Since the feast of the Dormition (Assumption) of the Mother of God falls on a Sunday this year, the readings for the Sunday are 
prescribed as well as those of the feast (Mt. 19:16-29; Lk. 10:38-42, 11:27-28; 1Cor. 15:1-11; Phil. 2:5-11). Rather than complicate things, though, the extra readings actually help us gain a new perspective on the mystery of Our Lady’s glorification.
As of first importance, we’ll begin with First Corinthians, with what St Paul says is of first importance: “that Christ died for our sins… that He was raised on the third day.” If we add to that what he says in the reading from Philippians, that the Son of God “took the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men,” we have two great essentials of our faith, the Incarnation and the Redemption. So, this is of first importance, because if God did not become man in Jesus Christ, and if Jesus did not die for our sins and rise from the dead, nothing else would matter. We would find ourselves in the situation Paul describes a little later in First Corinthians: our faith would be useless, we would still be in our sins, those who have died would have eternally perished, and we ourselves would be the most pitiable of men.
So, what Christ did for us is of first importance, but we see in Our Lady the first-fruits of what is of first importance. She was the first to have received the grace of the redemption through her Immaculate Conception and her suffering with Christ at the foot of his Cross, and she was the first to receive the fullness of the grace of the Resurrection through her glorification in Heaven, which is what we are celebrating today.
St Paul says of Christ that because of his obedience God highly exalted Him, so that every knee would bend to Him, both in Heaven and on Earth, proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Mary’s obedience was similarly rewarded. When asked to be the personal means by which the Son of God would enter into this world as man, she offered her complete obedience, saying, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me…” Therefore Christ has highly exalted her, commanding all Heaven and Earth to honor her as the one through whom our salvation was made possible, the one who lived perfectly the will of God and thus found unique favor with Him.
It is inconceivable that Christ, who loves mankind more profoundly than we can imagine, and who has promised eternal rewards for those who believe in Him and love Him, would not have given the best of his gifts to the one He loved most, the Woman who gave Him his humanity through which He saved the world. If He called her to share in his sufferings as she stood at the Cross, how could He not call her to share his glory after He ascended to Heaven in his resurrected, glorified humanity?
Some people question the doctrine of the Assumption of Our Lady, simply because it is not recounted explicitly in Scripture. For one thing, we can hardly expect to find evidence of her Dormition and Assumption in such early documents, some of which were written while she was likely still alive! Liturgical veneration of her glorification in Heaven obviously could not commence until after it happened. Our faith in such mysteries is based primarily on the grace of the Holy Spirit guiding the Church to the fullness of truth, on some writings from the time of the early Church, and also on the following points. If God is able to do such things, like glorifying Our Lady body and soul in Heaven (and we just heard in the Gospel that all things are possible with Him), and if it is in all ways fitting that He do such things (which it is), and if divine revelation nowhere denies that He in fact did such things (but rather offers foreshadowings, symbols, and other positive indications), then we are justified in believing them. It is sufficient anyway that the Church proposes this for our faith. The Bible doesn’t say that the Bible is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth”; the Bible says the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth! (1Tim. 3:15)
But enough of all that. Let us simply celebrate with faith and love these mighty works of God. Mary has chosen the best part, as we have heard in the Gospel. This part is total surrender to God, which is symbolized in the Gospel by the other Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his word. Because of her obedience to the Lord in all things, Our Lady was exalted in Heaven beyond any other creature, whether man or angel. This is something she likely never guessed at before she had consented to give birth to God the Son, but she could say, as St Paul did in today’s epistle: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” And what she is as the Mother of God is beyond our power to comprehend. We say that in a spiritual, mystical sense we go to Jesus through Mary. But the Son of God, in the most literal sense, came into this world through Mary, through her very body. He was Pure Spirit for all eternity, yet going through Mary, He entered this world as man. The Word became flesh, in and through Our Lady.
