Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 08/15/24 Assumed Into Heaven

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Homily from the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Body and soul in Heaven. The fact of the Assumption is the greatest reminder that all those who have died in Christ are meant to rise with Christ. All of us will get our bodies back and we will rise on the Last Day; some to the Resurrection of Glory and others to the Resurrection of Shame. Mass Readings from August 15, 2024: Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10 Psalms 45:10, 11, 12, 161 Corinthians 15:20-27 Luke 1:39-56

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

Your Spirit. He reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 1, verse 39 through 56. Mary sat out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, Blessed are you among women?

And blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how is it, does this happen to me, that the mother, of my Lord should come to me. For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you, who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. And Mary said, My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. For he has looked on his lowly servant. From this day, all generations will call me blessed. The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm. He has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things. And the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant, Israel. For he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children,

forever. Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. The gospel of the Lord. May you to have a seat. So on this solemnity, it's kind of, it's a couple things. There's so many things to be able to talk about. We can talk actually, we could if we wanted to talk about where does this this doctrine, where is this truth that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven at the end of her earth or life. Where does that come from in the scripture? We could talk about that a little bit, but I think a really important thing is to just let's just talk about what it means. Like, what does the assumption of Mary point to?

It points to a lot of things I want to highlight. There's three brief things briefly. So again, this solemnity today, the assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary is that Mary, at the course of her earthly life, so whether she actually died a natural death or as the Christians in the East say, that she went into the dormition or into the slumber,

at the end of her earthly life, God did not leave her on earth, but brought her into heaven with him. But not just her soul, he brought her body and soul into heaven. So this highlights a couple things. Number one is, I would say this, this doctrine highlights our absolute and utter dependence on God for everything. Here's what I mean. What, when is a person more helpless than in death? Like in the sense that, that after day,

death, you can't do anything. I mean, when we're alive, we can kind of move. We can kind of, we have, we have our free will, we can move our bodies, we can move, we can make decisions, we can impact the world. But in death, we are utterly dependent on God for everything. You know, Jesus, he says it makes it very clear. Actually, even in life, Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing. And just to reflect on that for a second, I know for myself, I've said this before, I'll say it again. When I hear those words, apart from me, you can do nothing. Jesus says, I think, well, yeah, I mean, I can do less. But no, Jesus is saying absolutely definitively, apart from me, you can do nothing. And that becomes so starkly clear

and obvious in death. It's the assumption of the Blessed Reverend Jeremiah reminds us that before God, we were absolutely powerless. And in so many ways, they're absolutely powerless. us. Like what, honestly, what could a, what could a dead person do on their own accord? What could a dead person do of their own will? Absolutely nothing. But God can do something. And so God's assuming Mary, bringing her back to life, essentially, bringing her into heaven, body and soul. It's all God's work. It's all God's initiative. It's what we call grace. Our absolute and under dependence on God for everything is why he gives us his grace. I mean, think about this. So here's, here's Mary at the end of her life.

Completely powerless, completely dependent on God for everything. And what does he do? He gives her his grace and he assumes her, brings her into heaven, body and soul. When did you experience something like this? I would venture to say, you might have experienced something like this at your baptism. Maybe you're baptized as a baby. I was baptized as a baby. I think the only person only being less powerless than a dead person is an infant, right? A newborn, completely powerless. What can you do? What can you offer? What can you... How can you earn grace? How can you earn anything? There's nothing you can do. So the great mystery of God's grace is, even an infant baptism, is that grace is

given to us when we can do nothing, when we can't do anything to earn, to deserve, to merit, to warrant God's grace, he just simply does something in us. that we could never possibly do for ourselves. Just like Mary being assumed into heaven. God does something for her. She can never possibly do for herself. At your baptism, God does something for you that, and for me, that we cannot possibly do by ourselves.

And this is just the mystery of God's grace. It's offered. And the crazy thing about this is, okay, not only is it not merited, not only is it not deserved, not only is it something we can't work for, we have to accept it as it's offered. What I mean by that is, we don't get to choose how God's grace comes

to us. I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Because sometimes I've thinking about it. I'm like, okay, God, give me this particular grace, that particular grace. I want it in this way. I want it in that packaging. And yet we don't get to choose how God's grace comes to us. Mary didn't choose to be assumed in heaven. She was simply, she simply received it. You and I, if you were baptized as a child, you didn't choose how God's grace would come to you and how he would adopt you and bring you to himself, you just have the chance to accept it. And that's the mystery of God's grace.

We do not merit it. We also don't get to choose how it comes to us. Our choice is to accept it and to cooperate with it. So here's Mary, who allowed herself, essentially, to be assumed into heaven. Here's our choice. As we allow ourselves as we allow God to do his great work us. That's the first thing, our absolute and utter dependence on God for everything.

The assumption highlights this because Mary was helpless and God lifted her up. You and I are helpless and God lifts us up. But who does he lift up? And that's the second great thing about the assumption is the assumption reveals our true identity. Here's what I mean. So John Paul the second in his theology of the body, he dived it deeply into this and he said, what I want to do is I want to unpack what he called an adequate anthropology. Now this is big words I understand. But an adequate anthropology is, a view of the human person, like that's the anthropology, a view of the human person that isn't limited, but is a more comprehensive understanding of what a human being is. So here's a question. John Paul II tried to answer.

