From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
God’s temple in heaven was opened,
and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
She was with child …
Revelation 11:19…12:1-2a Excerpt, first reading on today’s Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
A lot of ink is spilled in the Old Testament describing the design and building of the Temple, because it was the holy place where God’s Presence touched the earth. The 12 tribes understood the earthly Temple as being a lesser copy of the original in heaven. Nothing gets more detailed treatment, though, than the Ark of the Covenant, around which everything else is centered. As we read in Exodus, chapters 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31—are all about the plan for, first of all, the Ark, and then all the furnishings, decorations, clothes, people, incense, etc. that surround it. Then, chapters 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40 repeat, in minute detail, the careful following out of those chapters of plans. The Ark itself is covered in gold, inside and out. Within it are the “10 Words” of the Commandments, the Decalogue. Placed in front of the Ark are a jar of the manna, the “bread from heaven” and Aaron’s staff, representing the great high priesthood that connects God and his People. Finally, at the very end of chapter 40, the “cloud of the Lord” his very Presence on this earth, settles on and in the Ark.
Israel, alas, did not remain faithful. Eventually the Temple was destroyed in battle, and the Ark disappeared, perhaps hidden in the mountains by the prophet Jeremiah, but no one knew where. But there was a hope that someday… .
In the vision from Revelation excerpted above, John describes what the first Christians had come to know: God, reaching down from his heavenly Temple, had gifted the earth with a new Ark of the Covenant, a woman with child, a woman bearing the very Presence of God, an Ark as pure as gold inside and out, a young Jewish maiden named Mary. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptist, is the first person to recognize that Mary has become the New Ark of the Covenant:
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Luke 1:42-43 from today’s Gospel
Both she and her son-to-be recognize the Presence of the Lord in this new, living Ark. She exclaims it, while her son John, in the womb, “leaps for joy,” dancing in front of this New Ark as did King David before the first Ark.
What Christians realized was that preciousness of the first Ark is as nothing compared to the preciousness of this New Ark. Within this New Ark we find not the “10 Words” but the very WORD Himself. Outside of this Ark, he will become the everlasting High Priest who unites all people and God, and he will proclaim and provide the true bread, the manna from heaven that is his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
Now consider: Mary was the first human being to accept Jesus into her life, into her very being, and she was entrusted with his life, his care and nurture, and she lived with him in family intimacy for 30+ years. After Christ’s Ascension, she had to give all that up for decades before the end of her own earthly life. John, in his vision in the book of Revelation, reveals this: the New Ark of the Covenant is now with God in Heaven—the same woman who gave birth to the Messiah here on earth is now with him again, and we still “see” her as his mother.
Such mysteries stretch beyond our ability to completely grasp them. The Jews considered that a few outstanding men of God—Enoch, Elijah, and perhaps Moses—had been assumed into heaven at the end of their earthly lives. In oral, family-centric cultures burial places are of great importance and dig deep into the cultural memory. Those three were simply “taken up” to where they belonged. They had no known burial places.
Mary, first woman assumed, had two burial places. One, perhaps prepared ahead of time in Ephesus where she lived with the Apostle John, was likely never used. The second one was near Jerusalem where tradition says she was brought before she died. When the Roman emperor Marcian, in Constantinople, asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring relics of Mary to the capitol to grace a church there, the Patriarch was obliged to reply that there were no bone relics of Mary, for “Mary had died in the presence of the Apostles, but her tomb, when opened later…was found empty, and so the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.”
It is no diminution of a man to praise and honor his mother. It is no diminution of God to join in the praise and honor He bestows on the mother of his Son, lifting her up to where she belongs. Even as He created her, the Father knew: “here is one who will hear the Word of God and keep it.”
For further reflection:
Another lesson for us to consider in all this is how the Israelites remained stuck on the restoration of the Temple and their nation under a Davidic king–that was a typical idea of “success.” God’s response, as seen in Christ, involves a widened idea of “Temple”–the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. A widened idea of the Davidic kingdom–a world-wide communion ruled by Christ, the Davidic descendant. And a more extensive idea of life under the Law–guidance by the Holy Spirit for each member of the Body, living lives that do not simply “match” the Law, but fulfill it. God wants more for us, more than we can imagine, but we must trust him through all difficulties, listening carefully to him speaking to us, the Holy Spirit in our “hearts” (not ‘feelings’).