‘The Best Part’: Homily for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Optimam partem elegit sibi Maria, quae non auferetur ab ea in aeternum.

‘Mary has chosen for herself the best part, which shall not be taken from her forever.’ (Luke 10:42)

The Harvest Feast of Heaven

As we near the end of the summer, we begin to enjoy the fruits of the harvest. We blessed some of those fruits of the harvest this morning after Prime: the many berries and figs and plums and other first fruits of the good things that our land is giving us. Meanwhile, the Church, having contemplated since Pentecost the work of the Holy Ghost in the field of the world, celebrates today the first fruits of the harvest of Heaven. This is a feast celebrated in particular by the Church Triumphant—the Church in Heaven, which tastes today the fruits grown by the work of the Holy Ghost in the garden of the Church on earth. Today, the blessed enjoy in a new way the fruits of redemption, as the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary is assumed into Heaven. Our Lord’s risen Body, the true human Body which His Divine Person had assumed into union with Himself, had already ascended, but today it is the body of a mere human person which is assumed into heavenly glory.*

And so today, in a unique way, it is the angels who rejoice, as this Mass reminds us numerous times. In the Introit we heard that ‘on account of [Mary’s] assumption the angels rejoice’, and again in the Alleluia, ‘the army of angels rejoices.’ We will repeat once more in the Offertory, ‘Mary is taken up into Heaven; the angels rejoice.’ Today the angels rejoice because the bodily assumption of Mary adds a new dimension to their happiness. They are essentially already perfectly happy in the vision of God, but in seeing the Mother of God taken up into heavenly glory, there is an accidental perfection added to their joy. The angels rejoice in a new way, seeing Mary assumed to heaven.

Made for Eternity

But then what about us, still down here on earth? For us, the assumption of Our Lady and the joy of the angels today is a reminder of what is truly real, although we can so easily lose sight of it. It reminds us that, despite all that the contemporary world tries to tell us, we are made for eternity. This is why it was so fitting that the dogma of Our Lady’s bodily assumption into Heaven—a truth which the Church had always believed, which had been passed down through Tradition from the time of the Apostles, which is spoken of in the Liturgy and by the Fathers of the Church as something that is taken for granted and uncontroversial—it was especially fitting that this should be solemnly defined by the Church in the twentieth century, at a time when the world needed to be reminded of the truth of what we are made for.

Ever since the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, Western society had begun to seek happiness by limiting its view to the things of this world. God was still acknowledged by most, but He was only needed as a watchmaker, as Someone Who wound up the world and established reasonable norms for it. But He was not Someone Who could intervene, Someone with Whom man wanted to live and be in communion. The supernatural world was dismissed as superstitious, as irrelevant to the business of constructing human happiness on earth.

But as is now clear, the happiness that was promised by the Enlightenment didn’t work out. Its first attempted implementation in the French Revolution resulted very shortly in the first systematic genocide of modern times, followed by the Napoleonic Wars which devastated Europe and destroyed much of Christian civilization. Even so, the nineteenth century continued to believe that reason and secularism would bring progress and universal peace, till finally the Great War of 1914 to 1918 shattered this myth.

As Europe tried to pick up the pieces after the Great War, the various totalitarian ideologies—Soviet Communism, German National Socialism—promised redemption, a new humanity. The Second World War showed how empty all of this was. And yet the promise of a secular paradise continued and continues to tantalise human society, whether in the form of atheistic communism and socialism or of liberal capitalism—various ideologies which all promise in some way that, if we just set up things right here on earth, then we will be able to achieve happiness.

Eternal Life: The One Thing Necessary

In the end all such dreams leave humanity disillusioned, sollicita et turbata erga plurima (cf. Luke 10:41)—worried and disturbed about many things. In the face of all this, the bodily assumption of Our Lady holds up before us the unum necessarium, the one thing needful. It reminds all of us that we are made for eternal life, and that eternal life is not just an abstract idea—it’s something as real as a human body. There are already human beings in eternal life. Indeed, the souls of the vast majority of the human race are already in the life to come, and their bodies after a brief sleep will soon be with them forever, either in the glory of Heaven or in the torments of Hell. We tend to think of this visible world as being what’s truly real. But from the vantage point of eternity, we will realize just how brief this life was, and how what is truly real is the eternal life for which this life is simply a preparation.

And so our Lady comes to us today, to each of us troubled by the many things of this life, to show us what is the one thing needful: to teach us that so much of what we spend our time worrying about is not worthy of our attention—or at least not worth surrendering the peace that God wants to be always in our souls as a result of His life in us, which is the beginning of eternal life. Eternal life is this: to know God and His Son (Cf. John 17:3), to have His life dwelling in our souls. It is to live the life of the theological virtues: of faith by which we already share dimly in God’s knowledge of Himself; of hope by which we are assured of His promises and the help that we need to attain our eternal goal; of charity, which already in this life unites us to Him in a union that will be completed when faith gives way to sight.

This is what is truly real. This is the life that we are made for. This is why it makes sense to ‘put nothing before the work of God’ (Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch. 43): because the life of Heaven, which we anticipate in the work of God—that is, in the Sacred Liturgy—is what truly matters. And it is that which gives meaning to all the other duties of charity which, like Martha, we still have to carry out here on earth.

Here and now, upon the Altar, Our Lord will soon come with his risen and glorified Body, hidden beneath the sacramental veil, to unite our bodies to Himself so that we may one day be risen with Him. We ask our Mother, who has been assumed into Heaven so as to plead for us more effectively, to lift up our eyes from all the troubles, all the worries, all the trivia that distract us here, and to help us to see our true home, our true identity—the ‘best part’ that will not be taken away from us forever. * It is possible, as many Fathers and theologians maintain, that the bodies of the Saints who were raised at the time of the Crucifixion (Matt 27:52-53) were assumed into Heaven at the time of Our Lord’s Ascension. In this case, Our Lady’s Assumption would not be the first arrival of a complete human person in Heaven, but, given her dignity and her unique holiness as Mother of God, her assumption would have been a particular source of joy to the angels, more than that of any other Saint.