What is a human being? Like, what is it to be human? Well, one is a human being is someone made in God's image. That's great. Okay, someone made in God's image. That's what human being is. but made of what? I don't know if you've ever asked the question. Someone made in God's image, made of what? And the answer, in so many ways, simply put, is a human being, is someone made in God's image, made of body and soul, right? Made of matter and spirit.

That human beings are unique among all of God's creation. Because here in God's creation, he has angels, we have pure spirits, no bodies. In in God's creation, we have an incredible amount of animals and creatures that crawl on the ground and fly in the air and swim in the ocean, and they have bodies, but they don't have spirits. They don't have souls. Human beings, I don't know if you realize the uniqueness of what it is to be human. We are the only being we know about, at least, in God's creation, that is made up of body and spirit.

So here we are, made in God's image, made of what? Made of body and soul. Which is one of the reasons why death becomes so awful. because you are your body and you are your soul. In death, what happens? It's not just that your body stops moving. It's not just that your heart stops beating or your brain stops working.

What happens in death is that body and that soul duality, right? That unity of body and soul becomes separated. The soul leaves the body and leaves us, I'd say even partially ourselves. in death, we are still only partially, truly ourselves. So even those who are, even those now in the New Covenant, who are in heaven, they're not in heaven complete. There's a particular kind of lack. Now, they might be experienced fullness as full as they can possibly experience God's grace,

but they all in heaven, except for maybe one to three people, one to four persons in heaven, experience heaven in a slightly limited way. You know, again, to the fullness of their capacity, but they all experience heaven as souls, but they're meant to experience, and you're meant to experience heaven as body and soul. So in heaven, we know that Jesus, he's united his divinity to humanity. So he brought his body into heaven. So that's one person, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, has united to himself. That's one human body in heaven.

We also know that Elijah was taken up into heaven. So maybe Elijah's body's in heaven. Maybe Enoch, maybe Moses, for sure, Mary. That Mary, at the course of her earthly life, right at the end of her earthly life, she's brought up into heaven, body and soul. So she is the only human being that we know of at least, for sure, who is experiencing heaven as heaven's meant to be experienced. Remember that Jesus, we heard in the second reading today, Jesus is the first fruits.

Because why? Because he's experienced resurrection where his body and soul were reunited. Remember, when he died, his body and soul was separated and his soul descended into Hades. In the resurrection, his body and soul were united, reunited, and he assumed he ascended into heaven under his own power. He can do that himself. He's got. for Mary, she, her body and soul were brought into heaven, not in her own power, right?

This is all God's grace. This is our utter and absolute dependence of God's grace. She was brought into heaven so she could experience the fullness of heaven. And so we can see, oh, that's our destiny. So Mary is the first person to be able to participate in Jesus Christ's redemption and restoration because that's your destiny. Your destiny and mine. What God wants for all of us is after our death, yes, our souls will go to heaven, God willing.

Maybe pass through purgatory, praise the Lord for that. But at the resurrection, at the end of all things, every single human being will get their body back. Those who are in heaven will get their bodies back. Those who are in hell will get their bodies back. And for all eternity, you will be a human being. Meaning you'll be one made in God's image and likeness, made of what? made of body and soul restored. God wants for you and I to experience that fullness with Him in heaven.

So we can experience the fullness of joy, of love, of life, all those things. It is possible to lose ourselves and to experience not the fullness of joy, but the fullness of separation, the fullness of a lack of love, the fullness of despair, the fullness of hell. He does not want that for any of us. Mary, and the assumption of Mary, reminds us this third piece that God's will for you, God's will for me, is that we won't stay here. I know this is the last thing.

I know that so many of us in this life we experience a lot of pain, a lot of suffering grief and loss. Some of you who are watching this, praying with us, listening to this, are in one of the worst seasons of your entire life. And you wonder, is this ever going to end? The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a reminder that this is not our home, that there is a God who loves you.

And you and I are completely and utterly dependent on His grace. And we get to receive His grace as He offers it. Not as we want it, not as we think we could earn it or deserve it. We get to receive His grace as He offers it. We get to accept it and cooperate with it because your destiny is to once more be united with your body and soul in heaven. Because heaven is our home. I think we often forget to live for heaven.

Let me just make it more personal. I think I often forget to live for heaven. What I mean by that is I still pray. I still have mass. I still read the scriptures. I still try to live for the Lord and try to be a disciple of Jesus. But sometimes I forget that this. This is not my home.

Sometimes I forget that being surrounded by so many good things and so many dark things to think, like, this is where we're at. This is all there is. And I forget to live for heaven. This feast day today is a reminder to never forget. To never forget of our absolute and utter dependence on God for His grace. To never forget your true identity, Menechah's image, body and soul. And to never forget.

to live for heaven, where Mary at this moment intercedes for you and intercedes for me and the prayers of a loving mother.