Assumption Meditation

(originally posted 2003, revised 2012)
That Jesus' mother's body did not suffer the same decomposition as all other human bodies and was taken into heaven is a doctrine that even many Catholics gag on. This is, of course, because they are cursed with the attitude that things which cannot be fully explained or understood through common experience or science are, at best, very questionnable.

As anyone who has undertaken a serious study of Epistemology--and indeed as any honest scientist--can tell you, the rationalist/materialist philosophy has many more holes in it than the average Swiss cheese. It's too bad that the post-Vatican II Catholic Establishment had no use for teaching people how to think and to use their rational powers rightly. Reason in the fullest sense, as Belloc lamented, is truly dead. For the time being.

Aside from reason, knowledge of matters of faith comes from two other sources: Revelation and Faith itself. St. Thomas Aquinas said so in Summa Theoligica, Part 2, Question 6.

From my experience, I can say this is true. In my early 20s, I was a bit too rational and spent several years not really believing in Catholicism although I practiced it outwardly. Indeed under my parents' roof there could have been no such thing as not practicing it outwardly.

This is testimony to the power of a strong Catholic culture in a home, or a nation, or a civilization. During times when people are not believing--times which occur in all homes, nations, civilizations--there are still the habits and the atmosphere to keep them in line.

The Assumption and all other mysteries of the faith were well-meaning nonsense, I thought. If they had made sense originally, that had perhaps been garbled. A priest-professor at Catholic U. who ridiculed the Real Presence and The Resurrection was among the contributors to this lapse.

Then came a moment, literally, during one dark and stormy night, when I had to add such things as faith and prayer to reason or I would have gone insane.

Now, twenty-plus years into my retro-conversion, I believe fully in the Assumption and all the other stuff. It's not because I "have to" to be a Catholic. No one in Heaven or on earth showed me the mechanics of assumption or led me to that elusive intersection in creation where the spiritual and corporeal meet the purely spiritual.

In the light of faith it makes perfect sense. Mary's body was one of a kind. It did not suffer the disorder of eros over ethos. It was the Holy of Holies, where God came to meet Man face to face.

The doctrine of the Assumption is the classic example of a little-understood aspect of religious faith: tradition. The obscurity of tradition is demonstrated by the fact that people look to the sacred writings of a faith in order to understand it.

Indeed there are faiths built on the principle that only sacred writings should be their basis. This is problematic because as the late convert from Judaism, Charlie Hoffman delighted in pointing out, there is no indication anywhere in the Holy Bible of which books should make up the Holy Bible. Such matters are decided by the other lung of a religious faith, its tradition.

The books of the The Holy Bible were settled on by the church fathers because they best reflected the fathers' beliefs, hopes, experience, practice that had already been lived for a couple centuries.

Every faith has a tradition: teachings and interpretations developed by its scholars and leaders. These have as much weight as the "bibles." This is why I say I don't care what the Koran says. Islam also has in its deposit of faith the sayings and deeds of Mohammed. He was not a peace-loving and tolerant pussycat.

Marian doctrine and prayer are mainly the development of Catholic tradition. There is precious little (but very precious) about Jesus' mother in the four Gospels. Half, perhaps most, of early Christians did not believe that Jesus was a God-Man union and had no use for a Mother of God. The first church dedicated to the blessed mother was built in 450 A.D. in the up-and-coming Diocese of Rome.

The past 160 years have seen an explosion of Marian doctrine beginning with Papa Pio Nono's infallible proclamation of the Immaculate Conception. This was the Holy Spirit dramatically at work. Given the church's condition at the time, its obsessions with politics, the pope proclaiming a matter of faith was like the chairman of WorldCom coming out for virgin birth.

The proclamation began a Golden Age for the Church, what is called a "Marian Century," ending with Pius XII infallibly proclaiming the Doctrine of the Assumption in 1952. This occurred 10 years after Pius consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Mary. He did so during The Second World War because he figured the world needed a model of purity and love. All of these doctrines had been held as beliefs for centuries.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II added five new mysteries to the Rosary. The Second Luminous Mystery, Jesus' Manifestation at Cana when Mary put before him the problem of there being no more wine, reminds us that Jesus will do anything that Mary asks on our behalf.

There is talk of Mary being equal in dignity to Christ, a mediatrix through whom all grace flows. Women may be clergy in other churches, but in the Catholic Church, a woman is the holiest of creatures. As Catholics celebrate the Assumption of Mary's body in these early 2000s, we may be on the verge of a deeper understanding of what the body is. Lex orandi; lex credendi. As we pray, so we believe.

Copyright © 2012 by Neal J. Conway. All rights reserved.