Our People

Homily for the Meeting of Dominican Provincials of Asia-Pacific Solemnity of the Assumption

St Benedict’s Broadway

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
15/8/2008

In the middle of the first century AD a woman disappeared. Her friends insisted she had, without knowing a man, conceived and brought forth the Son of God; that that divine Son had been executed, had risen from the dead and had also disappeared from this earth; and now, she too had passed from this earth, into that eternity to which Mother and Son both beckon us. Well, these Christians believe many strange things… Amongst Christians little was said openly about her disappearance for some centuries, as they had other battles, whether external persecutions or internal controversies.

Though little was said about the matter of her Passover to the Father, all Christians agreed that Mary had not undergone corruption as ordinary mortals do. None dared pretend to having her relics or her grave, though in the centuries that followed it was increasingly fashionable to claim these with respect to many of her contemporaries and subsequent spiritual children. Some alluded to that chapter of the Apocalypse written by her adopted son John (Rev 11:19-12:10), which was our First Reading today, and saw there her glorification revealed. The Feast of her Dormition was common in the East from at least the 7th century and, with time, even in the sceptical and impious West. By the middle ages it was common knowledge, so that even St Thomas Aquinas and his brother Dominicans, who would not allow that the Order’s protectress was Immaculately Conceived, readily attested to her glorious assumption. Gathering together evidence from the Scriptures, the Tradition and the Liturgy, St Albert the Great concluded that: “it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.” (Mariale, q. 132; cited by Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus 1950, 30).

In many ways it was a natural doctrine for Dominicans to preach, because it insisted on the goodness of human flesh and not just of the human flesh of Jesus Christ now seated on the throne of glory or sacramentally on the altar. If someone who was not God already enjoyed that resurrection promised in the Scriptures and the Creeds, then the Albigensi, Cathar and other dualist detractors of the flesh – whom the Dominicans were founded to combat – were confounded.

Still, it took a long time to be defined for certain. After the horrors of the Second World War, in which crueller things were done to human bodies than at any time in history, it took a great act of faith and hope for humanity for Pius XII to reaffirm the ancient faith of the Church and declare de fide that “the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.” For, despite seven centuries of anti-dualist polemic, not all Christians shared the Dominican enthusiasm for the body. The tendency to elevate the spiritual by demeaning the bodily has often recurred, presenting body and soul as rivals or as prison and prisoner. Still today you encounter talk of ‘spiritual’ people who by quasi-Buddhist exercises or drugs or other means temporarily escape their bodies, or of others who are happily released for good from their body at death, or of others again who go off to inhabit new bodies by reincarnation. Still today we encounter the paradox of a society which at once worships and denigrates the body. We turn a healthy concern for beauty and fitness into compulsive dieting, gym-addiction and cosmetic extravagance, devaluing those with unfashionable physiques. The Olympic carnival, which has placed Asia front and centre of world attention, honours the human body in its own way; but the drug cheats highlight a wider problem with misusing the body in competition and commerce, prostitution and pornography, abortion and drugs, war and suicide.

In such a world to preach that one of us already shares the glory of Christ’s bodily resurrection can be very counter-cultural and very Dominican. To teach that the material order is good and beautiful; that the body is indispensable to that unity which is the human person; that we are created in the image of God in our rationality, freedom and love, but that that same God was created in our image, as it were, when He took flesh as a man born of a woman; that in that flesh He redeemed us and re-presents Himself in the Eucharist to be received into our own substance; that by such sacraments He makes our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit as He made His Blessed Mother at her Conception, Annunciation and Pentecost; that all that is good about us in this life will be assumed into heaven, where we will be restored to bodily life, and never suffer the vandalism of being reduced to mere ghosts… all these are thoroughly Dominican, thoroughly Catholic doctrines, liberating and full of hope, yet still strange to many ears in our Asian-Pacific cultures.

