He That Is Mighty
The world is full of important people. They are divided into two categories, those who are regarded as important by society at large, and those who are regarded as important only by themselves. Do you consider yourself important? If so, please know that you may be the only one who does so.
Today we celebrate the Assumption into heaven of someone who truly was important and still is. The Blessed Virgin Mary fulfilled a role that no other person has ever come close to, that of being the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and thus of being the Mother of God himself. We’re often asked to follow in the footsteps of our Lady, we’re told she will lead us infallibly to God, and this is true. But obviously we cannot follow the astonishing role to which she was called. When we follow holy Mary, we are asked to follow the example of her virtues—especially that of her humility in fulfilling the highest honor ever accorded to a human being.
We are given a glimpse of this humility in today’s Gospel, where our Lady proclaims that all generations shall call her blessed. At first glance, we may imagine in our ignorance, that she is telling us how important she is. But the words that follow reveal her true humility, when she reminds us that it is not by her own strength and virtue that she has been given the incredible honor to be God’s Mother, but solely because “He that is mighty hath magnified me.” If she has any importance in the eyes of men, she says, it is in spite of, rather than because of herself. In the words of the 113th psalm, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy Name give the glory!” It is God and God alone who has raised her from an otherwise mundane life in the obscurity of Nazareth to be the singularly most important person, not counting her divine Son, who ever lived. She is conscious of her role, but even more aware of the honor due to God alone.
And if we were wondering what this has to do with us, as we live our own mundane lives that in a hundred years will be forgotten by everyone, it’s necessary to recognize in the great gifts bestowed upon Mary that we too are important. For whatever was given to our blessed Mother has been given to us also, albeit in a less spectacular way. While God preserved Mary from the stain of original sin through her Immaculate Conception, he has preserved us from the same ugly stain through the waters of Baptism. While he asked our Lady to bring Christ into the world, he asks us to do the same by our lifestyle and example, by everything we say and do. And while he gave his Mother the final privilege of being lifted up body and soul into heaven on this Feast of the Assumption, he will one day raise us also through heaven’s gate and into his loving arms.
This final privilege is of course dependent on our own reaction to our calling. Will we follow the example of our Lady, acting at all times according to God’s laws and his plan for us? Or at least by striving to do so as far as our weak mortal frames permit? If so, we must recognize that we are indeed important. Important not to ourselves, certainly, but important in the eyes of God, a God who thinks of us as so important that he allowed his only-begotten Son to die for us. Like our Lady before us, let us recognize how important we are in the eyes of God, while echoing at the same time the words of her Magnificat, that it is God alone who has gifted us with this importance—“He that is mighty hath magnified me—and holy is his Name!”