IX. The Assumption of Mary

" Quae est ista quae ascendit de deserto, deliciis affluens, innixa super dilectum suum? " (Cant. viii. 5).

The succession of the Blessed Virgin's Feasts that we have followed has shown how wonderfully the Mysteries of Christianity are linked one with another; and this one, which celebrates the final event of her earthly life, has a special connection with the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. For if Mary once received Jesus her Saviour, it is fitting that the Saviour should in His turn receive Mary. He disdained not to come down to her; and now He will take her up to Himself and make her share His glory. It is but natural, therefore, to find the Holy Maiden rising in triumph from her tomb amid pomp and splendour. She gave her Son His human life; and He, being God, and hence bound to repay munificently, gives her in return the glorious Life of immortality. Thus are these two mysteries — of the Incarnation and the Assumption — linked; and, that there may be still closer relation between them, we may well believe that the Angels take part in both: — that they rejoice to-day with Mary, and are dehghted to behold so beautiful a completion of the mystery whose beginnings they first announced.

Heaven, as well as earth, has its gala days and triumphs, its functions and solemn entries; or, rather, earth borrows these names for its own vain pomps. Magnificence can in fact only be realised to its fullest extent in the splendid festivals of the heavenly Jerusalem; and of all the glorious solemnities that have rejoiced the holy angels and the spirits of the Blessed, we may be sure that the one we are keeping to-day is among the most illustrious. The raising of the Blessed Virgin to the throne prepared for her by her Son must indeed be the occasion of a most joyful day in Eternity: — if we may speak of days in the Everlasting City. To describe Mary's entry into Heaven I might try to bring before you the great concourse of its inhabitants, with the acclamations and glad canticles of the nine orders of Angels and the whole heavenly Court. I might even go higher, and show you the Mother of God presented by her Divine Son before the Father's throne, there to receive from His Hand her crown of immortal glory. But my object here is not so much to dwell on the ejfects of her Assumption, in her attainment of glory, as to consider what were its causes; and for this purpose it will be better for us to think most, not of the heavenly court that receives her above but of the virtues that accompany her from below. These virtues, in fact, form her chief glory, since they both prepared her for the bliss she has attained and will themselves cause its fullest perfection throughout eternity.

That Mary might enter into her glory she had, first, to be stripped of this wretched mortality, as of a garment foreign to her; then, her body and soul had to be "clothed upon" with immortality, as with a royal mantle or triumphal robe; and lastly, clad in this superb apparel, she had to be placed on her throne, above the cherubim and seraphim and all other creatures. Now, it may be truly said that the whole of this great work was wrought by three special virtues which shone forth above all others in the Mother of Christ: namely, those of Divine Love, Holy Chastity, and Perfect Humility. I shall try to set forth the special relation of each of these virtues to the three steps of the Blessed Virgin's entry into Eternal Bliss.

Nature and grace concur in establishing the unchangeable necessity of dying. It is a law of nature that everything mortal owes tribute to death; and grace has not exempted man from the hard necessity because the Son of God determined to destroy death by means of death itself. He has therefore laid down the law that we must pass through its very hands to escape from it, and go down into the tomb to rise again. In short, to strip mortality of its power we must all die. Therefore the sacred pageant of to-day-had to be preceded by Mary's decease: she could not attain to her triumph without first submitting to the law of Death, and leaving behind in his clutches — so to speak — everything belonging to her that was mortal. But, though the Blessed Virgin was subjected to this common law, it does not necessarily follow that she had to undergo it in the ordinary way. Death itself is, indeed, the lot of all; but its principle may vary in different cases. Now, everything in Mary's career was supernatural: she received Jesus Christ in the beginning miraculously, and it is but to be expected that she should have back her well-beloved Son, at the end, also by a miracle. Further, it seems a fitting completion to a life so full of marvels as was hers that the principle of her death should be not a human, but a divine, one. Hence, granting that some supernatural cause is to be looked for here, we have only to seek for the special one; and I hold it to be certain that Mary's human life came to an end simply through the working of Divine Love. The strength of this, hourly increasing in her throughout her mortal life, at last burst asunder the bonds of flesh and bore away her soul to be reunited with the Son from Whom she had been parted only by a violent wrench. Such a death is a sacred mystery; but we may to some extent realise how it might come to pass by yet once more calling to mind what has been so often dwelt upon in following the whole chain of events in the

