Dear Friends,
This Saturday the Church celebrated the great Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, meaning we believe God assumed Mary body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.
It might sound strange, but I think we can learn a little about the Assumption from St. Catherine of Siena’s experience of levitation.
St. Catherine of Siena, a great Dominican mystic and Doctor of the Church, was widely reported by many different witnesses to have experienced levitation on multiple occasions.
In her crowning spiritual work, The Dialogue, St. Catherine explains the inner spiritual realities that result in levitation. The explanation comes during the Heavenly Father’s concluding remarks to St. Catherine about the stages a soul must rise through to attain perfect love.
God the Father, speaking of St. Catherine, says, “Though she is mortal she tastes the reward of the immortals, and weighed down still with the body she receives the lightness of the spirit. Often, therefore, the body is lifted up from the ground because of the perfect union of the soul with me, as if the heavy body had become light.”
Thus, what draws her body up from the ground is the loving union of her soul with God. In short, the soul is drawn up in love so powerfully that the body can’t help but follow.
Our Heavenly Father continues, “It is not because its heaviness has been taken away, but because the union of the soul with me is more perfect than the union between the soul and the body. And for this reason the strength of the spirit united with me lifts the body’s weight off the ground.”
So perhaps we could say that Mary’s union with God was so perfect that it led to her Assumption.
It will be a great marvel at the end of time when all our bodies are resurrected by the Love of God, and an even greater marvel to see the soul drawing the body towards God in the loving union, prefigured for us today in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary who has joined in perfect loving union of body and soul her Resurrected Son in Heaven.
With gratitude and joy for the days ahead!
Fr. Seth