Life is with the Body

The Roman Catholic Church celebrates today the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. The texts chosen for today vary depending on the choice of individual Councils of Bishops. The understanding of Mary as the first and greatest disciple of Jesus and the Model for the Life of a Church focused on Jesus is expressed in this feast. Father Robert Barron, who speaks in the Word on Fire ministry and throughout the magnificent video series Catholicism, teaches

 "Our feast for today--the Assumption of the Virgin--is similarly Christological in focus. It is meant to highlight the reality of Jesus' bodily resurrection from the dead. As the first and greatest disciple of the Lord, the Virgin Mary shares in the effects of this event, participating body and soul in the new life opened up by Jesus.”

The text chosen today from First Chronicles describes the Ark of the Covenant being brought up to Jerusalem. The Ark points to God. The “Yes” of Mary which is the “true blessedness” which Jesus cleverly proclaims in the text from the Gospel from Luke is the model to Christians of response in faith and trust to God. The Mary, the Ark carrying Jesus, proclaiming Incarnation, points to the mission of God to be intimate as the “Word made flesh”. Mary, assumed bodily into heaven, illuminates the Resurrection and our share as disciples in the swallowing up of the victory of death through bodily taking on the imperishability and the immortality preached by Paul to the us and the Corinthians in the passage today. Father Barron comments on the Platonic themes which have dampened modern western life experienced fully in body and soul. He exhorts that ‘the body matters to Catholics”. He invokes the image of the Sistine Chapel with the Creation depicted in the bodies of Adam and the Saints. The Presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist calls all Christians to serve the Word, as Mary, in intimate and eternal communion of body and soul with the Father.