The Assumption and the key to Evangelization

A burning question

“How can I spread the Gospel more and better?” “How can we be more apostolic in the current climate?” “How could I share the faith more effectively with others in my daily life?” “What is the key to being an instrument of God’s love in my family, workplace and social environment?”

These are surely good questions, expressing a genuine concern which is relevant now and always.

And the answer?

Perhaps we could take the advice of St Bernard from a famous homily of his: Respice stellam, voca Mariam! – Look to the star, call upon Mary!

The Woman with the answer

Specifically we could contemplate Our Lady in the Liturgy of the Assumption. The Book of Revelation presents us with the dazzling image of the woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). 

This Lady of stellar radiance has already appeared fleetingly in Psalm 45:13, which refers to the princess “decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes”, while the Church places on Mary’s lips the oracle of Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”³

In his Assumption homily of 2007, Benedict XVI meditated on the “multidimensional image” of Rev 12:1-6:

Without any doubt a first meaning is that it is Our Lady, Mary, clothed with the sun, that is, with God, totally; Mary who lives totally in God, surrounded and penetrated by God’s light. Surrounded by the twelve stars, that is, by the twelve tribes of Israel, by the whole People of God, by the whole Communion of Saints; and at her feet, the moon, the image of death and mortality.

Our Lady is clothed with the Sun of Justice, Christ the Lord (cf. Mal 4:2). Her beauty consists in her identification with Christ. Thus she defeats death (the moon) and enjoys an unheard-of intimacy with the entire Communion of the Saints (the crown of twelve stars). Nobody is closer to us than Mary, because no one is closer to the Lord than she is.

The key to being apostles

Mary gives us the key to being apostles of the Lord. It is a question of immersing ourselves in his life, so as to share his life with others. The more we are bathed in the light of Christ, the more Christ can radiate to the world through us.

It is really important to improve how we understand and articulate the Faith. It is truly helpful to improve our understanding of contemporary culture and the mentalities of those around us. But what is absolutely fundamental is to be a branch grafted onto the Vine who is Christ (cf. Jn 15:1ff.). For without him we can do nothing (cf. Jn 15:5), and with him we “can do all things” (cf. Phil 4:13).

This conviction can help us when we face the temptation of pessimism in the work of evangelization. How much the devil would like us to give up our efforts to share Christ with the world!

True, we face a veritable tsunami of secularism, an aggressive culture of death, and the scandal of the sins of members of Christ’s Church and of ourselves. But what is all this compared with Christ “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6)? Christ is the Lord of history. The mission is his and he continues to go on working (cf. Jn 5:17), always and everywhere, and notwithstanding our assessments, his work is eternally fruitful.

Passion for Jesus means passion for his people

What is essential in the life of an apostle is to be united with Christ. Being with Christ always implies reaching out towards others. The more we are “in Christ”, the more we are “for others”. It is the fundamental dynamic of the New Commandment: Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable because of the nature of a life lived in, with and through Jesus (cf. Jn 13:34).

Benedict XVI explains this beautifully in his encyclical on Christian hope: “The relationship with Jesus is a relationship with the one who gave himself as a ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion with Jesus Christ draws us into his ‘being for all’; it makes it our own way of being. He commits us to live for others, but only through communion with him does it become possible truly to be there for others, for the whole… Christ died for all. To live for him means allowing oneself to be drawn into his being for others” (Spe Salvi 28). Pope Francis has put this same teaching succinctly and clearly in his great teaching document on apostolate: “Mission is at once a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people” (Evangelii Gaudium 268).

So sublime, and so close

One could be tempted to think that because of her all-holiness, Our Lady is somehow distant from us who are all sinners. But the fact that she is so sublime in no way distances her from her children. On the contrary. At Lourdes where down through the years, she has helped so many of her children in very personal ways, Mary identified herself precisely as the Immaculate Conception. Mary’s holiness is the reason why she is so close to us.

As Benedict XVI explained with simplicity and clarity: “The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings” (Homily, 8 December 2005).

The December 2015 edition of National Geographic carried the striking cover story of “How the Virgin Mary became the world’s most powerful woman”. After surveying various aspects of Marian devotion from disparate parts of the world the author concluded: “She is the spiritual confidante of billions of people, no matter how isolated or forgotten.”

The apostles of the New Evangelization can surely learn from Mary that intimacy with Christ is what facilitates intimacy with souls.

“The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people”.

This is the key to apostolate. Our efforts at evangelization are a spontaneous fruit of our personal union with Christ. The person who seeks to live in Christ, through prayer and sacraments, who tries to grow in virtue, and especially in charity towards others, is always a natural and effective apostle. To proclaim Christ clearly by how we live and work, and also by speaking about Jesus, is always a fruit of the ascetical effort to welcome the invitation to live “in Christ”.

As St Josemaría puts it in The Way (960): “Just as the clamour of the ocean is made up of the noise of each one of its waves, so the sanctity of your apostolate is made up of the personal virtues of each one of you.”

In the glory of her Assumption, Mary gives us this encouraging lesson. Clothed with Christ, she is simultaneously in intimate union with his mystical Body, the Church, and by extension with the whole human race, since all people are invited to belong to the People of God.

In her Assumption Mary is the personification of the New Commandment. She is also the image of the Church, which, sometimes despite appearances, is always full of the saving light of Christ, in every time and place, and in the life of each of her faithful.

Pray to be apostolic

Communion with Christ and with others, which is the heart of the Church and the essence of the apostolate, is well expressed in a prayer from the writings of the soon to be canonised Blessed John Henry Newman.

Often called the “Fragrance Prayer”, St Teresa of Calcutta said this prayer daily. It may help us too to grow in apostolic zeal in our daily lives.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go.

Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,

That my life may only be a radiance of yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me

That every soul I come in contact with

May feel your presence in my soul.

Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine,

So to shine as to be a light to others;

The light, O Jesus will be all from you; none of it will be mine;

It will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me.

Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example,

By the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,

The evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you.