Time-Slowing Love
The Monday Mystery Part 19: The Assumption of Mary Into Heaven
Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might - Psalm 132:8
Welcome to the nineteenth entry of The Monday Mystery. Each week I will write a reflection on a mystery (i.e. an episode in the life of Jesus or Mary) from the Rosary. My hope for this series is to provide fuel and inspiration for your own meditations. When you finish reading the reflection, I encourage you to do a ‘test run’ of the mystery by praying a decade of the Rosary (i.e. one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be) while meditating on the mystery.
Twenty weeks is a long time. I say this in spite of being at a point where life is starting to speed up. I’ve taken my first steps in the “wow, we sure are getting older!” genre of small talk. And while for the majority of my life I considered college students unreachably older than me, I’ve ‘all of a sudden’ found myself at a point where even recent graduates don’t feel like peers.
Nevertheless, there are still a few things that cause my experience of time to take its foot off the gas pedal. This series of reflections has been one of them. While I felt confident enough to take the plunge into a weekly series this past June, I didn’t have a concept of what it would be like to publish week in and week out for almost half a year.
Standing here at week nineteen looking back on this almost-finished project has reminded me of a time I attended a priest’s fiftieth ordination anniversary. Addressing the gathering of parishioners he’d devoted nearly a lifetime to serving, he remarked, ‘Some people reach this point and say ‘it feels like I became a priest just yesterday.’ Not me! It feels like fifty years!’ Life had not passed this man by.
In a similar albeit much less notable way, these past twenty weeks have not passed me by. You won’t hear me say next week “I can’t believe it’s over - it feels like I only just started!’ It feels like it’s been twenty weeks. People say that time flies when you’re having fun. But it can also slow to a halt for pleasant and unpleasant reasons.
Whether and for whatever reason life goes slow or fast, it will eventually end. In today’s mystery, Mary comes to the end of hers. I don’t think she reached this point and thought to herself ‘Where did the time go?’ Probably no one else in human history had more ‘time-slowing’ experiences than Mary: She gave birth to God, who was miraculously conceived in her womb; she spent thirty years with him as he grew into an adult; she called forth his first miracle; she watched him develop into a mighty itinerant preacher. Finally, she saw him die on the cross only to rise again, and she witnessed the Holy Spirit pour out upon the Church at Pentecost.
This incredible life is captured by the rosary. The rosary begins before Jesus was born with the angel Gabriel announcing his birth. And even after Jesus fully arrives on the scene at the nativity, Mary’s presence is still significant. But after the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus seems to steal the show entirely up until the crucifixion, and even there her moment is one among numerous others.
But as Mary once again takes exclusive possession of the spotlight after an apparantly long hiatus, it’s worth remembering that the rosary is a Marian prayer; Mary is a part of every mystery, even when she isn’t explicitly featured. In the rosary we ponder the life of Jesus through the lens of Mary, and with our hearts, minds, and tongues saturated with a constant stream of Marian prayers. Even if we leave aside the many beautiful devotional traditions which place Mary as a pivotal figure in events like Pentecost, we can and should see Mary as the common thread in all the mysteries.
How so? Because even in episodes where we can be certain that Mary was not physically present (e.g. the Transfiguration), we can feel and know Mary’s presence as Jesus’ mother. Everything he did and does on Earth stems from the ‘yes’ we reflected on back in the very first entry of the Monday Mystery. And Mary didn’t merely tip over the first domino and walk away. Jesus received his very DNA from her. He was nursed and raised by her. He learned to eat and walk and speak and dress himself under her guidance.
It comes down to this: if you want to get to know someone, get to know their mother. No one else in the world has had more influence on them, and no one else has a fuller picture of their life. If you want to get to know Jesus, get to know Mary. Because of this mystery, we know that she is in heaven right know praying for us. She is ready and willing to help us. Her help is not merely through the example she set - as inexhaustible as her life may be as a source of edifying meditation. Her help comes in the form of immediate, personal, tender presence, and powerful intercession.
Many lament that they don’t get much out of the rosary. An obvious and universal obstacle people face is the mindless and superstitious recitation of the prayers. For some, including all too often myself, you could switch out any other words for the Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s. The rosary functions merely as a mantra. Now as far as mantras go, you could do a lot worse. And you’ll drive yourself crazy if you beat yourself up every time your mind wanders. But we should look for something more.
At this point, people like me lament, ‘if only people actually meditated on the mysteries.’ That’s one of the main purposes of these reflections; to serve as fuel and inspiration for your own meditations. However, even these are not the end goal. Like any prayer, the rosary when prayed well raises our sails. But our boat won’t go anywhere if the sails are not filled with the winds of God’s grace. As helpful and edifying as meditation is, praying with faith and a love is infinitely more so. To help us pray with faith and love, Jesus gave us his mother.
As you do your test run today, focus less on meditating on the mystery, and more on trying to keep in mind that Mary is alive and available to you. Jesus gave her to you on the cross. Ask her for help to know and love Jesus better. May Jesus and Mary be with you as you pray.