Blessed Virgin's life: — namely, the source, and nature of her love for Jesus. To draw this matter out again in full detail would be superfluous; but I may here quote, as specially applicable to our present subject, the words of a very holy man which beautifully summarise all that has gone before, and bring out with striking force the peculiar characteristics of Mary's maternal affection. Amadeus of Lausanne — a Bishop of the twelfth century — in a homily on the Blessed Virgin's praises, has the following passage: "To form Mary's love, two loves were united; for she gave to her Son the love due to a God, and to her God the love due to a Son ".^ This is a sublime way of saying that Nature and Grace concurred in making the deepest possible impression on Mary's heart, as there is nothing stronger or more efficacious than the love given by nature for a son, and that given by grace for God. These two loves are two abysses, whose depths we cannot sound and whose extent we cannot take in. But in face of them we may truly say, with the Psalmist: Abyssus abyssum invocat:^ "deep calleth unto deep " — since, to form the Blessed Virgin's love, the tenderest feelings of nature and the most powerful forces of grace met together. Nature had to be present because the Love was for a son, and grace because it related to a God. Ordinary nature and ordinary grace would, of course, not have sufficed to create such an affection; but we know, from our 1 De Laudib. B. Virg., Homil. v. 2 pg. xli. 8.

previous searchings into the origin of Mary's maternity, that both nature and grace in her were extraordinary. Hence a little reflection on the workings of this double love within her, after she had been left on earth without Him Who was its object, may give us some faint idea of how it might pierce and wound her heart with its longings till the frail body could bear it no longer: — and thus become, as I have said above, truly the cause of her death. It is held by Catholic tradition that the Mother of God remained some time on earth after Our Lord's ascension, it being His pleasure that she should stay to comfort and help the infant Church during the early days of His departure. If we would understand, in ever so faint a degree, what must have been her impatience to rejoin Him during all those years, we must try to measure it by her love. There can, I think, be no exaggeration in believing that, had God not willed her to live in this world for a certain time, any one of the sighs of longing that her heart breathed forth would have been strong enough to bear her soul away to its desired goal. Indeed, it would be almost truer to say that the Blessed Virgin's death, caused by Divine Love, was the cessation of a miracle than that it was itself miraculous; for the real miracle lay rather in her being able to live on earth for so long parted from her Beloved.

Believing, then, that excess of love alone brought about the ending of this wondrous life, we may go on to ask in what particular way the death-blow was given? Did some more strongly-inflamed desire — some more violent transport — than any before, come to carry off Mary's soul? I venture to hold that it was not so; but that when the appointed time for her release had come it was wrought simply by the gradual perfecting of her love, which — having always reigned in her heart without the slightest obstacle — at last reached such perfection that an earthly body could no longer contain it. Then the holy Mother gave up her happy soul into the hands of her Son: not by any sudden or extraordinary special movement, but gently and sweetly. Even as the lightest touch will make a ripe fruit drop from its stem, so was this perfect spirit gathered in one moment to its heavenly home, without effort or shock — needing nought to carry it upwards save its own holy desires. Thus did Mary's Love reunite her soul to Jesus through a happy death, which consigned her body to the tomb. But the mortal part of Christ's mother was not to stay long within the shadow of the grave; and we must now go on to see the effects of Holy Chastity in helping to bring it forth.

Mary's sacred body — the throne of Chastity, the temple of Incarnate Wisdom, the instrument of the Holy Ghost, the seat of the Power of the Most High — could not remain in the tomb. Her triumph would be incomplete if it took place apart from her holy flesh; for this, expressly sanctified to form the body of Christ, had been as it were the source of all her glory. The Blessed Virgin's flesh, we know, was virginal flesh; and the power of holy virginity had worked three special wonders therein. It had saved it from corruption, drawn down heavenly influence upon it, and surrounded it with divine light. These three marvellous effects of virginity in her flesh had in their turn produced three conditions which, together, resulted in the assumption of her body from the tomb. First, the fact that Mary's flesh was saved by the virtue of holy chastity from corruption prevented it from being dissolved, like that of mankind in general, at death. We have seen how, at the first moment of her existence, Mary's body and soul alike were preserved from the stain of concupiscence, so that they possessed perfect integrity. Now, to grasp fully the necessary effect of this miracle — which we call the " Immaculate Conception " — on her whole nature, it is absolutely necessary to understand clearly what this freedom from concupiscence, in her, meant, St. Thomas tells us we are not to suppose that the extraordinary grace bestowed upon Mary merely tempered — as in others among the elect — the fire of concupiscence. He says that not only were evil works, evil desires, and even wrong inclinations, destroyed in her; but that the very origin of the fire itself — the first spark, so to speak, whence the flame of concupiscence might spring — what theology calls fomes peccati — was utterly extinguished. Further, entirely to elucidate the point that I wish to make clear, I must ask you to remember what is Christian teaching as to the ordinary cause of death in our sinful race. We may not hold, with mere men of science, that it is simply a necessary consequence of the composite nature of our bodies. We are bound to raise our thoughts higher, and to believe that what subjects our flesh to the law of corruption is the fact that it attracts what is evil and is a source of bad desires: in short, as St. Paul says, that it is caro peccati} Flesh such as this has to be destroyed, even in the elect; because whilst it remains " a flesh of sin," it is unworthy to be united to a glorious soul, or to enter into the Kingdom of God, which " flesh and blood cannot possess".^ It must, then, change its original form that it may be renewed, and lose its first life to receive a second from the hand of its Maker. For God allows this flesh of ours, all disordered as it is by concupiscence, to fall into ruins, that He may rebuild it Himself according to His first plan at its creation. This is what we must hold as to bodily corruption if we would follow the teaching of the Gospels, from which we learn that our flesh has to be turned to dust because it has been the servant of sin; whence we cannot fail to see that Mary's flesh, being absolutely pure, must in consequence be incorruptible.

