August 13 - "The Solemnity of the Assumption"

We will celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption on Tuesday of this week.  I saw a report of a talk that Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles recently gave at the Napa Institute.  His remarks are very timely as we prepare to gather for Mass on the Solemnity of the Assumption.
               Early in his talk Archbishop Gomez notes that there is no question that our institutions and national self-identity were meant to be shaped by a vision of the values of the Gospel.  The promise of America—what distinguishes this country from all the rest—is our commitment to promoting human dignity and freedom under the Creator.  At the heart, this is a Christian commitment. 
               But these things are changing now.  We face aggressive and organized agendas by elite groups who want to eliminate the influence of Christianity from our society.  Our beliefs are now labeled as a kind of hatred or intolerance.  Our Church institutions face lawsuits—the “crime” of still believing what Jesus taught.  The “crime” of not wanting to cooperate with practices we find immoral or dehumanizing.
               Archbishop Gomez went on to give a spiritual interpretation of the Guadalupe story in light of the present situation in our country.  He sees the story of Guadalupe points to five themes:  vocation, education, life, culture, and family.  He believes that if we look at these themes, they give us a strategy for Christian living and carrying out the Church’s mission in this post-Christian culture.  Let’s look briefly at three of these five themes for the remainder of this column.  We’ll look at the other two themes next week.
               Vocation.  Our Lady entrusted St. Juan Diego with a task—to build a shrine in her name “to show, praise, and testify to God.”  When he first met the Mother of God, St. Juan Diego protested that he was neither strong enough nor holy enough to do what she was asking of him.  In return Our Lady told St. Juan the following:  “Understand that I have many servants and messengers who I could send to deliver my message and to do my will.  But it is absolutely necessary that you yourself go.”  Archbishop Gomez believes that God is speaking these words to us at this time.  God has a message that he wants each of us to deliver with our lives.  We need to rediscover the truth that each of us has a vocation to be holy, to be saints.  Holiness does not mean separation from the world.  Holiness means transforming the world—living totally for the love of God and sanctifying the world by our love and service.
               Education.  The second lesson of the Guadalupe story is that we need to teach the knowledge and love of Jesus.  When St. Juan Diego met Mary, he was on his way to church.  Every Saturday and Sunday he would get up before dawn and walk nine miles from his home so that he could go to Mass and then go to classes to keep deepening his knowledge of the Catholic faith.  As far as Juan Diego was concerned, Jesus Christ had come into his life and there was nothing more beautiful than to know Jesus.  This is a message for the Church in our times.  We need to renew in our times the Catholic imagination and our sacramental vision.  We need to push back against the scientific and materialistic vision of our age.  We live in a culture that tells us that there is no reality that “transcends” what we can see and hear and taste and touch.  This is a world without the possibility of God. 
 
When Juan Diego was in the presence of the Virgin, he wondered whether he was in paradise.  With her coming, the mountains were filled with songs like wonderful birds.  Flowers bloomed in the winter season in soil where there were only stones and cactus and thorns.  In our teaching, then, we need to help people see that our lives are connected, part of the beautiful mystery of God’s plan of creation.
               Life.  The Virgin of Guadalupe appeared as an icon of new life—as a woman carrying a child.  Guadalupe is a vision of the world as God wants it to be.  The “shrine” that Our Lady wants us to build in the Americas is a new civilization—a culture that celebrates and welcomes life.  The Christian faith in this new world confronted the brutality of Aztec human sacrifice.  The saints and missionaries of the Americas proclaimed that every life is precious and an image of the living God.  We need to continue that mission.  As we can see every day in our society, life has become “cheap” and easily discarded.  We see this in the crisis of homelessness, in the lives wasted by addiction.  We see it in the spread to push euthanasia and in the continuing tragedy of abortion.  The saints of the Americas teach us to go to the peripheries and margins of our society—to care for those who have no one to care for them.  They teach us to meet “others”—as brothers and sisters—and to serve them from the heart at a personal sacrifice.  We need to help people today to see the face of Christ in those who are sick and suffering.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John