A few days ago, on August 6, we celebrated the Transfiguration of the Lord. This coming Saturday, we will celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is an interesting link between these two feast days when you step back and look at them.
At the Transfiguration, the Lord brought Peter, James, and John up Mt. Tabor with him. He then spoke to Moses and Elijah. To the three apostles, he appears in dazzling and blinding white as this happens. By speaking to Moses and Elijah, he shows that he is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Perhaps more importantly for this moment, he is showing that even though Moses and Elijah have died, they are somehow still alive! This knowledge, that there is life beyond death, is meant to strengthen the apostles for what will soon happen: the Crucifixion of our Lord.
The most amazing and incredible claim of Christianity is our claim about what happens after death: that those who have united themselves to Christ will live again. We say that what happened to Jesus Christ will happen to all of us too. God wants us to spend eternity in happiness and joy with him. We are invited to life after death, and we will one day be reunited with our bodies. These bodies, freed from disease and sickness will be glorified bodies, shining like Jesus’s did on Mt. Tabor. I don’t think we remember this promise often enough, so I’m going to say it again:
Death will not hold us.
We will all rise again, one day, with our bodies.
God has invited us to spend eternity with him.
This is a wild promise and a shocking invitation. Many religions through history are appalled at the idea God would debase himself to be like us and invite us to join him. Other religions believe we lose our individuality–what makes us who we are–after death. Still others believe that the afterlife is just, generally, a place of suffering and pain which can be mitigated if you were rich or powerful enough in this life.
Only Christianity believes that we stay who we are and that God loves us enough to allow us to be united with him for eternity.
Perhaps the wild and shocking nature of this claim is one of the reasons that we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a feast one which we celebrate that Mary was assumed, body and soul, into Heaven. She is now experiencing the joys of eternity which we are one day called to enjoy. She gets to skip to the front of the line because, well, she’s the greatest of all the disciples. (And, I mean, come on, she’s Jesus’s mom. There’s gotta be perks for that!)
The Assumption gives us another glimpse at the reality to which we are all called, and it shows us that this really is what God wants for us.
One day our Lord will return in glory, and on that day all who have died will rise up out of the ground. Earth will surrender the bodies it has taken in death and return them to us.
The Transfiguration and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are both pointing us to eternity, reminding us that we are called to join God forever and that death cannot contain us. Let us live like we know it.
Fr. Matt