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I think there is
absolutely little denying the fact that ours
is a world that doesn’t much value the dignity of the human body.
Last
century, two world wars as well as conflicts in Korea, Viet Nam, and the
Middle East degraded, trampled over, and destroyed millions upon
millions of human bodies. Recall the death camps like Treblinka and
Auschwitz-Birkenau, the battlefields like Normandy, Gallipoli, and Pearl
Harbor, the cities like London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and
the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. Forget honorable burials...just mass
graves where decaying and rotting bodies are heaped one on top of the
other.
Early
in this new century—and millennium—the dark cloud of terrorism not only
is trampling over and destroying thousands if not millions of human
bodies, but is using the human body itself to perpetrate acts of
violence upon non-combat civilian populations. “Suicide bombers” we
call them. “Martyrs for Jihad” supporters call them. It’s appalling,
no doubt about it. But, let’s not overlook our fellow citizens who
believe that the Constitution guarantees women the right to choose to
abort a fetus from its mother’s womb. As of this morning, 47,282,923
fetuses have been aborted in our own country since the 1973 Roe v.
Wade Supreme Court decision.
In a
series of 129 weekly addresses delivered during the five years between
1979 and 1984, Pope John Paul II described what has been called “an
authentic and sometimes even daring development of thinking” about the
human body. Instead of asking: “How far can I go before I break the
law?”, Pope John Paul said that we should ask: “What does it mean to be
human?” “What does it mean to love?” “Why did God make us male and
female?” “Why did God create sex in the first place?” The answer to
these questions, the Pope asserted, would enable us to develop a more
thorough understanding of who we are as God created us to be. According
to John Paul II, created in God’s image as male and female, our bodies
provide the basis for understanding, living and experiencing our bodies
as a manifestation of God’s beauty.
The
human body, then, is the first and most important sign of the ultimate
spiritual reality of who we are. The human body is not simply a
biological organism but, more substantively from the perspective of
faith, the human body is a sign of a spiritual and divine mystery. This
mystery is not a “puzzle to be solved” but an “invitation to discover
the hidden reality and plan of God” revealed in our bodies. It is in
this context, the Pope says, that we will learn that the human body is a
sacrament possessing divine value, not something that we possess an
inalienable right to devalue and degrade.
Today,
we celebrate the Assumption of Mary, Virgin and Mother of God, into
heaven. Not only was Mary’s soul assumed into heaven; Mary’s body was
also assumed into heaven. While this doctrine doesn’t tell us how God
did this or detail the events surrounding Mary’s Assumption, the
doctrine invites us to believe that Mary was assumed into heaven so that
we might have a deeper and richer understanding of God and of human
existence, too. Furthermore, in light of our belief that Mary’s body
was assumed along with her soul into heaven, the doctrine invites us
also to formulate a deeper and richer understanding of the human body as
a sacrament possessing divine value.
The
gospel of this solemnity records Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, telling
Mary: “Blessed is she who trusted that the Lord’s words to her would be
fulfilled.” That short statement pretty much sums up Mary’s entire
life. That is, at every moment of her life when Mary could have chosen
to listen to words other than God’s word, she didn’t. Evidently, Mary
viewed her life and her existence as a gift of God and lived as God saw
fit, not as Mary saw fit. Even when events meant that Mary would have
to do things and experience things that she’d rather not have to do or
experience—for example, an unplanned pregnancy, walking the way of the
Cross with her son, watching him die on the Cross—Mary revealed in her
body what it means to be a child of God. “Lowly servant”—one who lives
for God—is what Mary called herself.
“Blessed is she who trusted that the Lord’s words to her would be
fulfilled.” God so loved this woman of faith that God took her—soul and
body—to heaven.
Obviously, Mary would not have been Mary if she didn’t have a body.
God’s only begotten Son, Mary’s son, Jesus, would not have been the
Savior if he didn’t have a body. You and I would not be who we are if
we didn’t have a body. Our bodies provide the basis for understanding,
living, and experiencing them as “a manifestation of divine beauty,”
Pope John Paul II reminds us. Mary and Jesus have shown us the way.
The challenge is now ours.
As I
stated at the beginning, we live in a world and culture that have long
devalued and actually degraded the human body. From all sides, we find
ourselves assaulted to do everything we can to change our bodies and how
we appear. The cosmetics industry, the “fat reduction” industry, the
tattoo and ear/nose/navel/nipple/genital piercing industry, the fashion
industry, and the hair replacement industry exist only because we
believe the body God has entrusted to our care is in some way deficient
or defective. Some people actually hate their bodies and are desperate
to change how they appear both to themselves and to others. When we
count ourselves numbered among these people, perhaps our most honest
prayer would be one of complaint to God for having embodied us in such a
second-rate, detestable bag of mortal flesh. “Why did you have to give
me this body, God!” we’d demand. “Look at how you’ve ruined my life.”
In
contrast, the doctrine of the Assumption teaches us the divine dignity
and value of the human body. It is not how we appear in our bodies that
is of eternal significance. No, as Mary taught us by the personal
character she revealed through her body, what is of eternal significance
is how we use our bodies by trusting that the Lord’s words to us will be
fulfilled.
That is
an important lesson for us to learn precisely because the world and
culture we live in so devalues and degrades the human body. However,
the doctrine of the Assumption doesn’t focus just upon our body and its
dignity. It also focuses upon the dignity of every human body.
Beyond
reverencing our bodies and beyond accepting our bodies as the gifts they
are, the doctrine of the Assumption reminds us to remember the dignity
of every human body and to reverence every other human being because God
created each of their bodies in His divine image and likeness, too.
This
“theology of the body” has some very practical implications that have
the power to change our world. For example, to demean others because of
their bodily features by hurling verbally abusive language at them is to
demean the One who created those bodies. To cause harm another’s body
because we resent that person or what their body represents is an
unjustifiable attack upon the revelation of God embodied in this
person. To obliterate a human body purposely is to obliterate a
manifestation of God’s love in human form.
It’s so
easy not to reverence another person or even entire races of people by
reducing the value we accord their bodies to something less than the
value we accord debris. Demeaning, obliterating, and harming the bodies
of other people isn’t anything new, however. Think of what people did
to the body of God’s only begotten Son!
We
might not like our bodies. We might seek to destroy the bodies of other
people. But, the doctrine of the Assumption reminds us that God loves
each and every one of us just the way God created us. The human body
isn’t something we should hate or fear because God created the human
body as male and female to reveal to the world something of God.
“What
good must I do to inherit eternal life?” a young man once asked Jesus.
In this life, constituted as it is of soul and body, the good is
to use both in such a way that we become fit, like Mary, for eternal
beatitude. Then, one day, these lowly bodies of ours will be raised to
the new life won for us in the Lord’s resurrection.
A brief
commercial break...
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HOMILY
