I’m writing this week’s message on the 15th of August, the major festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the contemporary Church of England calendar. The date goes back to the early centuries of Christianity, and it continues to be an important celebration in Roman Catholic contexts today, where it marks Mary’s ‘Assumption’ into heaven. (I remember travelling through France once in mid-August with the family and not understanding why the roads were so congested and the queues for petrol were so long – until we realized it was le quinze août, which has its own Bank Holiday.)
In the sixteenth century, Cranmer pointedly left it out of his liturgical calendar in the Book of Common Prayer, presumably because he thought that the teaching about Mary’s ‘Assumption’ (with which the day had become associated during the Middle Ages) was unbiblical.
Of our nine church buildings in Ashford Town Parish, five are dedicated to Mary. That shows how widely venerated she was by our medieval forebears, when 15 August would have been a well-known day of public celebration, but what do we make of all that today? What does Mary mean for us?
At one point in Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, a woman calls out from the crowd: ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ His reply might sound a bit harsh: ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’ (Luke 11.27–28).
But Jesus is always wanting to help people focus on their own response to God’s word, and that’s what he’s doing here. Don’t dwell on what it would be like to be someone else, in some other situation from yours, some other life than yours. Listen for what God is saying to you, here and now, today, though Jesus Christ, and act on it, in the power of the Spirit whom he gives.
Mary is indeed blessed. ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,’ Elizabeth greets her (Luke 1.42). This is not, however, a blessing other than the blessing on ‘those who hear the word of God and obey it’. Mary says yes to God’s word, even when she struggles to fathom its meaning, and even when it turns her world upside down. She gives herself, her body, to bear the eternal Word of God made flesh, so that he might dwell among us, full of grace and truth (John 1.14).
Anglicans have not affirmed the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary’s assumption into heaven, but we can perhaps appreciate the question it is seeking to answer. Given the completeness of Mary’s ‘yes’ to God’s life-giving Word, how can she be severed from that life by death?
May we, together with Mary, welcome God’s Word in Jesus Christ, and rejoice that ‘the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name’ (Luke 1.49).
The Revd Dr Jeremy Worthen
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