The destiny of a human life, given over to God’s purposes, united with Christ, and adopted into his family is glory. The church commemorates the glorious entrance into heaven of the Virgin as a reflection of the glory of Christ that was revealed in his Transfiguration, manifest in his Resurrection and Ascension, and will be at last given to those who have been united with his divine Sonship through baptism.
One of the great blessings of Catholic Christianity is that it affirms both the earthiness and the enchantment of the world we live in. There is no shying away from the stark realities of our physicality.
Mary shows us our own destiny as children of God and as heirs with Christ of the promises of the Father. The Blessed Virgin shows us what it looks like to be a finite creature wrapped, by grace and faith and love, in God’s own eternity.
On the face of it, Mary’s Assumption, body and soul, into heaven, is one of the most challenging traditions of the Church. One of my seminary professors loved to say that, for him, the Assumption was just too much of an assumption. It certainly presents a unique obstacle to many of our Protestant brethren. And this is in large part because the event does suggest, in a strange way, that the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus wasn’t enough, that there had to be something more.
While among Christians Jesus has escaped his detractors, his mother still carries the weight of human detraction, or perhaps worse still types of adoration that rob her of her humanity.
