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| Michael Phelps with one of his many gold medals |
(Assumption 2012: This homily was
given on August 15, 2012 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond
Suriani. Read Luke 1: 39-46.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Assumption 2012]
It was my favorite commercial
that debuted during the Olympics. I’m
sure many of you saw it.
It opens with footage of a
swimmer’s hands entering the pool at the beginning of a race (the camera angle
creates the illusion that you are the
swimmer). Then the swimmer’s voice is heard:
“Take a day off? I don’t even take a
morning off.”
Next we see the hands of a
gymnast on a high bar, holding on tightly as he swings his body around the bar
during a routine. Then his voice is
heard: “I haven’t ordered dessert in two years.”
Next we see the hands of a
cyclist on her bike, and we hear her voice in the background: “You know that
best-selling book everyone loves? I
haven’t read it.”
Finally, we see a shot of a
discus in a man’s hand as he’s spinning his body round and round, preparing
himself to throw it, and we hear his voice say, “I haven’t watched TV since
last summer. Hey, I’ve been busy!”
I liked this commercial when I
saw it for two reasons: number 1, because it implicitly reminds us of the goal of Olympic competition—a gold
medal; and number 2, because it reminds us of the price that the winners have to pay in order to reach their
desired goal: the diet, the sacrifice, the discipline, the exercise, the years
of intense and exhausting training.
Many athletes today want the
glory! They want to win gold
medals. They want to be Olympic
champions. In fact, I’m sure that lots
of young athletes here in the United States and throughout the world watched
these Olympic Games during the last few weeks and dreamed as they watched!
They each dreamed of standing exactly where Michael Phelps and all the
other gold medalists stood after their victories: on the top of the medal
podium listening to their country’s national anthem being played.
But how many of those same athletes
are willing to pay the price that Michael Phelps and the other champions paid
to get to the top of the podium?
Probably very few.
Many want the glory, but very few
are willing to go through what they need to go through to obtain the glory.
So what does all this have to do
with the feast that we celebrate in the Church today: the Solemnity of Mary’s
Assumption into heaven?
Simple. This
feast is like that Olympic commercial, in the sense that it also reminds us of the
goal (in this case, the ultimate goal of human existence—heaven); and it
reminds us of what it takes to get there!
In today’s gospel, Mary calls God
her “Savior”. And that’s true. Mary was saved by her divine Son, our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ, by being preserved from original sin in that event we call
the Immaculate Conception. Mary, in
other words, never lacked sanctifying grace in her soul. The rest of us do lack this grace when we come into the world, which is why
we need baptism; hence St. Peter makes the statement in his first letter that baptism
is what “saves” us (1 Peter 3: 21).
And Mary never sinned throughout
her entire life; thus, at the end of her time here on earth she was given
another unique privilege: she was taken up into heaven soul AND body.
The rest of us who experience
salvation will have to wait until the end of the world to have our bodies
resurrected and reunited with our souls in the Lord’s eternal Kingdom. But for Mary it’s already happened! That’s the meaning of today’s feast.
And yet Mary’s path to the goal was
anything but easy! It was
tough—extremely tough: certainly tougher than anything our Olympic athletes had
to deal with on their paths to glory.
She had to deal with poverty; she had to face misunderstanding (she was
even misunderstood, for a time, by her saintly husband, Joseph). She had to flee from a crazy king who wanted
to kill her and her family; she was forced to live for awhile as a refugee in a
foreign country; she lived for 33 years with the knowledge that someday a painful
“sword” would pierce her soul; and one day it did—the day she was forced to
watch her only Son die a horrible death.
And yet, through it all, Mary
remained God’s lowly and faithful servant, always choosing to do what God
wanted her to do, even when it required incredible self-sacrifice on her part. For example, in today’s gospel it says that
Mary stayed with her cousin Elizabeth for about 3 months.
Why?
She did that because her cousin
Elizabeth needed her! Remember, Elizabeth
was old—very old—and 6 months pregnant
with John the Baptist! Mary knew that,
and went to help her cousin get through the final months of what had to be a
very difficult pregnancy.
Of course, Mary was also pregnant
and probably could have used some help herself.
But our Blessed Mother never
thought of herself first. She was completely
selfless.
Like that Olympic commercial, the
feast of Mary’s Assumption reminds us of the goal, and it reminds us of the
price that must be paid to reach it: the price that Mary paid during her visit
to Elizabeth and throughout her entire life: the price of selflessness and self-sacrifice;
the price of purity, forgiveness, patience and charity (even toward her enemies)—in
a word, the price of holiness.
May the Lord give us a desire—an
“Olympic desire”—to pay that price like Mary did, each and every day, so that
the prize she won in her life (which is infinitely greater than a gold medal)
will someday be ours.
