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Pope Benedict XVI delivered this sermon on August 15th, which is the feast day of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the oldest Marian Feast, returns every year in the heart of summer. It is an opportunity to rise with Mary to the heights of the spirit where one breathes the pure air of supernatural life and contemplates the most authentic beauty, the beauty of holiness. The atmosphere of today’s celebration is steeped in paschal joy.

“Today”, the antiphon of the Magnificat says, “the Virgin Mary was taken up to Heaven. Rejoice, for she reigns with Christ for ever. Alleluia”.

This proclamation speaks to us of an event that is utterly unique and extraordinary, yet destined to fill the heart of every human being with hope and happiness. Mary is indeed the first fruit of the new humanity, the creature in whom the mystery of Christ — his Incarnation, death, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven — has already fully taken effect, redeeming her from death and conveying her, body and soul, to the Kingdom of immortal life.

For this reason, as the Second Vatican Council recalls, the Virgin Mary is a sign of certain hope and comfort to us (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 68).

Today’s feast impels us to lift our gaze to Heaven; not to a heaven consisting of abstract ideas or even an imaginary heaven created by art, but the Heaven of true reality which is God himself. God is Heaven. He is our destination, the destination and the eternal dwelling place from which we come and for which we are striving.

St. Germanus, Bishop of Constantinople in the eighth century, in a homily given on the Feast of the Assumption, addressing the heavenly Mother of God said: “You are the One who through your immaculate flesh reunited the Christian people with Christ…Just as all who thirst hasten to the fountain, so every soul hastens to you, the Fountain of love, and as every man aspires to live, to see the light that never fades, so every Christian longs to enter the light of the Most Blessed Trinity where you already are”.

Mary follows Jesus to God’s glory

It is these same sentiments that inspire us today as we contemplate Mary in God’s glory. In fact, when she fell asleep in this world to reawaken in Heaven, she simply followed her Son Jesus for the last time, on his longest and most crucial journey, his passage “from this world to the Father” (cf. Jn 13:1).

Like him, together with him, she departed this world to return “to the Father’s House” (cf. Jn 14:2). And all this is not remote from us as it might seem at first sight, because we are all children of the Father, God; we are all brothers and sisters of Jesus and we are all also children of Mary, our Mother.

And we all aspire to happiness. And the happiness to which we all aspire is God, so we are all journeying on toward this happiness we call Heaven which in reality is God. And Mary helps us, she encourages us to ensure that every moment of our life is a step forward on this exodus, on this journey toward God.

May she help us in this way to make the reality of heaven, God’s greatness, also present in the life of our world. Is this not basically the paschal dynamism of the human being, of every person who wants to become heavenly, perfectly happy, by virtue of Christ’s Resurrection?

And might this not be the beginning and anticipation of a movement that involves every human being and the entire cosmos? She, from whom God took his flesh and whose soul was pierced by a sword on Calvary, was associated first and uniquely in the mystery of this transformation for which we, also often pierced by the sword of suffering in this world, are all striving.

The new Eve followed the new Adam in suffering, in the Passion, and so too in definitive joy. Christ is the first fruits but his risen flesh is inseparable from that of his earthly Mother, Mary. In Mary all humanity is involved in the Assumption to God, and together with her all creation, whose groans and sufferings, St. Paul tells us, are the birth-pangs of the new humanity.

Thus are born the new Heaven and the new earth in which death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more (cf. Rv 21:1-4).

Christ conquered death with love

What a great mystery of love is presented to us once again today for our contemplation! Christ triumphed over death with the omnipotence of his love. Love alone is omnipotent. This love impelled Christ to die for us and thus to overcome death. Yes, love alone gives access to the Kingdom of life! And Mary entered after her Son, associated with his Glory, after being associated with his Passion.

