Today’s readings: Chron 15:3-4.15-16;16:1-2; Ps 131; 1Cor 15:54-57; Lk 11:27-28. Rev 11:19a; 12:1-6a.10ab; Ps 44; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Lk 1:39-56
In 1911, Joe Hill composed for the Wobblies, a radical labour organisation, the anthem The Preacher and the Slave, parodying the Salvation Army’s hymn In the Sweet Bye, Bye. The anthem goes: “you will eat, bye and bye, in that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, you’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”
The “pie in the sky” was popularised in the aftermath of World War II in reference to unrealisable prospects of a better future. Ever since, it has become proverbial with critics of religion as, from their perspective, it promises salvation of souls, rather than attending to down-to-earth, day-to-day physical needs. “The pie in the sky” is cited alongside Karl Marx’s pronouncement that religion is “the opium of the people”.
It was in a similar context that the Assumption of Our Lady was defined as dogma of faith. In 1950, the world was still tottering from the ruination of WWII, where an unprecedented level of inhumanity was perpetrated by ideologies of the 20th century which, as history would show, were not to be the last. Pastorally concerned, Pius XII, placed the dogmatic definition in the context of an age “weighed down by so many cares, anxieties, and troubles, by reason of very severe calamities that have taken place and by reason of the fact that many have strayed away from truth and virtue”.
In this particular context, the pope’s hope was that “those who meditate upon the glorious example Mary offers us may be more and more convinced of the value of human life entirely devoted to carrying out the heavenly Father’s will and to bringing good to others”. Pointing to the mystery of the Assumption, the dogma sought to counterbalance “the extinguishing of the light of virtue and the ruining of the life of the human race by the illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals”.
In this logic, Mary’s bodily Assumption directs our attention to the dignity of the human person and “the lofty goal we are destined to”, rendering faith into “our own bodily resurrection stronger and more effective”. So, after all, this mystery is more of a statement on the salvation of humanity, than on the narrative of Mary’s life.
Fabrizio Costa, in the TV mini-series Maria, figlia del suo figlio (2000), poetically captures this logic in the scene of the Assumption taking place in Mary’s house. There, in the scorching afternoon heat of a Mediterranean summer, recalling the Dormitio tradition, the virgin is portrayed half asleep. Jesus irrupts to carry her from that state of threshold consciousness. In the ensuing mother and son conversation, Mary acknowledges: “I have loved my son, more than I have loved God”, to which Jesus replies in a divine-human tone: “It’s the same.”
Indeed, the richness of the Biblical readings for today’s liturgy celebrate Mary as God-bearer, the New Ark of the Covenant, and in equal measure as bearer and carer of human life in all its stages. The Pauline readings intersect on the victory of Christ and his followers over death.
The Assumption reminds us that Christians foretaste “the sky” by gratefully welcoming and sharing “the pie” before we die, in the awareness that disembodied promises of heaven are mere illusions as much as promises of paradise havens nescient of God’s heavenly reign are hellish.