“For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death for ‘he subjected everything under his feet.’”

          There are two ways to defeat death. For most people, defeating death just means prolonging life. Many take this approach to medical care, prolonging life at all costs, or just losing sight of the real ends of human life. But merely prolonging human life is not enough to defeat death – it will eventually come for us all. The most compelling answers to the deepest questions of human existence (whether religious or secular), are inevitably supernatural. There must be a deeper sense in which death is defeated than merely the scientific and medical prolonging of life.

The Book of Genesis sets out how death was not a part of God’s original plan, or at least not death as we currently know it. Our first human parents enjoyed the gift of immortality. Now, Adam and Eve would not necessarily be alive today even if they hadn’t sinned, but the end of their earthly life would not have been painful. They would have met Death as an old friend, as a necessary step on the pilgrimage by which life is changed, not ended (in the words of the funeral Mass).

Thanks to sin, though, death becomes an enemy to be defeated. Instead of the necessary and welcome passage to a higher existence at the end of a long and beautiful life, death in the world of sin encapsulates all the limitedness of human existence. Thus, St. Paul teaches that Christ does not fully reign so long as those who belong to Him are subject to any other power. And so, “when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power,” even death will be subject to Him.

          The fact that, at the end of Her earthly life, Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven, shows that victory over death is possible not only for Christ, but for us too.

          The Fathers of the Church agree that, just as Her Son suffered bodily death, so too did Mary pass through the temporary separation of body and soul, only with a complete absence of suffering. The Eastern Church calls this Her Dormition. She was then taken immediately, body and soul, into Heaven. She is the first to experience what all the saints will undergo at the end of time: the re-uniting of our souls and bodies. This is what we mean when we profess each Sunday in the Creed that we believe in the Resurrection of the Dead: not only that Christ rose from the dead, but that our bodies too will rise at the end of time, restoring us as whole human beings the way that God created us and desires us to be: body and soul together.

We can see the Resurrection throughout Mary’s life. The Gospel today takes us back to the beginning of Mary’s story, just after She has become the mother of the Redeemer. She remained sinless throughout Her life, already enjoying here on earth the blessedness that we hope to enjoy in Heaven, when the deceptions of the Devil will no longer lead us astray. Even at the beginning of Her journey, though, Mary is already pointing towards the end. “All generations with call me blessed,” She says.

          What St. Paul says about victory over death gives us an important insight into our Blessed Mother in another way. “For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead came also through man,” he tells us. Just as Eve shares in Adam’s fall and even precedes it, Mary shares in Christ’s victory as co-redemptrix, and She even precedes His victory by being born without original sin as a singular grace in anticipation of Her Son’s redemption. Thus St. Paul tells us, “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order.” Mary is the first to be redeemed in Her Immaculate Conception, so She is also the first to experience the Resurrection today in Her Assumption.

The Blessed Mother’s Assumption is about hope. Not wishes, but hope, which is the expectation of attaining that which is difficult to obtain. In Her Assumption, She conquers not only death, but every suffering and pain and unfulfilled longing present in this life. Mary shows us that the path of hope  in the Lord will liberate us from every trial. In the Resurrection, all that was lost is restored. All that is good is revealed. God’s hidden purposes are made known, and the ways He has triumphed amidst sorrow and pain drown all sorrow in glorious light. What truly defeats death, is love, the greatest love ever known when the God-Man laid down His life for His friends.

This, then, is why our Lady’s Assumption is so important: She inspires us to place our hope in Christ, to trust that He alone (not science, not technology, not magic or ill-gotten wealth or gain) has the power to defeat the greatest enemy of our fallen human nature, because He already has, and because His victory is made visible in the person of His and our Blessed Mother. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death for ‘he subjected everything under his feet.’” By the grace of Mary’s Assumption, may we all be inspired to seek Her Son’s final victory in Heaven.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope

In Assumptione B.M.V. A.D. MMXXV