August 15, 2024 at St Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL
Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab + Psalm 45 + 1 Corinthians 15:20-27 + Luke 1:39-56
I do not think that the church nor our society has ever been quite ready for Mary of Nazareth and all that she implies for the rest of us human beings. We easily and too often imagine her as the pinnacle of beauty and holiness with crowns and halos hanging over her. I blame that on artists who are failure as theologians. We hardly ever depict her with a skin tone that is anything but white forgetting that she was what we might call today, an Arab or a Palestinian. She was a Jewish woman who did not look like us.
Luke tells us more than anyone about Mary, but it primarily from the infancy stories. At the Annunciation, Mary spoke in the name of all humanity and gave her “yes” to God’s desire to dwell among us. After that, she got down the day-in and day-out business of preparing for what would happen. She sought out Elizabeth, and elder whose experience came closest to her own. When Luke tells that us about that visit, he has Mary singing a song of praise based upon Hebrew scriptures that is a preview of what her son will preach. If the words of that song are taken out of the context of the liturgy or the New Testament, they subversive and on the edge of being communistic in the unwelcome sense of that word.
This woman has no pretensions. She does not see herself as any kind of Queen. She calls herself a slave. Her song is not about her, but is a proclamation of faith, a kind of Creed that praises God in the simplest terms. The song of the mother of God is Luke’s gift to us. Mary’s song urges us to recognize God’s activity in the everydayness of our world. She points to where we can find God working among us and warns us about the possibilities of losing our way. Her Creed leads us to seek God in times and places where the lowly are cherished and the hungry filled.
As we celebrate her Assumption in body and soul, Mary’s canticle tells us where we will find our own salvation. It is where ever the lowly are cherished and the hungry filled. She proclaims that we will find our salvation accepting and sharing God’s own mercy. The more we are able to do that, the more we will sing with her, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” This feast invites us to make her song our own, because we have become God’s lowly servants and begun to realize God’s favor to us. The meaning this feast then, is simply that ordinary people like you and me are created with the capacity to share divine life, and that is what the Church is teaching through this proclamation.