She entered it with an uncontainable force, keeping the way behind her open to us all. And for this reason we invoke her today as “Gate of Heaven”, “Queen of Angels” and “Refuge of sinners”. It is certainly not reasoning that will make us understand this reality which is so sublime, but rather simple, forthright faith and the silence of prayer that puts us in touch with the Mystery that infinitely exceeds us. Prayer helps us speak with God and hear how the Lord speaks to our heart.

Let us ask Mary today to make us the gift of her faith, that faith which enables us already to live in the dimension between finite and infinite, that faith which also transforms the sentiment of time and the passing of our existence, that faith in which we are profoundly aware that our life is not retracted by the past but attracted towards the future, towards God, where Christ, and behind him Mary, has preceded us.

By looking at Mary’s Assumption into Heaven we understand better that even though our daily life may be marked by trials and difficulties, it flows like a river to the divine ocean, to the fullness of joy and peace. We understand that our death is not the end but rather the entrance into life that knows no death. Our setting on the horizon of this world is our rising at the dawn of the new world, the dawn of the eternal day.

“Mary, while you accompany us in the toil of our daily living and dying, keep us constantly oriented to the true homeland of bliss. Help us to do as you did”.

Dear brothers and sisters, dear friends who are taking part in this celebration this morning, let us pray this prayer to Mary together. In the face of the sad spectacle of all the false joy and at the same time of all the anguished suffering which is spreading through the world, we must learn from her to become ourselves signs of hope and comfort; we must proclaim with our own lives Christ’s Resurrection.

“Help us, Mother, bright Gate of Heaven, Mother of Mercy, source through whom came Jesus Christ, our life and our joy. Amen”.

The Pope also noted the following, after leading the Angelus:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, in the heart of what Latin-speakers called the “feriae Augusti”, the August holidays, from which the Italian term “ferragosto” derives — the Church celebrates the Assumption into Heaven of the Virgin Mary, body and soul.

The last reference to her earthly life in the Bible is found at the beginning in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, which presents Mary gathered in prayer with the disciples in the Upper Room, waiting for the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14).

Subsequently a double tradition — in Jerusalem and in Ephesus — attests to her “Dormition”, as Eastern-rite believers say, that is, her “falling asleep” in God. This was the event that preceded her passing from this earth to Heaven, professed by the uninterrupted faith of the Church.

In the eighth century,by establishing a direct relationship between the “Dormition” of Mary and Jesus’ death, for example, John Damascene, renowned doctor of the Eastern Church, explicitly affirms thetruthof her bodily assumption.

In a famous homily he wrote: “She who nursed her Creator as an infant at her breast, had a right to be in the divine tabernacles” (Sermon II: On the Assumption, 14, PG 96, 741B).

As is well known, this strong conviction of the Church culminated in the dogmatic definition of the Assumption affirmed by my venerable Predecessor [Pope Pius XII] in the year 1950.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches, Mary Most Holy should always be seen in the mystery of Christ and of the Church. In this perspective: “the Mother of Jesus in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come (cf. 2 Pt 3:10)” (Lumen Gentium, n. 68).

From Paradise, especially in difficult times of tribulation, Our Lady always continues to watch over her children whom Jesus himself entrusted to her from the Cross before dying. How many are the testimonies of this motherly concern found in visiting shrines dedicated to her!

At this moment I think especially of the unique citadel of life and hope that is Lourdes. I shall be going there in a month’s time, please God, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions that took place there.

Mary assumed into Heaven points out to us the final destination of our earthly pilgrimage. She reminds us that our whole being - spirit, soul and body - is destined for fullness of life; that those who live and die in love of God and of their neighbour will be transfigured in the image of the glorious Body of the Risen Christ; that the Lord will cast down the proud and exalt the humble (cf. Lk 1:51-52).

With the mystery of her Assumption Our Lady proclaims this eternally. May you be praised for ever, O Virgin Mary! Pray the Lord for us.

Reposted here given its relevance to other topics under discussion. Are not the fruits of the promises of the Lord made so wonderfully manifest when we contemplate the Blessed Virgin?

James McGrath writes in to provide some alternative commentary on the issue of Battlestar Galactica’s Theology, which I discussed in this article.

