Assumption Day 2012

Assumption Day 2012 (Luke 1:46-55)
“He has filled the hungry with good things.”

Grace is the gift of God. The gift of God is the abundance of God.
At the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel greeted Mary with the words: Hail Mary, full of grace.

Gabriel did not come to fill Mary with grace. God had already filled her with grace. The abundance of grace is the Real Presence of God.

Most people most of the time reject the abundance of grace in the Real Presence of God. The evidence of this statement is recorded in scripture, history and personal experience. Most people most of the time make choices that reveal to others and to ourselves that we do not value the Real Presence of God. What we do not value we do not choose.

The most obvious evidence to support this statement is the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath Day, the seventh day, is the Day of Real Presence. Moses writes that God designed time itself to reflect the seventh day. It is the time when the timeless touches time. It is the day when the infinite and the universal is available to the limited and the particular. Moses and the prophets also record their observations that most people most of the time reject the gift of the Sabbath.

That gift is God’s promise to be with us and to bless us with the abundance of grace.

Separation from God is subject to the law of diminishing return. The more you get the less you enjoy but the more you want. The soul disintegrates into stagnation through the pursuit of separation. The soul also seeks greater and greater external stimulation to mask the pain of separation.

Grace is just the opposite of separation. Grace is immersion in divine abundance. The more grace you get the more you enjoy grace and the more you are able to expand and transform into grace.

Mary grew in grace. She grew in grace in the threefold manifestation of love: love of God through worship, love of others through acts of compassion, love of the unique image of God imprinted on her soul through Bible study, prayer, and the surrender of self will to divine will.

Unlike so many people in the long history of Israel who said “no” to God, Mary said “yes”. Mary grew up in a time of religious controversy and conflict. People argued over religious belief and practice. Mary lived a life of grace. She focused on worship, service and personal transformation of her mind, heart and will.
Mary asked honest questions to seek knowledge, understanding and wisdom. When the archangel told her she would be the mother of God’s Son she asked the very logical question: how can this be?

God invites our questions. Mary asked a question in order to hear the answer.
After Mary received the answer to her question she declared: I am the Lord’s servant. She did not presume to change the message of God. She did not debate the angel. She did not claim any special position or privilege. She expressed her moment of grace in the joy of grace by acknowledging the reality of grace: I am the Lord’s servant.

Mary knew that if you name God, Lord, than you are not Lord. You are not in control. You do not make the rules or establish the plan. God does that.\

As the Lord’s servant Mary declared: may God’s will be done. Surrender to God’s will is not the same as submission. Submission to divine will always asserts the hidden bargain: I will do what you want so that you are obligated to give me what I want.
Surrender is the total immersion of the will in the love of God. Surrender is not resignation to overwhelming and incomprehensible power. Surrender is the embrace of the Great Mystery of Divine love by faith. Surrender says: I fully accept your plan and your purpose and I delight in your Real Presence. The framework of power, of command and control, is simply absent from a soul that surrenders to the Real Presence of Divine Love.

Mary’s next choice was to share her joy with her cousin Elizabeth. Grace increases as we share it with others. Mary and Elizabeth experienced an infilling of the Holy Spirit as they met and shared another moment of grace.

This moment brings forth the second portion of the Hail Mary prayer as Elizabeth declares to her cousin Mary: blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Elizabeth’s joy echoes in the immaculate heart of Mary to produce the song of worship we know as the Magnificat.

The Magnificat is based on Hannah’s song from the book of 1 Samuel. It reminds us that Mary read scripture, studied scripture and memorized scripture. A soul that is touched by grace discovers a desire to read the Bible.

As we choose to respond to the desire to read the Bible God infuses more grace into our soul. We move from a desire to read the Bible to a passion to study the Bible.
The next step of grace is the real choice to memorize the Bible. Mary embodies this pattern of grace and demonstrates the pattern in the Magnificat.

Grace is like a small seed, a mustard seed. It begins small and understated- almost unnoticed. The seed of grace is nourished in our souls by the real choice we make to meet God at the time and place God has announced he will meet us. That time and place is the altar of sacrifice on the Day of Real Presence.

In the life of Mary we see how grace balances and transforms the duality of human experience: the joys and the sorrow, the life and the death.

There is no evidence that Mary participated in the religious debates of her time and culture. There is every evidence in her song of joy, the Magnificat, that she accepted grace to grow in faith. Faith is about a relationship. Mary had the most intimate relationship with God any human being has ever experienced. By grace through faith she embraced the will of God and became the Holy Mother of God incarnate.

The way of grace is active, dynamic and transforming. As her son was dying a terrible death on the cross, he asked Mary to take the next step in grace. He asked her to complete the apostle John’s spiritual formation. Despite her grief and her anguish Mary once again experienced the events in her life as a moment of grace. This time, she heard the word of God from her only son who is the Word of God.
She accepted this call by grace through faith in the center of the Great Mystery of God: the infinite and eternal love of God.

The example of Mary, and the experience of Mary, is that life on this planet here and now is formed by joy and sorrow. The way of grace that God offered Mary is the way of grace God offers all people. It is the way of grace that invites us into a life of faith. The life of faith is the immersion of the mind, heart, will and soul in the steadfast holy love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Mary’s life is a life of choice. The culmination of all of the small and big choices Mary made is the Assumption. Mary had chosen to open her heart to grace at every moment in her life, in the joys and in the sorrows, in the pleasures and in the pain, in her life and in her death. At the moment of her death, Jesus brought her body directly to heaven and gave her the gift of immediate resurrection. Then, he crowned her Queen of Israel, Queen of Earth, and Queen of Heaven.

The Assumption of Mary at her death, and the Coronation of Mary in Heaven, is not a reward for submission to Law, religion or belief. It is the fruit of a life of grace lived by faith in the Real Presence of the Great Mystery of Divine Love.

We remember today that Jesus fulfilled the 5th commandment by honoring his mother with the Assumption and the Coronation. We also remember how the Assumption and the Coronation model for each of us the glory of a life that embraced both joy and sorrow by faith in the Real Presence of Divine Love.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, hagios theotokos, pray for us to make a real choice to live by grace through faith in the Real Presence of Divine Love.