• Rom. viii. 3, ^ Cor, xv, 50,

And it was for the same reason — i.e.^ through the action of its virginal purity — that her flesh was destined to be endowed prematurely with the gift of immortality. Though God has fixed upon some particular moment for the general resurrection of the dead, He may yet be compelled for special reasons to anticipate that time in favour of the Blessed Virgin. An apt illustration of such forestalling may be found in a common earthly phenomenon. The sun naturally brings forth fruit only in its due season; but there are certain modes of cultivation which cause plants to experience his influence more quickly, and to spring up and bear fruit long before that season arrives. Even so there are "forced" plants in the garden of our Heavenly Spouse; and Mary's holy flesh was a substance prepared for producing the fruits of immortality before the commonly appointed time, by the peculiar heavenly influence drawn down upon it through its perfect chastity. In fact, its conformity with the Flesh of Christ fitted it to receive a specially prompt effect from His quickening power. Our Lord had taken upon Him that virginal flesh — had dwelt enclosed within it for nine months — had loved it so much as actually to incorporate Himself with it. It is not, therefore, to be supposed that He would leave a body so well beloved as this in the tomb. He would naturally bear it away immediately to Heaven, clothed in immortal glory.

And this glory, again — this robe of Immortality — will be the effect of Mary's Immaculate Conception:

and for this reason; — Jesus Christ, in His Gospel, represents the glory of risen bodies to us by saying that we shall be in heaven " as the angels of God "} Hence Tertullian, speaking of risen flesh, calls it " angelicised flesh " — angelificata caro. Now, of all the Christian virtues, the one that chiefly forms angels on earth is Holy Chastity. St Augustine has said of it that " whilst dwelling in the flesh it has a quality not of the flesh," ^ and which partakes rather of the angel than of the man. A virtue that has power to produce angels even in this life may well produce them in the future one; and we have therefore good reason to believe that chastity plays a most special part in clothing our risen bodies with their glorious garments of immortality at the Last Day. If Mary's body, then, because of its conformity with the body of Our Saviour, surpasses the very Spirits of Heaven in purity, what may we not imagine its glory to be! To give us some slight notion of it. Holy Scripture has placed the moon under her feet and the stars above her head; whilst it has represented the sun as piercing her through and surrounding her with his rays: — Mulier amicta Sole: ^ this being the only image that earth could aff"ord brilliant enough to symbolise the beauty and splendour that must clothe the Mother of God in her risen state.

^ Matt. xxii. 30.

"^ " Habet aliquid jam non carnis in carne." — De Sancta Virginit.' n. 12, torn. vi. ^ Apoc. xii. 2.

Such, then, was the work of Virginal Purity in Mary's flesh. The only point now left to consider is what particular relation her perfert Humility of heart has to her final triumph. We shall understand this best by a further comparison of her with her Divine Son, for the triumph of Christ — His victory over sin and death — was brought about solely by Humility: by the humbleness of perfect obedience to His Father's Will. Now, Mary could not really rejoice in her triumph if she were to reach it by any other way than the one that her Son Himself had chosen; and hence we may be sure that by Humility only she was raised to her throne, and in the following manner: —

The property of true humility is to strip and impoverish itself, but at the same time to clothe and enrich itself in a marvellous way by its own very act, because whatever it gives up it assuredly gets back. It cannot be better described than by St. Paul's expression: " having nothing, yet possessing all things "^; and by shortly recalling the chief sacrifices of Mary's life we shall see how perfectly this description may be applied to her mode of practising the virtue.