By God’s grace she is what she is. All blessings are hers, those that belong to her unique mission as the God-bearer, and those that belong to all disciples who are called to hear the word of God and keep it. As to the former, she was rightly praised by the woman in the Gospel who cried out to Jesus: “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts that nursed You!” Jesus’ response is taken by some to repudiate that, but the term used in the Gospel does not require that interpretation. The Greek term usually translated “rather” in this passage can also mean, “yes indeed,” for the term is meant either to add something to or subtract something from what immediately precedes it. So Jesus, instead of apparently contradicting the woman, could have been agreeing with her but simply adding something important to what she said. So we could translate: “Yes indeed, yet blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” One must keep in mind that Jesus came into this world to save more people than his Mother, so He necessarily had to stress those things by which all believers could be blessed.
Let us look now at the Gospel of the rich young man. One might wonder how this can be related to the mystery of Mary’s heavenly glorification. I think we can begin with Jesus’ words to him: “If you would be perfect…” The Mother of God would be perfect. She possessed in herself every possible perfection of both nature and grace. She had no riches to give to the poor like the young man, but it didn’t matter, for she already had her treasure in Heaven. Like the rich young man, she had kept all of God’s commandments, but unlike him she was not attached to any possessions, pleasures, or the wealth of this world. She sought first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, so whatever she needed for her earthly life was given besides.
Yet like the rich man there was one thing she lacked. But unlike him she couldn’t be blamed for lacking it, for it could not be hers while she still walked the earth. Having all perfections of body and soul, the purest heart and the most complete union with the whole mystery of her divine Son, she still lacked the ultimate perfection of the complete transfiguration of her whole person in the glorified state of Resurrection, which could only be hers upon her death and Assumption into Heaven. Unlike the rich man, whose fate we do not know, Mary did receive that full and eternal perfection of sharing the life of glory with her Son—as He lives it, in body and soul, in advance of the general resurrection, when all the saved will be glorified eternally in the mystery of Christ’s bodily resurrection.
The Lord Himself returned for her to personally bestow this unique gift upon her. We hear about others who were saved, like the beggar Lazarus, that he was “carried by angels” to Heaven. But angels alone were not sufficient for the all-holy Mother of God, who
is “more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim,” as we sing every day. They were certainly present to honor their Queen, but no one less than the Lord Himself was deemed worthy to escort her to her heavenly dwelling place. The iconography of the feast shows the Lord having come from Heaven to receive her at her death, and He holds in his arms her soul, symbolically depicted as a newborn infant (for she is just beginning her eternal, heavenly life), yet in some icons even the infant is crowned as Queen!
Let us review what all these readings have taught us today. Mary is the perfect one, in body and soul, from the moment of her conception to her eternal glorification as Queen of Heaven and of the whole cosmos. By God’s grace she is what she is, and it should be our joy to celebrate and honor her for the great things the Almighty has done in her. Her treasure was always in Heaven, and so she was free to follow her Lord, to choose the better part, to listen to his word, to remain in union with Him in obedience even unto his suffering and death on the Cross. For Christ’s obedience, the Father exalted Him; for Mary’s obedience, Jesus exalted her, and He promises to reward all those who will hear his word and keep it.
To choose the better part is not simply to choose contemplation over active service, but to choose union with Christ over all else. Our Lady held in herself the best of both Martha and Mary, for as a wife and mother she labored much in active service of the Holy Family, yet her heart was always in a state of prayer, of listening, of surrendering to the will of God in love and unquestioning fidelity.
Lastly, let us recall what is of first importance: the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the sine qua non of our salvation. But God, in his infinite wisdom and love, willed that Mary would be essential to his plan of salvation, for she is essential to the Incarnation.
Let us then rejoice in her whom God made perfect: perfect as his Mother and his Handmaid, perfect as the most faithful disciple and exemplar of all virtue, perfect as our heavenly Mother and Queen. We look to her when we wish to see what Christ has willed for his Bride, the Church, because Mary is in her own person the image, the personal embodiment, the bearer of the fullness of grace Christ has won for us and wishes to bestow on us. It has been granted her to grant his grace to us, so let us seek this from her hands. It is truly fitting that she has been taken to Heaven and exalted as Queen even of the angels, yet it is also fitting that she remain close to us as Mother, attentive to our needs and our cries for help.
If we would gain eternal life, let us not only keep the commandments, but renounce all that is worldly and have our treasure in Heaven. And if we would be perfect, let us bind our hearts to the Heart of Mary, receiving through her the grace to hear the word of God and keep it perfectly. Our reward shall thus be great in Heaven.