In 1950 Pope Pius defined this as Catholic faith and the Dominicans celebrated this definition in style by creating and naming a new province of the Order: the Province of the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed into Heaven in the Region of Australia and New Zealand. Now it may have astonished Our Lady, Pope Pius and everyone else to learn of that particular geography for the Assumption. But it is a special delight to have the Provincials of that region and our near neighbours here to celebrate with us our Provincial Feast this year. That in this era of virtual reality and high tech communications, you would choose to meet face-to-face reflects again a very Dominican, very Catholic, very Assumptionist doctrine: that we must actually live, cheek by jowl, pray together, worship together, eat together, study together, govern together, argue together, in the flesh, if we are to be truly ourselves.

In our very individualistic age extended families distend into nuclear ones, nuclear families experience nuclear fission, and many live alone, or live as if did. Genuine community can be hard to maintain. Some years ago there was talk of recognizing virtual priories: brothers could live in their own residences, perhaps many kilometres away from each other, but still call themselves one community. Happily the Order rejected such nonsense, not just because it has demonstrably failed where others have tried it; not just because it runs so contrary to our own history and rule; but also because it is contrary to sound Catholic – Dominican – anthropology, treating us as angels with angelic communication, as disembodied spirits needing no physical presence to each other. There are very strong Dominican reasons against community-by-teleconference.

Today we celebrate the first Christian body to enter into glory: the Mother of God is called by her Son to be with Him for ever, “for the Almighty does great things for me”. There are no half-measures in this summons: body and soul she enters now into the risen life of her Son. She does not ascend, of course; she is assumed. Someone else draws her; it is Christ who converts, transforms, assumes us, into His body, His life, His destiny; assuming us ultimately into an eternity of joy with Him in heaven. Even Mary could not do this for herself; she too needed a Saviour, even if hers was the unique privilege of being saved in her very conception by a Son she not yet borne.

Such wonderful mysteries of faith, such profound wisdom about the human person: the Church in Asia-Pacific needs you and your brothers more than ever to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. Recently we were blessed with the first ever celebration of World Youth Day in Oceania and the second, after Manila, in the Asia-Pacific region. It was an extraordinary time of grace not just for the young people but for the whole Church and society here in Australia, a veritable tsunami of faith and joy. Crowds of up to half a million gathered for some of the events, echoing the largest Christian gathering in history, when perhaps ten times that number gathered for Mass in 1995 in Manila. The Dominicans played an important part in WYD08. They contributed to the Youth festival, the Vocations Expo, the morning catechesis. A few hundred metres from here the Dominicans packed the university hall to bursting point. A Dominican cardinal, bishops, priests, deacons, sisters, group leaders, students and pilgrims all collaborated for the week; so did a beatified Dominican layman, Pier Giorgio Frassati, one of the patrons of this and past World Youth Days, whose body lay in this very church for some days and later in the Cathedral. Many were inspired by his story; some I hope will be drawn to share in his Dominican vocation.

One of our weekly columnists, a self-styled ‘urban princess’ Andrea Burns wrote breathlessly in her column that there was a hot new star in town. “This guy eclipses the popularity of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles… That’s right, Joe Rat-Z, the Papal C, was in town for one week only and the kids were going nuts for him… People really love this guy… Despite his age, his funny red shoes and that skill-tester they call the Pope Mobile, Joseph Ratzinger is like totally cool. Could it be that we are wrong about Gen Y?” she wondered. “Are they not the soulless, video-game-playing, pre-marital-sex-having, carefree generation who rather surf for porn than waves? Maybe Gen Y are looking for something to believe in too… The future’s not so bleak and I think the kids proved there is still hope, faith and love out there.” (“Living on a prayer, rock star Pope is a hit with Gen Y,” Sunday Herald Sun 20 July 2008, 109)

Indeed the future is far from bleak. But the call to the preacher to Gen Y is as urgent as ever before. Pope Benedict challenged a new generation to be apostles, prophets, preachers to their peers. With yourselves as their example and in some cases, as their brothers in religion, they will do great things. Blessed Mary, Assumed into Heaven in the Region of Australia and New Zealand, pray for us! Blessed Dominic our Father, pray for us!