Newman Centre at University of Toronto

The Assumption and the Body

- Feast of the Assumption, Year C -

When my father died, we were able to honour him in a number of ways. As we gathered around his bedside, we shared our thoughts and feelings, and then joined hands for some shared prayers. Then we each made the sign of the cross on his forehead, the way he used to do for us when we were children in bed at night. At that point, the rest of us stepped out while Mum helped the nurses to begin the preparation and washing of his body. It was something she had talked about in the days beforehand, remembering how, in her childhood in Holland, the family would help prepare the body when someone died. It was something she felt she would like to do for him, to wash his body one more time as she had helped wash him over the previous years. Finally, once Dad was partly clothed, Mum invited those of us who so wished to help her wash his face and arms, his chest and legs, and to rub in some of the oils the nurses had on hand. Since we don't have the custom of a viewing of the body as you do here, that was the last time we saw Dad. It was a way for us to honour his body one last time, to minister to him, to show our respects.

Such an honouring of the body, such an awareness that the body is not just a lump of cells, but is the expression of the person, an integral part of their being, is a key element of what we celebrate when we celebrate this feast of the Assumption. For we celebrate the reality that Mary is already experiencing the fullness of Resurrection life, and that this life is not just about the resurrection of a soul - a spirit, a mind, a heart able to love - but involves, as an integral part, a body. Mary's body and soul, in ongoing unity, are taken up now into the fullness of new life. Already she experiences what we will only experience at some later point. She shows us what lies ahead, and in so doing, reminds us in a startling way that our bodies are to be treasured, for they are part of our eternal destiny.

Some would hold that our bodies are disposable - recyclable receptacles for our souls. That our souls inhabit our bodies in a merely functional way - the way old furniture inhabits the attic, or spam e-mails inhabit our mail-box. In this view, my body has no necessary connection to my soul. At best, the body is related to the soul like a favourite pair of old shoes - snug, warm, a good fit, but in the end, able to be discarded, not an essential part of me. This is not a Christian view of the body. For the Christian, and certainly for the Catholic Christian, the body has an intimate connection with the soul. The two are meant to be a single, harmonious whole. They may be separable, to be sure, and that is what happens at death. We see the deceased, and while the body is the same, we can't help but think, "That's not really her." The unity of body and soul which is the person is not there. That is the un-naturalness of death - it separates what God has joined in intimate unity, separates body and soul until that day when God restores all to its fullness and its proper state.

Body and soul may be separable in death, but God's design is for their intimate unity. It is a unity in which the body gives the soul physical expression. It is the body, in its facial expressions, by which I make manifest that I am sad or happy, annoyed or distressed. It is the body, in its vocal chords and sound box, which enables me to communicate the ideas and thoughts of my mind. It is the body which enables me to see when my friends are sad or happy, to hear their words, to receive the gift of their thoughts. It is the body, in its capacity for touch, which enables me to hug and to heal, to arouse, to soothe, and to be hugged and healed, aroused or soothed. It is the body, in its capacity for smell and taste, which enables me to savour the gifts of creation in food and drink. My body mediates the world to my soul, and mediates my soul to the world. My body is an essential part of my being as created in the image of God, of the unity God has made me to be - an embodied spirit, an ensouled body.

That unity, which each of us was created to be, is scarred by sin. Sin ruins relationship, and one of the most intimate relationships we have is with our bodies. Sin scars the harmonious relationship between body and soul. Through sin, I can allow my body and its needs to dominate my life, and give little attention to the needs of my soul, of my spirit. I can get caught up in all sorts of physical delights - food, drink, clothing, comfort, drugs - and allow these to distract me from my soul needs, my need for love, for culture, for intellectual stimulation, for art, for relationship. We do not live on bread alone. Or I can get overly absorbed in the things of the spirit, of the soul, at the expense of my basic bodily needs - the creative work which obsesses me when my body is crying out for food, the long hours of study at exam time without proper exercise, the intense emotional discussions when I really need rest. Since sexuality is such an intimate element of our nature as embodied spirits, we find this divorce of soul and body readily evident in our sexual relationships. At one extreme, there is the sexual act which is a mere physical coupling, with no real union of persons. At the other, there is the sexual act which claims to be a total mutual self-giving of persons, but in which one or other holds back their physical fertility from that gift.

Sin ruins relationship. And part of what original sin means is that from the beginning of our lives, there are elements of that disharmony of body and soul within each of us. One aspect of Mary's being preserved from original sin is that God blessed her with a perfectly harmonious union of body and soul in her person from the very first moment of her conception. And from then one, she chose to live a life without opposition or alienation between her body and soul, her life ever poised between and respectful of both the finiteness of her body and the transcendence of her soul. This natural harmony of body and soul, God's original plan for us, was given Mary as a gift from the very start of her life.

But that was not all of God's gift to Mary in the Immaculate Conception. Beyond the harmony of her human nature, God also blessed her with a deep harmony with the action of God's grace in her life. God graced her with freedom from that alienation from God into which we are all born. And Mary built on this freedom by a life of choices made in cooperation with God, most clearly in her complete surrender to God's plan for her life - let it be done to me according to your word. Through this yes, she conceived, in her body, the Son of God. She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and became, in a unique fashion, what each of us is, in our bodies, what Paul reminds us that we are - a temple of the Holy Spirit [1Cor. 6:19].

It can seem a quaint phrase to us, in our sophistication. And yet it expresses a profound reality - that my body is not simply a temple of my soul, but also, in God's grace, a Temple of God's own Spirit. It's a mystery that Flannery O'Connor, the Catholic writer from the American south, portrays in one of her stories. Two teenage boarding school girls are visiting with relatives. During the weekend, they go around calling each other, with much amusement, Temple One and Temple Two. At dinner time, their aunt asks them why, and this sets them off into more peals of laughter. Finally, punctuated by further bouts of giggling, they manage to explain. "Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun at the Sisters of Mercy in Mayville, had given them a lecture on what to do if a young man should ... 'behave in an ungentlemanly fashion with them in the back of an automobile.' Sister Perpetua said they were to say, 'Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!‚' and that would put an end to it. The child [their cousin] sat up off the floor with a blank face. She didn't see anything so funny with this... 'I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost,' she said to herself, and was pleased with the phrase. It made her feel as if somebody had given her a present."

That sense of the gift which our bodies are lies at the heart of this feast of the Assumption. It was not necessary, but it was fitting that the harmonious interplay of Mary's life should be given her as a gift, restored and renewed and lifted up, at her death. It meant that her soul was united with her resurrected body into the full harmony of God's plan of salvation. And it meant that Mary, the whole Mary, body and soul, an embodied soul, was united with her Son Jesus in his Resurrection life.

What has already happened to Mary presents us with a clear statement of our ultimate destiny, a destiny which will involve not just our souls, but our bodies as well. It is a destiny assured us in that we are already Temples of the Holy Spirit. And, as St Paul tells us, the Spirit is God's seal on us, making certain that, with our cooperation, what He has planned for us will come to pass [2Cor. 1:21-22; Eph 1.13-14] The dogma of the Assumption speaks of the unity of body and soul that we are as human beings - enfleshed souls, ensouled bodies. We live a bodily existence, and we are destined for glory, not just in the realm of the spiritual, but also in the realm of the material, the bodily. That is the destiny into which we induct Anna Grace in her baptism this morning. That is God's covenant promise to us to which we say Amen as we offer the sacrifice of the Mass and receive Christ into our bodies once more. That is the future to which we look forward, seeing in Mary, assumed into heaven, our own future in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.