I thought I’d draw attention to some of the posts on my blog about BSG and theology (I’m a religion professor who is also a fan), such as :

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/05/gospel- according-to-gaius.html

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/04/bartlestar- theodica.html

I’d welcome your comments!

While I could say more for Professor McGrath’s opinions regarding Bart Ehrman (my own views on the “problem” of evil and theodicy are well known; I don’t see the existence of evil and/or suffering in the world as any kind of challenge to the Christian conception of God, and regard those who use said issue(s) as an objection to Religion as being, shall we say, rather deluded themselves), some of his views on BSG and the theology of Gaius Baltar’s new religious movement (itself a derivation of the Cylon religion) are rather interesting.

For example, McGrath remarks thusly concerning the first episode of the latest, and final, season of BSG:

In the BSG Season 4 premiere, entitled “He That Believeth In Me“, a more relevant verse would seem to be “Whosoever seeks to save his life will lose it…” Gaius Baltar moves from an unwilling Messiah disgusted by the gaudy Hindu-style flashing votive lights surrounding his picture, to one who seems genuinely willing to give up his life to save another. The “one true God” has yet to be explored fully as a concept on the show, but in the mean time, interesting questions continue to be asked about how we live our lives and what matters most to us.

I observed to my wife, while we were watching the latest episode of the series to date, that Baltar seems unable to avoid some manner of beating in each and every episode he has been in this season. I’d have to go over all the episodes again (we have them on tape), but I can’t recall yet a time when Baltar has not been pistol-whipped, choked, or punched during the course of an episode since the fleet departed the Ionian Nebula

And in each and every case, Baltar’s personal sufferings have been intimately relevant to the narrative of the show. Indeed, through examples as varied as the knife attack on Baltar in the head to Galen Tyrol attempting to choke him, the series has demonstrated in almost every episode this season that the God whom Baltar is preaching effects His plan for humanity in part through human suffering.
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BeliefNet has an interview with Ron Moore, the mastermind behind the new iteration of Battlestar Galactica that I have been watching with avid interest. The topic of discussion is the Theology of the show, which is both a timely topic (given the intensifying religious debate that is shaping up as the show continues through its fourth, and last, broadcast season) and also a necessary discussion.

I’ve been trying to ferret out, for months, exactly where Moore is attempting to take the religion in the show, but one consistent thought I’ve had in all that time is that I really do want to applaud how he has handled the issue in its entirety. Outside of Babylon 5, very few science fiction series have ever really handled the issue of religion in any serious fashion (Deep Space Nine, which Moore also worked on, is the one exception I can think of), and indeed too much of science fiction seems predicated on the assumption that religion will go the way of the dodo by the time humanity well and truly takes to the stars.

I guess that’s why it’s called “fiction,” but still.

Some viewers say the show stereotypes fundamentalist Christians as kind of robotic, while others are saying, “This is great…pagans are finally the good guys!”

The parallels between the Cylon beliefs and fundamentalist Christian beliefs, yeah, there are certain aspects of it there, but there’s also the roots of the drama, also contains things such as Al Qaeda’s use of its religious practice to justify what it does. That’s part of who the Cylons are too, they aren’t just really stalking horses for fundamentalist Christianity.

There also seem to be elements of Eastern religions in the show with Leoben Conoy, another Cylon, talking about consciousness and reincarnation. Does each of the different models of Cylons represent a different religious point of view?

I think that’s true. Part of the idea of Leobon was to separate it from easy stereotypes of Christian beliefs. There wasn’t really a hierarchical church, there wasn’t an easy notion of Heaven and Hell. Leoben was starting to talk about things that were more Buddhist — consciousness, Enlightenment and reincarnation. I thought it was interesting to marry those notions to the idea of one deity.

As to Moore’s own religious views:

Do your own religious views shape the story lines?

