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Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the One who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God Bless the Lord be with you. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Glory to you, o Lord. Chapter one, verses 39 through 56 Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, 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? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who have believed what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. And Mary said, my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked upon his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed. The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm. He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever. Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you to have a seat. So today is the Assumption of Our lady, or the day we celebrate the Assumption of Our lady, which is what it is. I think sometimes it sounds like super Catholic is one of those things like, okay, so at one point Mary like floated into heaven like a helium balloon. That kind of situation. It's there's a lot of things that that go into that that there are a lot of things that are declared by this feast Day. The first thing I mean, you say is that here's our Lady Mary, who, who at the end of her earthly life was assumed body and soul into heaven. And that declares a number of things. Here's the first one. The first thing it declares is that the body is good. This is really important because there were times throughout the course of humanity where the body's not recognized as something that is good. It's the thing that we have to deal with. It's the thing we need to escape from. And the death, oftentimes people see it as an escape from the body. But the assumption of Mary, body and soul into heaven declares not only that does the body have dignity. It declares that the body is actually holy. Mary's body in heaven right now gives glory to God and God's will for your life is that your body in heaven will give glory to God for all eternity. So the first thing it declares that the dignity of the body and that body is not just good, it's holy. Second thing is that women have dignity. This is something that I think some people quickly overlook, that we have Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, who is also his body is in heaven. So there's a human male body in heaven, in Jesus, because, right, he ascended to heaven at the end of the 40 days after he rose from the dead. So there's a male body in heaven. But the assumption declares not only that there is a male body in heaven, but also that there is a female body in heaven. And that declares very, very clearly is the dignity of all women the dignity of women's bodies as well, not just the dignity of women's body, the holiness of women. You know, it's so quick. There's actually a Gnostic gospel called the Gospel of Thomas at the end of the Gospel of Thomas. No, this is not a real gospel. This is a false gospel that people promoted at the end of the Gospel of Thomas. At one point, Peter, Jesus says to Peter, peter, I'm going to bring you to heaven with me. And Jesus Peter points to Mary Magdalene and says, what about her? And in the false Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, don't worry about her. I'll first make her into a man so she can come to heaven too. The actual Catholic teaching is not only is there dignity of the body and it's holy, but the dignity and holiness of women. In fact, we declare very clearly that the holiest person who ever lived on the face of the earth, other than God himself in Jesus, is a woman. And so the assumption of Mary declares These two things, the dignity of the body, the holiness of the body, the dignity of women, and the holiness of women. But there's a third thing that gets declared today, and that is the dignity of our response to God. What I mean by that is the fact that every one of us is given the opportunity to respond to God. That Mary was given. We all know the story, right? That Mary now, right now is fully alive, body and soul with Jesus right now. Because she went all in. Essentially. That's what it was, right? We know the story that at one point, Angel Gabriel sent to a town of Nazareth. Here's Mary, she's a teenager. He's going to be a mother of God's son. And what she says is, let it be done to me according to your will. And when she says this, when she gives this yes, again, the dignity of the yes, the dignity of this response to God when she says this yes, she is holding nothing back. I mean, think about this. There's no backup plan. There's no safety net. When she says, behold, the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your will, what she's giving is her whole self. What I mean by that is this yes doesn't just encapsulate this one moment where Gabriel says, this is God's will for your lives. That, yes, encapsulates the entire rest of her life and actually now in eternity. What does that mean? What I mean by that, that is that when Mary became a mom, she gave up. She gave up a life of not being a mom. I'll say it like that. That's not a very articulate way to say that. What I'm saying is every mother knows this. Then when they become a mom, they're giving up their future. They're giving up their future of independence. They're giving up their future of, like, I get to determine what I want to do and where I go. They're giving up all this independence. They're sacrificing their future to an unknown other person. We know this, that every mom gives up her body. Like every mom gives up her pre mom body for a mom body. And this is something. I remember my mom talking about this so many times that with all the kids, she'd say, like, oh, with this one, after this one, I could no longer do X. After this one, I could no longer do Y. And it was all these things like, oh, my gosh, the sacrifice that would go into every natural mom. That's just that yes is okay. Another thing I'm giving away. Well, Mary gave her yes. She not only gave her body, she not only gave her future, she also gave her reputation that people could think whatever they wanted to about her. And she didn't back down. Why? Because she was all in. This is the remarkable thing, that she went all in and God didn't let her fall. Even though that yes meant not only she sacrificed her future, sacrifice her body, sacrifice her reputation, but also sacrifice certainty. You know that Mary's yes was uttered without having any idea the sorrow it would bring, without having any idea the joy it would bring, without having any idea the loss that would come along with that yes. But there was no backup plan that essentially, Mary was all in. And that's the dignity of our response. When we give that response to God, he takes it and makes it holy, just like he takes our body. Dignity of body makes it holy and women, dignity of women and make them holy. He takes the dignity of your and my yes. And he makes it powerful. Because what God has done with Mary, he wants to do with you. The Mary's yes was not just with her soul, with her mind. It was her whole self. And because of that, she's assumed not just her body, not just her soul, I mean, not just her mind, but her whole self, her body, her mind, her soul, her everything is assumed. Everything that she gave to Jesus has been transformed by Jesus. She's kind of the blueprint, and that's what this day declares. Is that what God has done with Mary's yes. He wants to do with your yes and my yes. What God has done with Mary's soul and mind and body, he wants to do with your soul and mind and body. Another way to say it is since Mary gave her whole self to God in that yes, because of that, he then gave her the whole of heaven because she gave her whole self to God in that yes. Now her whole self has access to heaven. And she does this not because she's meant to be the only one. She's just the first one. What she has done, you and I are meant to do what God has done in her. He wants to do in you and me. She's all his. So here's the question. What about us? What if God wants all of us? What if God wants us to with the dignity of our response to him? What if he wants to take that yes and say, okay, that means your soul is mine. Okay, of course that means your mind is mine. You've got it. That means your body is mine. Okay, that means your future and your hopes and Your fears, your dreams and your anxieties, all of them get to be mine. If we can give God our yes the way that Mary gave God, her yes, basically saying yes with no backup plan, saying yes without reserve, basically being all in, what will he do with it? He will do exactly what he's already shown he's done with Mary. If we give him our whole life, he'll raise it. If we give him the smallest response, that dignity of our response, what he can do is makes it holy. Because we know this. God doesn't waste anything that we give to Him. He doesn't waste our suffering. He doesn't waste our love. He doesn't waste our yes. He doesn't waste our sacrifice. And so if you and I find ourselves today in a place where we're given the opportunity to say yes to God, but we're also faced with this fear and anxiety over what will he do with that yes, Take consolation. In today's feast. What he does with that yes is yes. He takes us body and soul, through suffering, through sorrow, through grief, through loss, and through joy and through life and through love, all the way to him. Mary went all in. You and I are called to be all in. What we do is we go all in and we let God bring all of us, our entire self, body and soul, all the way to Him.