter from the demon.  He does this without causing scandal for her by entering her home (she could not have let him in without her husband present, and if she had been married, her husband would have gone to Jesus instead of her), and without incurring uncleanness through his doing so, in the same way as was done with the Gentile centurion’s servant.  And in performing this miracle the Lord heals the rift between the Jews and this people, the descendants of Noah’s son Canaan, signifies by the final words of this reading: “And her daughter was healed from that hour.”  Jesus shows himself as much their Lord and Savior as that of the Jews, from whom, at this time, he had “withdrawn”.  

We see in this reading how Jesus answers prayer.  He desires our heartfelt acknowledgment of him as Lord, homage, and complete submission to his will while confessing our unworthiness.  Jesus answers the prayer of his Apostles too, although in a way they had not expected: by casting out the demon from afar, he sends the woman away, back to her home.

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saturday, August 15, 2026

Luke 1, 39–56

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 for ever.”  Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

We celebrate today the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, into heaven.  Although not revealed in Scripture, belief in her Assumption is attested to in accounts handed down by the early Church.  The general gist of these is that at the end of her life on earth the Holy Spirit gathered the Apostles from the parts of the world in which they were preaching and brought them to her bedside.  After speaking to them of her desire to be reunited with her Son and assuring them of her prayers, she died and shortly thereafter was interred in a stone tomb.  Three days afterwards the Apostles opened her tomb to find her body gone.  Because these accounts speak of the “death” of Mary, the Greeks call their celebration of her entrance into heaven “the Dormition”, that is, the “sleeping” of Mary.  In the West, it was popularly believed that the Blessed Virgin did not die but that she was taken up into heaven while still alive, much as our Savior ascended into heaven after his Resurrection.  The oldest surviving evidences of the feast commemorating this event say that it was kept in August by monks in Palestine and in Egypt around the year 500, and from those places it spread into the West.  The doctrine of the Assumption continued to be taught through the ages and was formally defined by infallible decree by Pius XII in 195o.  The decree left open the question of whether the Blessed Virgin suffered physical death or not, but in the end what matters is that God took her to himself, body and soul, at the end of her life on earth.

This wondrous event is much celebrated in art.  One of the greatest paintings in human history is that of Titian’s “Assumption”.  A close study of the Virgin’s face as she is transported to heaven, surrounded by angels, powerfully reveals the awe and unworthiness that she must have felt, while, beneath her, the Apostles shrink back, marveling at the sight, St. John alone reaching his arms to her in his longing to be with her.  The Virgin herself is a wonderfully natural looking woman dressed in lush red and blue against a glowing gold field of light which grows a fuller hue as she nears the Father.  Her arms are extended upwards and bent at the elbows, as though she were praying, preparing to embrace, and yet gently protesting, all at the same time.  She is presented in a flowing red dress and swirling full length blue cape, but without a crown or even a halo, traditional elements representing sanctity.  The simplicity of her appearance allows for her to be seen as she saw herself, a mere handmaiden. 

The core of the Gospel reading for this solemnity consists of the Virgin’s outburst of praise to Almighty God in thanksgiving for his choosing her to be the Mother of his Son.  In Latin, the first word of her praise is Magnificat, literally, “it magnifies”, as in, “My soul magnifies the Lord: my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  Thus, her prayer is known as the Magnificat.  From at least the sixth century it has been prayed daily at Vespers as a culmination of the praise offered at that office.  Settings exist for it in Gregorian chant, and it has been set to music by the greatest composers, including Palestrina, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, and Rachmaninoff.  Each of these compositions is magnificent and even majestic, and they are often performed.  I find that of these, the Palestrina most movingly evokes the mystery of the Assumption, while the Bach, with its abundant brass, is a celebration of the Virgin’s glory.

At the heart of the Magnificat is the theme of reversal, that God in his mercy casts down the rich and raises up the poor, that he humbles the proud and gives pride of place to the humble.  In all of this, we see Mary’s faith in God and in his promises.  She herself, a young peasant girl in a small town, is lifted up by God to hold within her chaste womb his only Son.  Nowhere in her prayer does she extol her own virtues, and only speaks of herself as being blessed by all generations to come in order to emphasize how unheard of, unprecedented, it is that God has sent his Son among us.

On the occasion of this Solemnity let us meditate on the stupendous act the Lord has performed in raising up the Virgin Mary, body and soul, into heaven, and to pray that through her intercession, by the grace of God, we may join her there.