The Feast of Mary’s Assumption: A Time to REFOCUS

 

(Assumption 2024: This homily was given on August 15, 2024 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 2024]

Refocus.

That’s not a word that we normally associate with Mary’s Assumption into heaven.

But I think we should!

We celebrate this feast on the 15^th of August—which means that summer, sad to say, is now more than half over.

For most people summer is an enjoyable time, given the fact that the weather is usually a lot more pleasant than it is in January and February.  For many people it’s also a restful time, a time for them to get their physical and emotional “batteries recharged,” so to speak; although for some others it can be a season of great stress—especially on those days when they have more than one social event scheduled.

But for almost everybody living in our fast-paced society right now the summer can also be a very DISTRACTING TIME!

All those enjoyable, restful—and stressful—things can, unfortunately, get in the way of our relationship with the Lord.

And so the Church gives us this feast in the middle of August: a feast that can help us to REFOCUS our attention on God and on those things that are most important in life.

Let me give you a few examples.

The feast of the Assumption, first of all, reminds us of our mortality.  It reminds us that we’re not here forever; that, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, we do not have on this earth “a lasting city.” 

We can sometimes forget that—even in the winter.

The Assumption marked the terminal point of our Blessed Mother’s earthly life; although the Church leaves open the question of whether Mary physically died or simply “fell asleep” before she was taken, body and soul, into heaven.  In the official teaching of the Church, given to us by Pope Pius XII in 1950, it says, “when the course of her earthly life was finished [notice there’s no specific mention of death there], [Mary] was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory.”

So the Assumption focuses us on the fact that our lives on this planet will have a terminal point and that we should live them accordingly.

It reminds me of a saying I once heard: Live every day as if it were your last—and one day you’ll be right.

This brings us to the second truth that the Feast of the Assumption focuses us on (or rather refocuses us on), namely, that the goal of this life is heaven!  The goal of this life is not to get rich, or to accumulate more “stuff” than everyone else, or to win an Olympic gold medal or to become the president of a company—or the President of the United States for that matter.  The goal of this earthly existence is eternal life with God in his Kingdom.

Mary has already reached the goal.  We celebrate that fact at this Mass.  As she now is, so all those men and women who die in the state of grace will someday be.  For us, however, the sequence of events will be a little different.

That’s important to mention.  Our Blessed Mother already has her glorified body in the kingdom of her divine Son.  Those of us who die in the state of grace and whose souls go to heaven (either immediately after death or after being purified in purgatory) will have to wait until the end of time to receive our risen bodies.

That’s one big difference between Mary and us.

But the goal for everybody—Mary and us—is (or at least is supposed to be) the same. 

Another truth this feast refocuses us on is that our physical bodies are holy.  They’re holy because they’ve been redeemed by Jesus Christ, and are made to live forever in heaven in their glorified state.

This, incidentally, is why sins of impurity and violence are so wrong: we’re using something which was made for heaven (our body) to put us on the road to hell!

Thankfully the sacrament of Confession is always available to put us back on the right road.

Finally, this feast refocuses us on the fact that we need Jesus Christ in our lives, and that we need to make every effort to stay connected to him (regardless of what season of the year it is!).

Mary did not save herself; she was saved by her divine Son.  (Many of our Protestant brothers and sisters don’t think we believe that, but we do!)

In her Magnificat (which we heard in our gospel reading a few moments ago) Mary says, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my Spirit rejoices in God, MY SAVIOR.”  The Lord saved our Blessed Mother by preserving her from original sin in that event we call “the Immaculate Conception”.

He saves us in a different way: by delivering us from original sin, as well as from our personal sins.

But then Mary went on to nurture her relationship with the Lord by living a sinless life of perfect love and perfect virtue: a life which was rooted in prayer.  In other words, she always maintained a close and intimate connection with her God.

This means our Blessed Mother never, ever got “distracted” spiritually in the summer—or winter—or spring—or fall for that matter!

What about us?

How has your prayer life been lately?  How has your Mass attendance been this summer?  Have you taken a “vacation from God” (even a little one)?  Have you been to Confession if you’ve needed to go?  Have you been to Eucharistic Adoration recently?  Has the Bible been on your summer reading list?  Have you maintained your connection with Jesus since the warm weather set in?

Today is a day for all of us to make the personal commitment to “refocus” to the extent that we need to: the commitment to refocus our attention on the things that really matter in this life.