I’m an Irish Catholic, not practicing. It probably just reflects my interest in my movement from Catholicism to atheism to agnosticism to interest in Eastern religions. I think the show is a reflection of my acknowledgement that faith and Religion are a part of the human experience, even if I’m not quite clear on exactly what it all means and what I truly believe. The most direct reflection of me in the show is this idea that when the Cylons became self-aware, when they became sentient, when they became people, they began to ask themselves the existential questions: “Why am I here? What is this all about? Is this all that I am? Is there something more?”

My view is that that’s fundamental to a thinking person. And that inevitably leads you to questions of faith and religion and “what will happen to me when I die?”

…

There’s been a lot of chatter on the message boards about the spiritual character of the show, with many people saying they enjoy it.

It’s fun to do a science-fiction series that isn’t just dealing with secular matters. I’m really glad people are responding to it.

I might not agree with Ron Moore’s personal religious convictions, but I applaud him heartily for putting things in this way. The show sets up very nicely many religious discussions, and even in the last couple of episodes there is a great example that one could draw upon.

In looking at Gaius Baltar’s newfound zeal for preaching monotheism amongst the Colonial population, one can draw certain parallels between that monotheism and Christianity. And yet, at the core of the monotheistic sentiments is a doctrine which is actually a logical inversion of Christianity. For whereas Baltar teaches that…

God only loves that which is perfect and he loves you. He loves you because you are perfect. You are perfect. Just as you are.

…Christianity teaches that God loves us in spite of our imperfections, that God — through Jesus — perfects that which he loves.

Things like this motivate a lot of thought, I find, and I think that’s something to be applauded in a television show, especially a science fiction show. Religion is an inescapable part of the human condition, and always has been; it is folly to think, like Gene Roddenberry did, that religion will disappear in due time. It won’t, and more importantly will continue to serve as an impetus for human action and reason for all ages yet to come.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Powerful reflection from Scott Hahn:

“We don’t have to die to go to heaven,” author and speaker Scott Hahn told more than 800 people packed into Ottawa’s St. Patrick’s Basilica April 12.

“All we have to do is go to Mass.”

The former Presbyterian minister, who now teaches Theology and Scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville, shared how he slowly came to understand how the Catholics are standing in Heaven during the Eucharist and sharing in the marriage supper of the Lamb as described in the Book of Revelation.

If one really thinks about it, he’s exactly right: in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Catholic faithful stand in the direct presence of Christ, in all His glory. Where else could we be, then, but in Heaven itself, to witness such glory?

Nicholas writes in with an additional question, a follow-up to his last.

Sorry, Ken, my question wasn’t clear. There are many possible natural reasons why humans do good deeds. For example, some altruism may be built in (in humans and other social animals) because altruism can help you, or your close kin, survive long enough to reproduce. And, if your parents often praised you for being kind (as kind parents do, partly out of self-interest) you may get into the habit of being kind. And sometimes people do good because they believe they will get a reward in Heaven. (That can occur, of course, independently of whether heaven exists. And it raises a whole other debate about whether acts motivated by a belief in heaven are good, or self-interested.)

My question is, can you give examples of good deeds that cannot be attributed to any such natural causes, but only to what you call sanctifying grace?

I would posit that the act of genuine forgiveness — and its being regarded as a good thing — cannot always be attributed to natural causes, for the simple reason that forgiveness in its most genuine form does not involve “forgive, but do not forget.” It is more complete than that, requiring us to both grant that we absolve the person who has wronged us and that we will not in any way hold it against them; in any future dealings with them, we will not anticipate the possibility of a repeated transgression.

I think the reasons this is counter-intuitive to nature should be obvious: the instinct to survive should motivate a person to either never forgive a transgression or to forgive the transgression but to treat the transgressor with hesitance in any future encounters. Complete forgiveness means allowing oneself to again become totally open, and thus vulnerable, to the other, and to a repeat offence.

