HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
SEMINARY OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, HOMEBUSH, 15 AUGUST 2025
The Church has just been celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea which ran from May to July 325. Arius of Alexandria had drawn a big following with his teaching that only God the Father was eternal, that the Son was created, and so Jesus was not co-eternal, consubstantial or co-equal to the Father. It was causing terrible division and confusion. Convoked by the Emperor Constantine to resolve the controversy, the Council gathered 318 bishops from across the Christian world to safeguard the truths of faith. 1700 years ago this past month all but two of the bishops present subscribed to the Council’s Symbol of Faith, establishing as Christian dogma the full divinity of Jesus Christ, as “Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, ὁμοούσιον (consubstantial) with the Father”.[1]
Jesus Christ is not the only guy named in the Nicene Creed: there is one other, an obscure Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Virtually nothing is known about him prior to his appointment as the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea around 27 AD until 37 AD. He raised taxes, minted coins, built infrastructure, quelled uprisings, and executed troublemakers. But there are few sources about his life.[2]
Why would the Creed bother naming such a figure, when heroes of the Christian story such as Peter and Paul do not rate a mention? For one very important reason: our faith is not grounded in mythological tales as were the religions of the Romans and Greeks, the Egyptians and Vikings, or the great Asian religions. Christianity is grounded in history, biography, facts, especially about a real man, flesh and blood if also God, who lived in first-century Palestine, in the time of Governor Pilate, and died at Pilate’s hands.
Adonis, the lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone, was gored by a wild boar on a hunting trip and appeared to die in weeping Aphrodite’s arms.[3] But some claimed he never really died and others that he died and immediately returned from the dead: it didn’t really matter for Roman religion. But as St Paul so famously admitted, if Jesus’ death and resurrection did not really occur, Christian faith is altogether in vain. The God-man would not truly have sacrificed Himself for us, nor would He have been vindicated by His Father-God. We would remain mortals and sinners (1Cor 15:14-17). And if Christ’s rising from the dead and into heaven is just mythology, so is today’s celebration of the ‘death’ and ‘rising’ of His mother… so, indeed, is our hope for such a fate for ourselves.
Jesus and Pilate—there is only one other human person named in our 1700-year-old creed: the Virgin Mary. We believe in the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ because we trust the eye-witness testimony of the Apostles and holy women who witnessed the empty tomb, the Risen Lord, and His ascension from this world. We also profess faith in the “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church” founded by Him to carry His story forward dependably. That Church has declared infallibly that the Mary of whom the God-man was born was herself assumed body and soul into heaven. If the Church could get that wrong, we can be no more certain of the history of the Son.
We know far more about Mary than we do about Pilate. We have some historical facts and some data of faith: that she was conceived and lived sinless in Nazareth; that she was betrothed to Joseph; that while a Virgin she consented to conceiving Jesus and was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit; that she glorified God in song, carried Him in her womb and brought Him forth in a stable in Bethlehem and so is called ‘Mother of God’. We know that she protected, nurtured, and taught young Jesus, pondering it all in her heart; that she interceded with Him at the Wedding Feast in Cana and ever since; that she supported Him all the way to the Cross, where the Church was entrusted to her care; that she provided that care by praying at the heart of the early Church for the Spirit of Pentecost. And we know that at the end of her earthly journey, she was granted the privilege of being assumed body and soul into heaven. That is why uniquely of the saints there is no putative burial site, no supposed first class relic of her. Again, because Christianity is an historical religion, these data of faith must be consistent with the historical facts: if Mary in fact sinned, or had intercourse, or only adopted Jesus, or was out of town on Good Friday or Pentecost, or her skeleton was to be found, then what Christians claim is false, vain, perverse. Factuality might not have mattered to the Roman pagans, but it is absolutely crucial for the Roman Catholics!
But if it is true that this girl said Yes to God where the first Eve said No and so many of us have since, if it is true that her Yes was not once off but always, then her life thereafter was simply the consistent unpacking of her grace, her sinlessness, her fiat, and the climax of her life in the Assumption was almost to be expected. If decline, death and decay in the grave are the natural consequences of our sin, it is fitting that sinless Mary not suffer that ignominy. Neither her soul, nor the body it animated, would know corruption. Like in the Son, so also in the Mother, Death was conquered by the Author of Life. And so today we celebrate that she was “raised body and soul to the glory of heaven, to shine resplendent as Queen at her Son’s right hand”.[4]
Some people are nonplussed by the Catholic fuss around Mary. It is enough, they say, that Jesus rose from the dead and all the way to heaven. Does His story have to bleed so much into hers? And all those titles Catholics heap upon her, like Mother of God and Help of Christians: shouldn’t we be giving Christ all the glory?[5] Well, Jesus isn’t jealous, isn’t resentful when His Father’s grace is praised or His Mother’s fidelity. He doesn’t demand all the spiritual limelight for Himself. Indeed, as St Paul once sang, “though He was God, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:5-11). He came “not to lord it over us” so much as “to raise us up to be children of God” (Gal 3:26); not to limit our lives but to enlarge them ”to the full” (Jn 10:10). Jesus is happy to share His glory, including that of His Resurrection (1Cor 15:35-57), and we need not be more cautious in our praises than He is in His actions. And so Elizabeth says in our Gospel today that Mary is “the most blessed of women” and “the Mother of my Lord” (or Queen Mother), the one blessed to believe in His promises (Lk 1:39-56). Mary’s response was to praise God for raising up His humble handmaid to a throne so all generations will call her ‘Blessed’. Jesus’ story overflows into hers, His victory over time, space, and even death itself shines in her, reflected like the moon reflecting the sun.
In celebrating today the Assumption moon who faces the Ascension Sun, we ponder what it means for us: that the story of Christ literally bleeds into Mary’s story and into ours as well, so that in the words of Nicaea, we “look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”. With Paul we preach that Christ has conquered Death, not just for Himself, but so that all who follow Him may share in His Resurrection (1Cor 15:20-26). Dear seminarians, as you discern God’s will for you, embrace it whole-heartedly and live it heroically emptying yourself as Jesus did of any need for glory while being grateful as Mary was for God’s gifts to you. The Almighty has done great things for you, and Holy is His name!
[1] γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί ‘begotten not made, consubstantial with the father.’ Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (43rd edn, Ignatius Press, 2012), 125-26.
[2] Helen Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (CUP, 1998); Warren Carter, Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor (Liturgical Press, 2003).
[3] He is the archetypical ‘dying and rising god’ according to the late nineteenth-century Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890). See also: Paul Eddy & Gregory Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Baker Academic, 2007); Tryggve Mettinger, ‘The “Dying and Rising God”: A survey of research from Frazer to the present day’, in B. Batto & K. Roberts, David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J.J.M. Roberts (Eisenbrauns, 2004); Jonathan Smith, ‘Dying and rising gods’, in M. Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. IV (1987), 521-27.
[4] Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus
[5] Rev 11:19; 12:1-10