You might have heard that a month ago Sir Richard Branson travelled to space in the vehicle that his company had been developing for 17 years. The event was quite widely met with a proverbial shrug of the shoulders as the billionaire’s costly vanity project, with many downsides and no real benefits. I’m not going to argue for or against it here and now. But his achievement might be a useful illustration of today’s feast, the Assumption of Our Lady – and I don’t mean the lazy route based on the name of Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic. From the outset, his project had a very clear aim: opening space tourism to wider audiences. After seventeen years of development, he took to the skies and reached where others will follow soon – apparently around 600 individuals have already paid deposits for tickets. This is where I see a parallel with today’s feast.
The Assumption of Our Lady is a celebration of the ultimate crowning of Mary’s life: ‘when the course of her earthly life was finished, [she] was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven’ – as stated in the official papal announcement of this dogma. The document explains that ‘by her assumption, she has attained the final bodily resurrection promised to all Christians, and the Church has reached its ultimate salvation.’ In other words, Our Lady trailblazed the path to which each one of us is called. She has reached where we are to follow. But how can we do this? It might be tempting to think that it’s impossible to imitate her and follow in her footsteps. Quite right, if we were doing it in the literal sense. But that would be the wrong approach. Mary, like any other canonised saint, isn’t proffered to us so we can replicate her deeds but rather her attitude in finding and fulfilling our own specific vocation and following our specific path of life. So, what was Mary’s attitude?
Firstly, she didn’t vie for fame. It’s stunning how inconspicuous her presence is in the New Testament. In the gospels, she is mentioned by name only a dozen times, mostly by St Luke and mostly in the narrative of Jesus’ infancy. Yet her quiet, supportive presence weaves throughout the gospels all the way to the birth of the Church on Pentecost Sunday. This attitude was beautifully and concisely expressed in her words: ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord.’ (Luke 1:38)
That leads us to another aspect of Mary’s attitude: her faithful obedience to God: ‘let it be with me according to your word.’ (Luke 1:38) Sometimes faith is misunderstood as a case of blind, irreflective, rigid and uncompromising sticking to religious rules and laws. As a Jewish girl, Mary was formed and shaped by the Jewish holy scripture that we know as the Old Testament. Its first five books are called the Torah – the Law. The entire Old Testament is peppered with references to meditating, reflecting, understanding and accepting the Law. Through such a process, an individual enters into a dialogue with the living God and finds his or her specific call. In the well-known scene when the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would become the mother of the Son of God, she responded with a question: ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ (Luke 1:34) Only on having heard some explanation does she accept God’s plan: ‘let it be with me according to your word.’ She continued reflecting on her life’s events to see them through the prism of her faith, as testified by St Luke: ‘Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.‘ (Luke 2:19.51) St Paul confirmed such an attitude in his letter to the Romans: ‘Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of God.’ (10:17)
Such faith, born out of meditation on the word of God, leads to practical application in the form of charitable love. Having heard and accepted God’s plan for her life ‘Mary set out and went as quickly as she could to […] Elizabeth,’ her relative who was pregnant in her old age and in her second trimester, and ‘stayed with Elizabeth about three months.’ We can be absolutely certain that Mary ‘did not come to be served, but to serve,’ as later her Son would describe his mission. She continued to have such a quiet, supportive, inconspicuous but active presence throughout her life; we see that at the wedding at Cana (‘They have no more wine’), at various stages of Jesus’ public ministry; the agony of standing at the foot of the cross where he died. Mary was at the heart of the Church, praying with the Apostles when the Holy Spirit came down upon them. She keeps helping us; that’s why we pray: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.’
Considering the cost of space tourism – a quarter of a million US dollars – it’s unlikely that any of us will reach beyond the skies and experience 5-minute-long weightlessness. On the other hand, in our baptism, we have already received our ticket to heaven and looking up to Our Lady, we can be sure that this is within our reach, and for eternity.
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