And yet, people offer forgiveness in this way quite often. Not always, of course, but often. And to do so, I think, puts a human being far outside of his or her nature. A nun, shot in the back, falls to Earth uttering her last words: “I forgive, I forgive.” A Pope makes a point of visiting in prison the man who attempted to murder him, and offers him his complete forgiveness. A man, nailed to a Cross, begs that the crowd of his murderers be forgiven, for they did not know then the full magnitude of their actions. That’s about as contrary to “natural causes” as one can get.

But Nicholas raises an interesting question of his own, O Reader. He lists many beneficial acts — good acts — that people do, and then asks for a demonstration of good deeds that cannot be attributed to natural causes, as though God could and would only choose to manifest His desire that we be moral in the inspiration of those acts which are contrary to, or at least outside, nature. Is it not equally reasonable that the author of all creation would choose to make His desire that we be moral innate to our nature? That is, is it not reasonable to suggest that the reason that human beings are altruistic, and the reason that altruism can be an advantage to survival in a species of social animal) is because it is God has made altruism to be moral, and desires that we live morally in this (and other) fashions?

Atheists are snobs indeed, and people should be good because it is the right thing to do. Dwelling on the idea that one must be good or else be punished is perhaps a valid starting point, if that is the route by which one comes to know God, but it cannot be the end of the journey.

To be fair, we will be judged for our wickedness, as surely as we will be noted for our virtue. And to be sure, it is good to be mindful of this reality — one cannot sin one’s way into Heaven, and one ought not make the attempt. That said, we should be moral for reasons far beyond mere fear, or to avoid being punished; we should be moral because all creation has been designed in a way that should give us impetus to be moral; because to live and act in a moral and virtuous fashion is to live to the fullest potential one has been given by God.

It’s easy to disagree with the non-belief in God. It’s damn hard to disagree with the conviction and integrity.

I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. But if I did, I think breaking a promise to a child should be considered a cardinal sin. A child has their whole life to learn that the world is a dark and horrible place full of people who are going to f**k them over and let them down. Do you really want the person who finally teaches them this to be you?

Never make a promise lightly. But if you do, resolve to keep that promise or die trying.

I look at people like this with a “glass half full” kind of opinion: dead wrong about Religion, unfortunately, but the heart is (more often than not) in the right place…and then in spades. And that’s not a terrible place for a person to be — more than enough such people have done a Muggeridge. It’s not a particularly huge step to make from understanding that there are very fixed tenets of right and wrong at work in the world to realizing that the world was made to work according to those tenets by something beyond human understanding, and then with a very palpable intent.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

But in our secularism-addled world, the bloody obvious has become both foreign and, for many, outright controversial.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday defended the Vatican�s right to speak out on bioethics, including its opposition to artificial procreation methods and embryonic stem cell research.

He also dismissed criticism that the Roman Catholic Church blocks scientific progress.

“Church teaching certainly cannot and must not weigh in on every novelty of science, but it has the task to reiterate the great values which are on the line and to propose to faithful and all men of good will ethical-moral principles and direction for new, important questions,” Benedict said.

Benedict brushed off those who criticize the church “as if it were an obstacle to science and to humanity�s true progress.”

The pope singled out as “new problems” the freezing of embryos, selecting which embryos should be implanted after testing them for defects, research on embryonic stem cells and attempts at human cloning.

He decried them as proof that “the barrier protecting human dignity has been broken.”

Science and religion can be fully harmonized; there are no fundamentally irreconcilable issues between the two. That’s not to say that the two won’t sometimes come into conflict, but it is to say that the true issue is not that science and religion come into conflict, but where they come into conflict.

evolution vs. creation? That’s not an issue — the theory of evolution and the belief that God created all things are fully compatible with each other, in the same way that one can simultaneously acknowledge both the carpenter and the hammer and nails. The business of Religion is not to tell us, as Galileo so nicely put it, “how the heavens go”, but instead to tell us how to get to Heaven. And the business of science is the reciprocal of that, to tell us how the heavens go. More importantly, the business of heaven is not to serve as the defining basis for moral standards, except through the framework of natural law.

