The Feast of St Mary the Virgin
August 15, 2011
One way to look at our celebration today is to consider how various Christian denominations view the Mother of Jesus.
In our Episcopal Church, we express our faith regarding Mary in today’s Collect:
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary,
mother of your incarnate Son:
Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood,
may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom…
That is, we refer to Mary as “blessed” and “Virgin” and as the mother of God’s incarnate Son, Jesus. We note that God has taken Mary to himself (more on that in a moment), and we ask only that we may share the glory of God’s eternal kingdom along with Mary, and all other Christians. As in all of our prayers relating to the saints, we do not ask Mary to do anything, we do not pray to her, and we do not ascribe to her any powers other than those that are evident from Scriptures. Our focus is on Mary’s Son, our incarnate Lord and Redeemer.
But why do we say, “you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary?” This has to do with an important concept from Christian theological history.
For our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, today is known as the feast of the Assumption of Mary. That is, it reflects the belief that, when Mary died, her dead body did not remain on this earth, but rather was taken up or “assumed” into heaven. Thus, there is no tomb of Mary anywhere on earth, and no shrine where anyone can visit her earthly remains.
This is a very early Christian belief, dating back to at least the fourth century. From the Scriptures, we only know that Mary lived a quiet life after the crucifixion and resurrection of her Son―remember that Jesus gave Mary into the care of the Apostle John in his words from the cross: “behold your mother.” [John 19:27] In the year 377, a bishop (Epiphanius of Salamis) declared that “no one knows whether Mary has died or not.” Many early Christian texts that did not become accepted as part of the New Testament include descriptions of events surrounding Mary’s death. At least in part because of these apocryphal writings, it is clear that many Christians believed specific things about the end of Mary’s life, including that she was taken, body and soul, into heaven.
This is not such an unusual idea. The Book of Genesis tells of a man named Enoch, the father of Methuselah. It says that Enoch “walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.” [Genesis 5:24] The Jews believed that Enoch was taken to heaven so that he might not suffer the fate of mortal death.
Elijah, of whom we spoke only last week, also did not die, at least as it is recorded in the Bible. At the end of Elijah's life, he was taken away (to heaven), either in a fiery chariot or a whirlwind. [2 Kings 2:11]
And, of course, Jesus himself ascended into heaven 40 days after the Resurrection.
So, it is not unusual to believe that certain people, at the time of their deaths, did not remain bodily on earth, but rather that God took them, body and soul, to heaven. Did this happen to Mary? There is clearly a body of early Christian belief that it did, and in fact it has been an infallible dogma of the Catholic Church since 1950 (a little late, you might remark).
The Greek Orthodox Church has a similar concept, called the Dormition of Mary. It holds that Mary did not actually die, but only fell asleep, and was taken to heaven while sleeping. Unlike the Catholic Church, which believes that Mary died, the Orthodox belief is that this never happened.
These beliefs about Mary, ancient as they are, do not seem terribly important to us today. What actually happened to Mary is more a question of curiosity than of faith for most of us.
However, there is a down-side to this belief, if it is based on certain principles. Here is where the danger lies (it goes something like this): Mary became the Mother of God Incarnate; she held the most sacred entity in the universe inside her human body for nine months; God would not dwell in a sinful body, so Mary was preserved from Original Sin from the moment of her conception in the womb of her mother (the Immaculate Conception); because Mary did not bear the “stain” of Original Sin, her body could not suffer corruption (decay) – the penalty for mankind’s sinfulness; therefore, at her death, her body was taken away to heaven.
This thinking is rooted in the error of Dualism (the soul is pure and good, but the body is evil), and also the error of denying that Jesus was an ordinary, natural human being. Episcopalians do not accept the Roman Catholic concepts of Original Sin[1] or the Immaculate Conception of Mary (nor the Assumption, for that matter). We believe that she was an ordinary, although very holy, young woman, and that her Son was born an ordinary little boy (although remaining divine at the same time). It is not necessary for us to preserve Mary from the evil of the flesh or the sin of Adam, and it is not impossible for us to consider that God could dwell inside the body of an ordinary woman. It is not important for us to know what happened to her body when she died, because we know that her spirit is with God, enjoying eternal life.
All this may lead us to wonder why today is such a special day. Why is Mary important to us? Is she any more important than any other saint, such as Peter or Paul?
The answers to these questions lie in our understanding of the central role of mothers in human life and society. Each of us probably has a special relationship with a woman whom we see as our mother, whether biological or otherwise. We know the impact that this woman has had on us, and most of us would agree that a mother’s influence and love made a great difference in our lives.
Thus, we extrapolate that the mother of that very special little boy, Jesus, must have been a truly extraordinary woman. She watched over him, all the while knowing that he was brought into this world in an unusual way and would have a great mission to perform.
Mary does not need to have been conceived without sin, she does not need to be any different than every other woman ever born, in order to fulfill her role as the nurturing and guiding influence in Jesus’ earthly life. She also does not need to have been taken directly into heaven at her death (or falling asleep), in order to be remembered and loved by us for all the good that she did while she was living on earth or for the example that her life offers us as Christians.
Which brings us back around to our Collect for today. We recall Mary’s qualities of being blessed and a virgin, we honor her Incarnate Son, and we ask God to allow us to enjoy eternal life, even as Mary herself is doing. How, precisely, God took Mary to himself is not anything that we need to attach great importance to. Whether her body is actually still here somewhere on earth, or if it is truly gone to heaven forever, is not important to us. Remembering her life, her role in the salvation of all humankind, and following her example (as we do with all the saints) are the key reasons to celebrate her this day.
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