The
Catechism reminds us that “Christ enables us to live in him all that he
himself lived, and he lives it in us” (CCC 521). This extends to His
Paschal Mystery, which culminated in His ascension and exaltation at the
Father’s right hand. We already experience this reality spiritually; when we
pray we come boldly to God’s throne, surrounded by myriads of angels and saints
(Heb 4:16; 12:22-24). Saint
Paul tells us that we will experience it bodily at Christ’s Second Coming: “The
Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command . . . And the dead
in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and
so we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thes 4:16–17).[1] This event
was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, in the assumptions of Enoch (Gn 5:24; Heb 11:5) and
Elijah (2 Kings
2:11–12), and in the resurrection of certain saints when Christ achieved
our redemption: “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were [also]
raised, and coming out of the tombs after [Jesus’s] resurrection they went into
the holy city and appeared to many” (Mt 27:52–53).
Pope
Pius XII has, by definitively proclaiming the truth of Mary’s assumption,
assured us that God is faithful to His word and character. Would the God who
assumed Enoch and Elijah into glory as a reward for faithfully walking beside
Him (Gen 5:24), allow
the flesh of His most faithful Mother to rot in the grave? Would the New Adam
refuse to share the fullness of His victory with the New Eve, bone of His bone
and flesh of His flesh (see Gn 2:23; 3:15; Jn 19:26; Rev
12:1-5; Eph
5:25-29)? Would the Son Who applied the merits of His redemption to Mary
at her conception, refuse to apply those same merits at her life’s end? God
made her the Kecharitōmenē, the one absolutely filled with His grace (Lk 1:28); and, as
Cardinal Ratzinger concluded, “where the totality of grace is, there is the
totality of salvation.” In Mary’s “pure ‘Yes,’ death, sin’s jailor, has
no place.”[2]
The
Church, in its yearly celebration of Mary’s assumption, invites us to be
permeated by the truth that what has begun in Christ – His resurrection and the
glorification of His humanity – will be realized in us (see CCC 966). The
Apostle John expressed his awe at this truth, “Beloved, we are God’s children
now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when [Christ]
appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who
thus hope in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 Jn 3:2-3). Mary prays for
us, asks Jesus to impart the grace moving us to love Him with the purity of her
immaculate heart (Mt 5:8). She
intercedes that we will, “Set [our] minds on things that are above, not
on things that are on earth. For [we] have died, and [our] life is hidden with
Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then [we] also will appear
with him in glory” (Col 3:1–4) – just as she did, “a woman clothed with the
sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve starts”
(Rev 12:1). She is, in the words of John, “a great sign” to us all.
Adapted from Shane Kapler’s The
Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in
Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).
[1] This is
not to be confused with the belief among some of our separated brethren known
as “the Rapture.” For a Catholic critique of this belief, please go here.
[2] Joseph
Ratzinger, Daughter Zion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 78.
