Choose What Mary Did

15 August 2025  Luke 1:39-56

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.”

Luke 1:49

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was made infallible doctrine in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XII on All Saints’ Day, 1950. At the time, the world was still healing from the greatest catastrophe of the 20^th century, perhaps in world history, World War II, and it was sliding into a twilight war with communism that would last for the next forty years. Though fascism had been defeated, it was growing clearer all the time that the poisoning of western culture had not been reversed. In fact, that poisoning had happened before World War II, and would continue long after. Pope Pius believed that the world desperately needed an antidote, and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was at least part of that. He said:

Thus, while the illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals that follows from these teachings threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and to ruin the lives of men by exciting discord among them, in this magnificent way all may see clearly to what a lofty goal our bodies and souls are destined.

“The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name” (Luke 1:49). Mary recognized that a fork in the road for the whole world had been reached with her – it is one of the reasons she “set out in haste” to see her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Suddenly all the things that had seemed strange and incomprehensible made sense because of what was happening in her, and round her. She knew that everyone and all ages now faced a choice: “He has helped Israel, His servant, remembering His mercy, according to His promise to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever”(1:54). We can go the way of that promise, made visible, fruitful and tangible in Jesus Christ, or we can go some other way, but any other way isn’t going to be real, however vivid and tempting it may look. She had made up her mind, and so she sang: “My soul doth magnify the Lord!” (1:46).

The tradition isn’t clear whether Mary actually died before being assumed into heaven. It is clear about Peter, and Paul, and all the other disciples – they all died and were buried, and we know roughly where and when. But there is no reliable record that Mary died and was actually buried anywhere. Perhaps it is the Holy Spirit’s way of saying that all generations, including ours, are still facing the same fork in the road. The great Russian novelist and dissident Aleksandr Solshenitsyn thought so. In 1978 he was invited to give the commencement address at Harvard, and delivered one of the most important speeches of the 20^th Century, “A World Split Apart.” He concluded it, saying:

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the modern era.

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.