Do It Like Mary
Do It Like Mary
For about 1,400 years, on August 15th, the Catholic Church in the West and Orthodox Church in the East have observed the tradition that at her dying, the Mother of Jesus was taken to Heaven, body and soul. Thus, it is believed, Jesus’s mother became the first of the human race to share in the Resurrection of her Son. The Episcopal Church and its ancestor the Anglican Church, as heirs of both Catholicism and Reformation, state that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation. So, since the Assumption of Mary is not recorded in the New Testament, our Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, does not explicitly affirm the Assumption as a teaching to which all Episcopalians should assent. So, what I tell you here is my pious opinion.
The New Testament is not an exhaustive biography of Jesus, nor an exhaustive history of the Apostolic Church. It reflects the male bias of the age, which presumed that what the men did to spread the Gospel was what merited recording for posterity. So, we hear no more of Mary after mention of her presence at Pentecost. Nor do we hear any more of Mary Magdalene after she became the “Apostle to the Apostles” on that first Easter Sunday. These are, at the very least, unfortunate omissions. I also note there are many traditions about where various apostles are buried, even as far away as Northern India, where even today there are Christians who trace their founding to St. Thomas. But no one claims a burial site for the Mother of Jesus.
Even The Episcopal Church, in our common prayer of the day, praises God for having “taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary,” without specifying the circumstances of that taking. It seems to me that if there is anyone who would have the honor of being the first fruit of the Resurrection, it would be her who shared more intimately than anyone in the Incarnation and Passion of her Son. That is my pious opinion.
What Holy Scripture does give us of Mary is her passionate concern for the poor and oppressed, and her equally passionate faith in the God of her ancestors. Pope Leo concludes his recent encyclical on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence with this meditation of the Song of Mary:
“Mary suddenly sees all of history through the lens of this revelation. Nothing has changed around her; the socio-political situation of her time remains the same. The Romans continue to control her land, and her people are still subjugated and humiliated. Yet, everything has changed within her, and this allows her to see what is invisible. God has already shown the strength of his arm; he has already scattered the proud, cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed. He has already helped Israel, his servant. God ‘takes the part of the lowly. His plan is one that is often hidden beneath the opaque context of human events that see the proud, the mighty and the rich triumph. Yet his secret strength is destined in the end to be revealed.’”
If past devotion overly emphasized Mary’s meekness, we are coming to a greater appreciation of her passionate concern for the poor and oppressed. And if the New Testament gives us so little of Mary’s own words of teaching, at least God made sure that her most important words got through the cultural presumptions of her time. Those words are found in the Gospel of John, where a newlywed couple runs out of wine and Mary says to her Son, “They have no wine,” hint, hint. And after Jesus initially demurs, Mary says to the servers, “Whatever he tells you, do.” She doesn’t confront her Son, or challenge his authority. But she does trust her Son to do the right thing, and tells us to trust him too.
Those five words are all she needs to teach us. Speak the needs of our world to our Lord, and then when he tells us what to do — where two or three are gathered in his name, or in that private prayer where we listen to God as well as talk to God — trust him and whatever He tells you, do.
Mary trusted her Son and pointed to her Son all the way to the Cross, the empty tomb, the upper room on Pentecost, and at her dying, all the way to Heaven. And by her prayers, so can we.
St. Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ
(transferred from August 15th)
August 16th, 2026
The Rev. David Kendrick