Homily – Assumption – 2026 – Fr Jerry Browne (National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies #southafrica, #Botswana, #eSwatini, #swaziland)
The Feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven is one of the great Marian celebrations in the Catholic Church. Of course, whenever Catholics start talking about Mary, it isn’t long before some of our non-Catholic friends begin asking questions like, “Why do you pray to Mary?” or “Do Catholics worship Mary?” or even “Where is the Assumption mentioned in the Bible?”
These are fair questions, and today’s feast gives us an opportunity to explore what we actually believe about Mary, why we honour her, and what her Assumption means to us.
Perhaps the best place to begin is with the most common misunderstanding of all, “Do Catholics worship Mary? The answer is very clear: No, we don’t.
We worship God alone – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mary is not God. She is a human being like us, completely dependent upon the grace of God. But we do honour her. Why? Because God honoured her first. We will explore this a little more in the next question, which is “Why do Catholics have such a special devotion to Mary?”
The answer is given by Mary herself in today’s Gospel: “From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me” (Luke 1:48–49). Notice where Mary directs the attention. Not towards herself, but towards God. “God has done great things for me.”
God chose this young woman of Nazareth to become the mother of his Son. The angel greets her as one who is “full of grace” (Luke 1:28). The Holy Spirit overshadows her at the Annunciation, and later we find her praying with the disciples as they await the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 1:14). She follows Jesus throughout his life and remains faithful even when that journey takes her to the foot of the Cross.
There Jesus says to the beloved disciple, “Behold, your mother” (John 19:27). The Church has long recognised in those words something much bigger than Jesus simply arranging for Mary’s care. Mary becomes a mother within the family of disciples.
We honour Mary, therefore, not because she competes with Jesus, but precisely because she leads us to Jesus.
Then comes our third question: Why do Catholics believe that Mary was assumed into heaven?
The word Assumption tells us something important. It comes from the Latin assumere, meaning “to take up” or “to take to oneself.” Mary does not ascend into heaven by her own power; she is taken into heavenly glory by God.
The idea of God taking someone into his presence was already a familiar concept in the Scripture. In the book of Genesis (5:24), we hear how Enoch “walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.” In 2 Kings 2:11 we read that “Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind.”
Neither passage is the same as the Church’s teaching on Mary’s Assumption, but they remind us that the idea of God taking someone into his heavenly presence is not foreign to the biblical tradition.
From the early centuries of the Church, Christians believed that Mary’s life ended in a unique sharing in the victory of her Son over death.
After centuries of prayer and reflection, and after consulting the bishops of the world, Pius XII formally declared in 1950 what the Church had long believed: that, at the end of her earthly life, Mary was taken body and soul into heavenly glory.
At the end of the day, perhaps the more important question is ”What difference does Mary’s assumption make for us”? The Assumption is not simply a wonderful privilege given to Mary. It tells us something about what God intends for us.
In today’s second reading, St Paul tells us that Christ has been raised from the dead, “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). In other words, Christ’s Resurrection is the beginning of something. Death does not have the last word.
That is important for us when we contemplate our own mortality, when we lose someone we love, when our bodies begin to fail us, or when we simply wonder what ultimately lies ahead. The Christian promise is not simply that our souls somehow survive after death. We believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Mary already shares, body and soul, in the glory that we hope one day to share, but the road that brought Mary there was lived here, in the ordinary circumstances of human life. She trusted God. She said yes when she did not know where that yes would lead. She remained faithful when life became difficult. She stood at the Cross when others had disappeared.
Through everything, she kept pointing beyond herself towards her Son. So perhaps the Assumption leaves us with one final question – not about Mary, but about ourselves: If heaven is where we are going, is the way we are living now taking us in that direction?
Mary reminds us that heaven is not simply something we wait for at the end of our lives. We begin choosing the road to heaven now – every time we trust God, every time we say yes to what he asks of us, every time we remain faithful when it would be easier to walk away, and every time we choose to follow Christ.
Mary has reached the destination towards which we are all travelling, and her life shows us the way: trust God, say yes, remain faithful through uncertainty, and keep following Christ, one step at a time.
*****************
If you would like to request prayer, please click on the following link and complete the prayer request form https://missio-sacbc.org
If you would like to make a donation to support the Mission of the Church you can do so on our website using the ‘Donate’ button: https://missio-sacbc.org/donate
**************
Please consider praying a decade of the rosary on a daily basis for the evangelising Mission of the Church and the Pope’s intentions.
The Pope’s prayer intention for the month of August:
For evangelisation in the City
Let us pray that in large cities often marked by anonymity and loneliness we find new ways to proclaim the Gospel, discovering creative paths to build community.
*****************
Blessed Pauline Jaricot, Pray for us. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
*****************
Batswana Catholics Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Catholic Institute of Education Catholic Diocese of Kimberley Youth & Young Adults Ministry Catholic Diocese of Mthatha Diocese of Francistown Diocese of Francistown Youth & Young Adults Pontifical Mission Societies of the Archdiocese of Durban Catholic Diocese Of Kroonstad Chiro Diocese of Francistown Catholic Diocese of Port Elizabeth Catholic Diocese of Ondo #faith #hope #love #homily #Assumption Missionary Childhood