The Blessed Virgin had three most perfect possessions. She had her high dignity; her wondrous purity of body and soul; and her motherhood of Jesus

^ Coloss. i. 19.

Christ: — she had for her own Son Him in Whom St Paul says " it hath well pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell ". In her, then, we have a creature greatly distinguished beyond her kind; but we find that her deep humility strips her in a sense of all these wonderful privileges. Though raised far above others by her dignity as Mother of God, she lives a life of obscure service as one of the common herd; though separated from all by her immaculate purity she mixes in the society of sinners, and purifies herself as they do. But she does more than this: from Calvary she even loses her well-beloved Son. And she does not merely lose Him by seeing Him die a cruel death, but by His ceasing, in a certain sense, to be her Son at all and by His substituting another for Himself: " Woman," He says to her, " behold thy son! " Be sure that Our Saviour did not speak in this way to His Mother without reason. He would not appear not to know her — would not call her Woman instead of Mother — if there were no deep mystery hidden beneath His action; and the reason of it may be found in the state of abject humiliation in which Our Lord then was, and which He willed that His holy Mother should share with Him by the closest possible imitation. We must remember, here, that Jesus had a God for His Father, and Mary a God for her Son. At the moment we are speaking of, the Saviour had lost His Father, as a father, and called upon Him only as His God. Mary, then, must lose her Son, to correspond with this supreme sacrifice; and hence He addresses her now as " woman," and not as " mother ". Further, which is the deepest humiliation of all, He gives her another son; as though henceforth He would cease to be hers, and meant to break the bond of their sacred union. St Paulinus gives as Christ's reason for this act that whereas, so long as He lived His mortal life on earth, He had paid every possible honour and service that a son could pay to His Mother, and had been her constant consolation and support, now that He was on the eve of entering into His glory He assumed an attitude more suited to the dignity of God; and therefore gave up the natural duties of filial love to another. Thus was Mary left with St. John for her son in the place of Jesus, Who had Himself instituted the exchange. She humbly accepted the humiliating decree, and took the disciple instead of the Master — the son of Zebedee instead of the Son of God (as St. Bernard says) — to her maternal heart; and so she lived for many years on earth, only thinking in her humility that she deserved not to be the Mother of God.

But if Mary was thus perfectly stripped of everything, that her humiliation in this world might bear a close likeness to her Divine Son's, she was to have all back in full, and more than full, measure; her humility was not only to " have nothing," but to " possess all things". Because she made herself the servant of others she is to be raised to a throne;

because she purified herself — being all pure — as though a sinner, she is to be the advocate of sinners, and their refuge next after Christ: Rcfugium peccatorum; and because she gave up her Son, and patiently and humbly bore His apparent desertion of her, that beloved Son will now enter once more into His filial rights — which He had ceded to John but for a time — and will present her before the whole heavenly court as His Mother.

Thus, then, are the words of my text fully verified in Mary's glorious Assumption. Truly, indeed, may we say that she " cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning on her Beloved "; for the arm of her Divine Son supports her, His well-known voice makes music in her ear, and her heart overflows with heavenly joy at the thought that it is to His merits and love alone that she owes every gift that she has received, and all the songs of praise wherewith the Angelic Hosts greet the entrance of their Queen. Surely we may without presumption imagine the Patriarchs and Prophets of the old Law echoing, as it were, the last words of her own magnificent canticle, when they see the mother of the Messias Whom they had prophesied appear, by uttering some of their own inspired sayings. Moses would surely cry as he beheld Mary assume her throne, " A star shall rise out of Jacob and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel "; ^ Isaias, seized with the spirit of God, would ^ Num. xxiv. 17.

sing in a rapture of delight: " Here is that Virgin who was to conceive and bear a Son "; ^ Ezekiel would recognise in the Virgin Mother that " shut gate " '^ that was never again to be opened because " the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it "; whilst Royal David, standing in the midst, would intone, to a heavenly lyre, his grand song: " On Thy right hand stood the Queen in golden raiment, wrought about with variety. All the glory of the King's daughter is from within, in fringes of gold, wrought with divers colours. After her shall virgins be brought unto the King — her neighbours shall be brought unto Thee. With joy and gladness shall they be brought unto the King." ^

Mary, meantime, will once more pour forth her Magnificat and sing the praises of God, Who by all this honour bestowed upon her has indeed gloriously rewarded the humility of His Handmaid.

^ Isaiah vii. 14. ^ Ezek. xliv. 2.

3 Ps, xliv., 10, 14, 15, 16,