The problem — the conflict, if the Reader will permit the use of such a clunky term — arises when scientific study strays into fields that flirt with, or jump headlong into, immoral practices. Stem cell research is the current example, with its tension between embryonic and adult stem cells. Obviously, embryonic stem cells are theoretically more versatile and useful, but they can only be obtained by processes which are destructive to fertilized embryos. The Chuch’s position (which, interestingly, is defensible solely on the principles of biology) is that embryos are human beings, given that they are living organisms of the species homo sapiens, and are genetically distinct from either parent (”parent” here taken to mean the donors who contributed sperm and egg to the researchers).

It is the Church’s contention, then, that embryos, despite the absence of a recognizable human figure, are already fully human, and thus deserving of full human dignity…which includes the right to not be, in essence, cannibalized for parts against their will.

One would think that it would be obvious that the above issue is not a scientific one, but a moral one, and yet for many people the fog of secularism has rendered those two categories indistinguishable from one another. That’s a pity…and it’s why, I think, the Pope has to trouble himself to say something which, only a few years ago, would have been a bloody obvious thing.

Erf writes in concerning my article on the new book by Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose.

Very well said, Ken. As a scientist myself this has always been something I’ve given a lot of thought to.

Science tells us about how the universe works. It tells us about what God created. It reveals the beauty. And it lets us work with it ourselves, echoing the role of creator in our own work. Religion tells us why, to some degree, and more importantly it tells us what to do with this wondrous creation God has made and given over to us to take care of. It tells us how to live, and what that means.

You might be interested in an article from a recent issue of Physics in Canada, called “On the Nature of Science”. Byron K. Jennings (from TRIUMF!) goes into great detail on what science actually does, and tries to do; he explains what scientists mean by a “theory”, and why all of science is open to correction and updating but that doesn’t make it wrong. And yes, he addresses Intelligent Design, showing just why it has nothing to do with science at all. You can find the article for free at arXiv.org, the Physics preprint server.

I do think that there’s a massive feedback cycle between the people writing these atheist tracts like The God Delusion and anti-science religious fundamentalists
Basically one side says “religion proves science is meaningless” and the other says “no, science proves religion is meaningless” and off they go. The truth, as is so often the case, is much more interesting.

Very much so. I wholeheartedly agree that both the fundamentalists and the militant atheists have it wrong in their assertions, although at least most of the atheists have the science right (it is just the theology and the metaphysical conclusions they draw that are incorrect).

Regrettably, the fundamentalists rarely have either the science or the theology right — at least, not to any decent degree. On the plus side, this makes them easier to put in their rightful place on the fringes of the discussion. On the negative side, this makes militant atheists who should likewise be consigned to the fringes seem the more reasonable by comparison, and so gives undue attention and weight to what they are saying.

In your second paragraph, you actually echo Galileo almost perfectly. In his letter to Christina, the famed astronomer — whose faith in Christ and God never wavered, despite the many mistakes the Church made in its handling of his discoveries — remarked that the Bible was meant to tell one how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.

I think that’s a very good picture of what has been called, by others, the “Two Books” approach to science and Religion…that to obtain the fullest understanding of anything, we have to interpret it through the two avenues of revelation that God has given to us: the revelation through His Words (as given in Scripture), and the revelation through His Works (”natural revelation”, or that which science can demonstrate and discover).

(It’s not really a plug for ID when I remark on a concept like natural revelation, either — I’m simply echoing Scripture when I note that God’s glory is supposed to be revealed in Creation.)

Finally, thanks for identifying a 1000-character limit in the contact form. I’ve increased the limit ten-fold now. And yes, I saw that missed italic closing tag, and have corrected it. Thanks again!

The last time I was in Rocky Mountain House, back in 2002, I wrote a couple paragraphs in response to an email my friend Greg Malone sent me. I just wanted to toss it up here to share it with everyone, because even after two years I find it still rings true for me.

I used the thrilling experience of asking Grace out for the first time as a metaphor for something even greater - what Heaven is like.