On Mary's Hope: You Cannot Give What You Do Not Have
Solemnity of the Assumption
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council conclude the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, with the following words: In the interim, just as the Mother of Jesus, glorified in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come, so too does she shine forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, as a sign of sure hope and solace to the people of God during its pilgrimage on earth.
Those words are important for us. Human life is transitory; we exist in an ‘interim’ between creation and restoration, final redemption; the world is not as it ought to be or will be. The consequence of living in the time between creation and redemption is the reality of pilgrimage: the Church is on a journey toward the perfection of the world to come, and you (the people of God), are on a journey toward the perfection of the world to come. The journey is hard because life in the world (the interim) is hard; despair, anger, resentment, fear, apathy, always threaten to seize the heart and corrode the soul.
But we are not left to our pilgrimage without the support of God. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, assumed body and soul into heaven, is given to us as a ‘sign of sure hope and solace.’ The pain and suffering you experience on your journey is answered by God with the divine sign of Mary’s assumption: the Mother of Jesus is saved, redeemed, completely and totally—body and soul, spirit and flesh, every corporeal and pneumatic ounce of her life is restored to glory. Mary has finished her pilgrimage and is given to you as a sign so that you might complete your journey and move forward with the confidence of knowing that the broken world in which we live will one day be restored; there is the meaning of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The world needs that kind of hope and consolation. I met a young man last week who stopped me and asked for a blessing. He looked like he had recently started sleeping on the streets, and he pulled up his shorts to show me a massive burn on his leg. He fell asleep one night on the sidewalk, and at some point, in the middle of the night, steam from the City’s water heating system pushed up through the ground and scalded him terribly. We talked for a few minutes, I gave him and his friend a blessing, and I have not seen him since.
But there is someone who needs the hope and consolation of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to know that his whole life, body and soul, spirit and flesh, might be saved, redeemed, restored to glory. We have important work to do, as a community and as a Church.
Today begins a new mission year for Source of All Hope at the Baltimore Basilica. Julia and Ginger and Steve and Gianna and Emily are going to spend the next twelve months setting an example of what life-on-mission looks like to any of us who live or work or worship in Baltimore City. There are people around us suffering from the worst kinds of poverty, material and spiritual, who will learn something of the hope that comes from Christ because these young men and women take the time to know them and to love them.
I was thinking that I should give the missionaries a piece of advice for the start of the new year. But what I want to say to them is an old cliché that holds true for each of us: you cannot give what you do not have.
I will return to those words in a moment.
The hymn that Mary proclaims at the end of today’s Gospel is as interesting as it is beautiful. The Magnificat consists of two parts: first, Mary says that Christ is the solution to her personal problems in life—vocation, mission, meaning, purpose; second, Mary says that Christ is the solution to the problems of the world—violence, poverty, injustice, sin, death. The Magnificat is a hymn of profound hope because Mary recognizes that there is no problem in life—her life or the life of the world—to which Christ is not the solution, the answer, the divine remedy for illnesses both personal and social, intimate and cosmic. And now because of the Incarnation, Mary has Christ, knows Christ, loves Christ.
If you took a few moments to make a list of problems— whether in your life or out there in the world—to how many of them would Christ be the answer or solution? Is the fact of Christ enough for your hope, or are you looking for some other source of consolation? Family problems? Christ. Meaning in life problems? Christ. Poverty and injustice? Christ. War and violence? Christ. Sin and death? Christ, Christ, Christ. There are lots of people out there selling false hopes, and plenty of people making a purchase because the wrong problems in life become consuming, and lesser answers than Christ come cheaply and without sacrifice.
We can get back to talking about not giving what you do not have. The world needs the hope and consolation that comes from Christ, but you cannot give what you do not have—and you cannot give hope if you do not possess hope, and you cannot possess hope if you settle for cheap answers to the wrong problems in life.
Mary recognizes in Christ the solution to the problems of her life and the life of the world, and her faith in Christ sets her on mission. Her life, in turn, becomes a source of hope for us who now make our pilgrim journey toward redemption. And our lives, when fixed on Christ and given over to the work of the Gospel, become a source of hope for everyone who suffers in a broken, imperfect world that itself awaits redemption and restoration.
The world needs the hope and consolation that comes from Christ, through Mary, to us, through us—but you cannot give what you do not have.
Homily preached on Thursday, August 15th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary