Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady
Mass for Pregnant Women
St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Apoc 11:19, 12:1-6, 10; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Lk 1:39-56
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
15 Aug 2010
It is most appropriate that we celebrate our third annual Mass for pregnant women on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.
We know that Mary has a unique spot in Catholic life, receiving honour and devotion second only to that given to her Son, Jesus Christ. When I was young the Church was criticised for paying too much attention to Our Lady and such criticism is still heard from some hard line Protestants today, despite Mary's prominence in the New Testament. More frequently, however, the Church is accused of being anti-women, because of the Catholic refusal to ordain women priests.
I do not want to set too many hares running so I should return to the first feast of the Assumption, which was only decreed as an official dogma of the Catholic Church in 1950.
In the Christian east, now largely the world of the Orthodox, the feast was known as the feast of Our Lady's Dormition, or falling asleep, and we have evidence of this celebration from the fifth century.
The Catholic teaching on the Assumption is that, because of her preeminent faith and goodness which was recognized in her being chosen as the mother of God's Son, Mary was taken up body and soul into heaven at the moment of her death.
Many of the ancient pagan Greeks believed in the survival of the soul after death (immortality), but we also believe in the resurrection of the body on the last day as Christ promised. In some way we shall be body and soul in heaven. I suppose we shall be at our spiritual, moral and physical peaks, which probably will require characteristics from different periods of our lives. Most of us are not spectacularly wise or unselfish when we are young!
The first strange reading from the Book of the Apocalypse recognizes Mary's immense dignity by describing her as the woman adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, with twelve stars of her head as a crown.
Her pregnancy with the Christ child is also acknowledged explicitly as she was crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth and we then have a horrible symbolic description of the struggle between good and evil, between herself and her child on the one hand and the red dragon, symbol of evil, with seven crowned heads and ten horns on the other.
But while the struggle is described for us too brutally, it is followed by an explicit claim for the victory of goodness. "Victory and power and empire for ever have been won by our God", through the life and activity of the grown Christ Child, who has gained full authority over all creation.
Mary's cooperation in all this, which is a poetic description of our redemption, is absolutely essential and indispensable. And just as Mary had a central role in the story of our redemption, so every mother has a crucial role in the total development, physical, spiritual, moral and educational of her children. This is an immense honour, but it is also a considerable responsibility. As Elizabeth exclaimed in today's gospel Mary was blessed and the fruit of her womb was blessed and in a different way a similar point must be made about every mother and child.
In the nine months of pregnancy and the long years until the child becomes an adult, the mother nurtures her child physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is a wonderful and difficult task and vocation, where the woman is called to give her all, preferably supported by a loving and energetic husband. As Pope Benedict has insisted "every child who is born brings us God's smile", although I suppose this is not as evident when they won't stop crying!
The ancient conviction that each person is unique, which is regularly confirmed as parents marvel at how different the personalities of their children are one from another, has been reinforced by modern scientific discoveries of D.N.A., the constituents of the human genome, where much of our unique development is programmed from the moment of conception.
Our talents and capacities are mightily influenced also by nurture, by the love, care and stimulus we receive in the early years from those who love us; first of all from mother and father, but especially also from brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Babies are not there to be hidden away from the extended family!
Every child has a unique spiritual potential to be developed through baptism, the reception of the other sacraments and being taught to pray and believe as well as to follow the commandments of love. Parental example is crucial here.
And every new-born has the capacity to share the vision of the one true God in heaven. The baptism ceremony explains the pride and joy of every mother as she sees the hope of eternal life shining in the eyes of her child.
All these are great blessings, and on many occasions they do not come easily and without sacrifice and difficulty. I pray that no mother here, today will suffer the hurt and turmoil of Mary's life; the scandal of the divine conception, Joseph's first instinct for a quiet divorce, her giving birth away from home in a stable, her flight as a refugee to Egypt and then being forced to watch the struggles and suffering of her Son's public life.
Following Christ does not guarantee us an easy life, but it does bring peace and does give us strength for difficult times.
We thank God for the fact that Australia is becoming friendlier to children, despite considerable unease, not all of it justified, about our immigration rate. Last year Australia welcomed a record number of new babies, 301,000 in fact.
Half of these births were to first-time mothers, while another third were having their second child. Another good sign was that the number of births per woman under 30 years of age increased for the first time since 1971. The Australian fertility rate is now 1.97, still not enough to maintain replacement levels, but it is improving. We thank God that these trends are moving slowly in the right direction and call on all political parties to help those women who want to have children and are constrained by financial pressures.
Parents who have hope, who believe in service and sacrifice for good causes, who do not believe that a high standard of comfort is the most important achievement, will have children. There is no Catholic regulation that you should only have two children, just as there is no Catholic regulation that parents must have the maximum number physically possible. But we all should remember that siblings are a blessing for one another as well as for their parents.
The feast of the Assumption teaches us many lessons. Mary's going to heaven body and soul at her death is a vindication of the goodness of material creation, of our bodies. It reminds us of the central role of women in society, in the life cycle and in the importance of being good wives and mothers.
And the feast of the Assumption reminds us of the importance of spiritual values and of the reality of the life after death and finally it reminds us of the wonderful eternal future of happiness which is the proper destiny of every baby who has been born or is yet to be born.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
