Bulletins
August 11, 2013
Download the Bulletin as a PDFThe Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is summer vacation’s annual Holy Day of Obligation, the yearly juxtaposition of the sacredness of the human body in all its heavenly glory and the decadence of its exploitation for earthly pleasure.
At the end of her life on earth the Blessed Virgin Mary was taken body and soul into heaven. Christ promised that He would prepare a place for us in His Father’s House and come back for us (John 14,1-3). She experienced in a singular fashion what we all anticipate in the Resurrection of the Dead. From that moment on for the rest of eternity the souls of the just will have the experience of heaven expand to include transformed corporeality while the souls of the damned will suffer not only spiritually and psychologically but also physically.
As beings with human natures we are properly body and soul even though our souls are immortal and our bodies are perishable. Yet the body is not a prison to escape or a shell to shed. The struggle that St. John teaches us to wage against the world and also the body (1John 2,15-17) serves to purify our sinfulness so that we can fully appreciate how the tangible, visible, audible, gustible (taste-able) and olfactible (sniff-able) serve to bring us immortal creatures into communion with the Eternal Triune God.
Of the many moral and mystical ramifications of our bodies’ destiny revealed by Our Lady’s Assumption, one consideration touches upon most matters of modern controversy: our bodies were made to be holy and chaste. We are born virgins and should be allowed to remain so as we stay in the state of grace. The virginity of those Christians about to be married will yield to sacramental mystery, consecrating themselves to God, to each other and to the new life that may come of the union. In stark contrast is the heart of the libertine which insists upon “the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”, which is to say that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing has purpose, nothing has dignity. In innocence and/or wisdom human beings know better. Our existence and our bodies already have meaning, value, purpose and dignity. Once we discover it we insist on other’s respecting it even though it takes effort on our part to live up to it.
You worship God with your bodies. Keep them holy.
God bless you.
Fr. Christopher J. Pollard
[email protected]
