Assumed Body and Soul into Heaven:
This is the heart of the matter! What happened to that flesh which the Eternal Son of the Father took from Mary? What happened to that crucified humanity? What is the fate of the street children feeding from the waste tips of the wealthy; to the body wracked by the pain of addiction; to the woman whose body has been violated by rape and to the boy who has been abused? What will happen to the victims of torture and terror; the slaughtered of the killing fields and the bodies lost in the mud of Passchendaele? Is the woman condemned to a life time of beatings doomed to die a miserable, lonely death? Is the hero who fought to save his comrades gone for nothing? Is the life of that wonderful mother who fought so hard in her battle against cancer utterly pointless? What will happen to the child who died the agonising death of starvation?
This is the heart of the matter and the Dogma of the Assumption boldly asserts that third class citizens, those who are excluded, the inferior and the lowly, are to be lifted high. On the Feast of the Assumption we sing Psalm 113: “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust; from the dung-hill he lifteth up the needy” and we echo Mary’s Magnificat: “He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly poor.”
The Assumption answers the question about what happened to the crucified Jesus: to the flesh and blood, body and soul he took from Mary. But it answers too the question about our own destiny, the fate of the poor: what are we destined for? Dust or glory? And this is why I am a Catholic Christian which is a religion not of “spirituality” but a religion of flesh and blood and reality. Catholic Christianity is not about cosy feelings and personal fulfilment but about the fate of those children scrambling over the scrap-heaps in desperate search of sustenance. Catholic Christianity is the religion of the God who feeds the poor by giving nothing less than himself.
© Peter Bolton
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