Mary, of course, had no need to refocus, simply because she was always focused—PERFECTLY focused!

May her prayers from heaven help us all to be more like her, not only during the summer months but throughout the entire year.

 

Recognizing the Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist

 

(Eighteenth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on August 4, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 16:2-16; Psalm 78: 3-4, 23-25, 54; Ephesians 4:17-24; John 6:24-35.

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Eighteenth Sunday 2024]                                                              

When I was first ordained back in 1985, I remember a man coming up to me one day after a Sunday Mass, carrying his two children.  He had one in each arm.  The oldest was four years old; the other was two.  The man said to me, “You know, Fr. Ray, when I came up to you to receive Communion today my four-year-old son wanted to know if he could say ‘Hi’ to Jesus.  I told him, ‘No!’”  “Wow,” I said to him, “You mean that your son already understands that what I give out at Communion time is really the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ?”  I was impressed.  But the father replied, “Oh no, Fr. Ray, you don’t understand.  My son said that because he thinks that YOU look like Jesus!”

So much for my brilliant deductions.

Naturally it is extremely difficult for any child of four to recognize the Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament.  But of course it’s also just as difficult for the rest of us.  Sadly, age does not necessarily increase the quality of our spiritual awareness and vision.  And spiritual vision is what we need in order to be aware of the fact that the Eucharist is not a symbol, but is truly the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Savior of the world.

In a sense you could say that we need to put on “spiritual glasses” if we want to be able to see Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.  But those glasses are not easily acquired. 

Maybe part of the difficulty we have in recognizing the Lord’s presence in this sacrament is that we don’t expect the Almighty, omniscient, eternal God to be present in such a small “package.”  As Mother Teresa once put it: “How much smaller could he have made himself than a little piece of bread—the Bread of Life?  How much more weak and helpless?”

The idea that God would give himself to human beings in this way can be difficult to grasp and understand.  But we’re not the only ones in history who have had this problem.  The crowd that Jesus faced in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel (where today’s gospel reading is taken from) also faced this difficulty.

I find it interesting that the crowd back then had no trouble whatsoever accepting the miracle of the loaves.  That didn’t challenge their faith at all.  As we heard in last weekend’s gospel reading, after they ate the meal Jesus gave them they were so happy that were ready to carry our Lord off and make him their king!

It was only when Jesus began to instruct them on heavenly food (i.e., the Holy Eucharist) that the trouble began.  We see the conflict between our Lord and the crowd beginning to develop in this week’s reading.  But it gets even worse in the later verses of John 6.

Our Lord first of all said to the crowd, “I know why you want to see me again.  It’s because I fed you with earthly food.  It’s because I gave you all a good meal of bread and fish.  But now I want to tell you about another kind of food—another kind of bread—a ‘heavenly’ kind of bread.”

Of course, as happened so often in our Lord’s ministry, the crowd misunderstood him completely.  They thought he was going to give them a new kind of manna, akin to what the Hebrews got in the desert at the time of Moses (we heard about that in our first reading today)—except that this manna (this new manna) would never spoil.  Well, they thought that sounded like a great idea, so they said to our Lord, “Sir, give us this bread always!”

Jesus responded by setting them straight.  He said, in effect, “I’m not talking about manna like the kind Moses gave you; I’m talking about myself.  I am the Bread of Life!”

That’s when the trouble began.  This was a truth that this particular crowd could not accept.  That’s clear from what we’re told in the rest of John 6.  Finally it came to the point where some of them said, “This sort of talk is hard to endure!  How can anyone take it seriously?”  And many walked away from Jesus at that point—even some who had previously been his loyal followers.

There’s an old hymn that has the line in it: “Look beyond the bread you eat; see your Savior and your Lord.”  That’s the challenge of faith that faces each and every one of us.  It’s the challenge to recognize the presence of Jesus Christ—Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity—in the Holy Eucharist.

And it is possible to do.  Whenever I brought my grandmother Communion in the latter years of her life, she would always say to me before I left, “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing God to me.”  Not “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing ‘the bread’ to me”; not “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing ‘the host’ to me”; rather “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing GOD to me.” 

My grandmother was a woman who had a simple—but a very deep—faith. My grandmother was a woman whose spiritual vision was 20/20, especially when it came to the Holy Eucharist.

Let us pray today at this Mass, that our spiritual vision will be the same.