Today, as you well know, we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. This feast commemorates the end of her life here on earth, and the start of her life in heaven. It is on this interaction between the earthly and the heavenly, the natural and the supernatural, that I would like to preach on today, since I have been invited to preach on celebrating the sacraments and liturgy worthily for our spiritual growth. The liturgy is that part of our earthly, or natural life, which – if done worthily – can help us not only for our eventual supernatural lives, but, more importantly, help us to experience the supernatural even here on earth. But more about this later.
It is doubly appropriate that we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, during the feast of her father, St. Joaquim. Appropriate because there is a pious tradition that along with his wife, Saint Anne, St. Joaquim dedicated Our Lady to service in the Jewish Temple as a child, and she spent her youth weaving garments necessary for the temple liturgies.
In other words, the liturgy is so important, that we should dedicate not just our lives, but also the lives of our children, to ensure that the liturgy is noble, dignified and composed of only the best. Remember, that as per tradition, St. Joaquim and St. Anne, were childless until their old age. Despite this, when they eventually obtained a child, they dedicated their child to service in the Temple. What a great lesson this dedication offers parents who dissuade their children from religious, or priestly, life. And they do so, knowing that we have a crisis in vocations, knowing that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the transmission of the sacraments are impossible without priests. To those of you who are parents, and those who – through the grace of God – will become parents, may St. Joaquim inspire you, and intercede for you, so that your hearts may be open to this grace.
But let me return to my promise to speak about the Our Lady, the earthly and the heavenly, the natural and the supernatural. Our Lady is an example of where these two, normally opposite, things meet. As we know, through the grace of God, Our Lady was prevented from contracting the stain of original sin. This is to say, she was immaculately conceived. In some way, therefore, she was always associated with the supernatural, she did not suffer from the stain of original sin which marks our nature. Nevertheless, just like our common ancestor Eve, who was also created without the stain of original sin, Our Lady continued to have free will, and could have sinned in the course of her life. And yet, she was always obedient to God, especially when she offered her “Fiat” to the annunciation – “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, Be it done unto me according to Thy will.” From this moment onwards, and until the birth of Our Lord, she was the Temple, housing the presence of God on earth. In other words, Heaven and the Earth, the natural and the supernatural, met in her body for the first time. And because she continued to remain sinless through the rest of her life, her body did not suffer corruption, but was taken up into heaven when her time on earth was over. This is the feast we celebrate today, the Assumption of Our Lady.
My dear brothers and sisters, in Lumen Gentium, the fathers of the Vatican Council II hailed Our Lady as a "type", “figure”, or “model” of the Church. If heaven and earth, the natural and the supernatural met in her, and her actions allowed for the heavenly to descend to earth, for the natural to be elevated to the supernatural, then this is also what happens in the church, and through the liturgy. Heaven and earth meet through the liturgy, and our natural selves and filled with supernatural grace. This bears repeating: at every Mass, and other liturgies of the church, heaven and earth meet, and our natural selves are filled with supernatural grace. This is all you need to go away with today, everything else I will now say is only an elaboration of this idea, and what we must do to be worthy of this encounter.
It is because the impossible happens, that the awesome takes place, that the liturgy of the Church must be solemn. Speaking soon after his election to the Pontificate to the Eastern Churches, Pope Leo said:
We need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!
Mystery, beauty, wonder, these are some of the constituents of solemnity. Unfortunately, in our churches in Goa, today, the concept of a solemn liturgy is practically unknown. We do not do in our liturgies anything that we do not do in regular life. We offer the Blessed Sacrament a casual bow instead of a genuflection. We take communion in our hands, and show it scant respect, and sometimes when there are other things in our hands – too often women come with handkerchiefs in their hands and think it acceptable to receive communion on their hands. A man once approached me with his child in his arms, and extended his hand casually to receive communion! After communion, rather than kneeling in prayer until the post-communion prayer, we sit down. When the Blessed Sacrament returns to the tabernacle we continue to sit, instead of standing in respect. Is this the behaviour of those who realise that heaven and earth have just met?
After years of prioritizing Concanim to the exclusion of other languages, and especially the exclusion of Latin; by trying to vernacularize as much as possible, our liturgies have become gaunti, not universal. They have become mediocre, not excellent. We have excluded Gregorian chant from our singing, and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish hymns sung in church from hymns sung at parties or dances. Instead of the dim lighting, that evokes the humble light of candles, that elevates the sense of mystery, we flood our churches and chapels with white light as if they were football stadiums!
My dear brothers and sisters, our encounter with the liturgy should elevate us, take us to a place beyond the natural. But too often, this is not our attitude to the liturgy. We have domesticated it so that it is just as ordinary as the rest of our lives. In other words, my dear brothers and sisters, our attitude to the liturgy is marked by the vice of sloth.
In one of his homilies, St. Anthony quoted from the book of Sirach (50:9) and suggested our Our Lady was
like a vessel of hammered gold
studded with all kinds of precious stones;
Perhaps taking inspiration from such comparisons, and comparisons of Our Lady to the Ark of the Covenant which was made of incorruptible acacia wood and overlaid with gold, our ancestors ensured that the liturgy used only the best and most precious materials. The vestments of the priests, or the altar cloths were made of silks, cottons and linens, instead of cheap synthetic materials. The Body and Blood of God rested on gold and silver, instead of steel and other cheap metals.
My dear brothers and sisters, St. Joaquim dedicated his daughter to the service of the temple, and She dedicated her life so that we may have experience heaven here on earth. Let us, therefore, on this feast day of Our Lady dedicate ourselves, and our children, to granting to the liturgy, the dignity it demands so that we may grow spiritually.
Saint Joaquim, pray for us.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the chapel of St. Joaquim, Borda in the course of the novena prior to the his feast.)
(Image reference: The Disputation of the Blessed Sacrament, Raphael, 1509-1510, Vatican Museums, Rome.)
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