ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Monday, August 15, 2022

S. Clement’s, Philadelphia

 

One of Our Lady’s titles in the Litany of Loreto, the Western Church’s only officially approved Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is “Ark of the Covenant.” So, this evening I want to reflect on what it means to describe Mary as a new Ark of the Covenant, and to explore how that image illuminates the mystery of her bodily Assumption into heaven at the conclusion of her earthly life.

 

We begin with the Ark of the Covenant itself. And please bear with me. We will get to the Assumption, but first we need to go over some indispensable Old Testament background.

 

We recall that after the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive God’s law for his people. In addition to the Ten Commandments and all the other precepts of the Torah, God gives instructions for the construction of a kind of portable Temple, known as the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. 

 

And the first item of sacred furniture to be fashioned and placed in the Tabernacle is the Ark of the Covenant: a sacred box or chest made of acacia wood and covered with pure gold. (Acacia wood, incidentally, was known in the ancient world for being extremely durable.) Inside the Ark are to be placed the two tablets of the Law Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, a golden bowl of manna—the miraculous bread from heaven that God provides for his people in the wilderness—and the rod or staff of the high priest Aaron.

 

The Ark is so holy that it cannot be touched directly, so it must be carried about on two poles, similarly made of acacia wood and covered with gold, that fit into golden rings attached to its four corners. Finally, two golden statues of cherubim—that is, angels—are placed on top of the Ark’s lid, known as the mercy-seat.

 

When Moses places the completed Ark in the Tent of Meeting, a mysterious cloud descends, the glory of the Lord fills the Tabernacle, and God speaks with Moses. For this reason, the Ark and the Tabernacle together become recognized as God’s dwelling place on earth. During their forty years’ journey through the wilderness, the Israelites carry the Ark ahead of them; and wherever they make camp, they set up the Tent of Meeting with the Ark inside it so that Moses can confer with God.

Now, fast forward about three or four centuries. The Israelites are settled in the Promised Land. The young King David decides to bring the Ark up to his capital city of Jerusalem and there give it a permanent home in a proper Temple rather than in a portable Tent. But instead of carrying the Ark on the golden poles, the Israelites place it on a cart drawn by oxen. At a bump in the road, the oxen stumble, and when an unfortunate individual named Uzzah puts out his hand to steady the Ark, he’s struck dead on the spot. Filled with fear, David cries out, “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” and he abandons his plan to bring it up to Jerusalem, taking it instead to the house of one Obed-edom the Gittite in the hill country of Judah. There the Ark remains about three months. 

 

But when David sees that far from being struck dead, Obed-edom’s household is blessed by the Ark’s presence, he takes courage and renews his plan to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, this time having it carried properly on the golden poles rather than drawn on an oxcart. And then, as the Ark enters the city to the people’s shouts and the blasts of the ram’s horn, David dances before the Lord with all his might.

 

At length, David’s son King Solomon builds the Temple that finally replaces the Tent of Meeting. Here the Ark resides in the innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies, another four or five centuries until the Babylonians conquer Jerusalem in 587 BC. At this point the Ark disappears from history, and no-one knows what happened to it, although numerous wild speculations and theories abound to this day. By New Testament times, the Holy of Holies in the rebuilt Temple stands empty. But a widespread belief persists among devout Jews that one of the signs of the Messiah’s imminent arrival will be the Ark’s return to Jerusalem.

 

Now, a number of New Testament scholars suggest that in the opening chapters of his Gospel, Saint Luke takes great pains to depict the Virgin Mary as a new Ark of the Covenant. Putting it that way, of course, gets things completely the wrong way round. The point is not to reduce Mary to the status of an exalted container or vessel. The way biblical typologies work, the earlier reality always anticipates something far greater. So, it’s more accurate to describe the Ark as a foreshadowing, anticipation, or type of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She’s the incomparably greater fulfillment towards which the Ark was symbolically pointing all along.

 

The first clue in this direction comes at the Annunciation in Nazareth, where the Angel Gabriel explains how, even as a virgin, Mary shall conceive the Son of God: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee …” This language of overshadowing directly invokes the Old Testament descriptions of the cloud of divine glory descending upon the Ark and filling the Tent of Meeting.

 

The parallels become even more explicit in the Visitation Gospel that we’ve just heard. Elizabeth’s exclamation, “Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” directly echoes David’s “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” And then the unborn John the Baptist leaping for joy in his mother’s womb recapitulates David dancing before the Lord with all his might. One final detail, not mentioned in today’s Gospel, is that just as the Ark remains at Obed-edom’s house three months, so Mary remains at Elizabeth’s house in the hill country of Judah three months.

 

The early Church Fathers noticed further parallels. The durability of the Ark’s acacia wood anticipates Mary’s bodily incorruptibility. The purity of its gold anticipates Mary’s pure holiness. Just as the Ark is God’s dwelling place on earth in the Old Testament, so Mary becomes the dwelling place of God incarnate in the New. 

Where the Ark contains God’s word carved on two stone tablets, Mary carries in her womb the Word-made-flesh. Where the Ark contains a golden bowl of manna, Mary carries in her womb the true Bread from heaven. And where the Ark contains the rod or staff of Aaron’s priesthood, Mary carries in her womb the one true High Priest whose perfect sacrifice reconciles a fallen world to God. All this rich symbolism conveyed in one little petition from the Litany of Loreto: Ark of the Covenant, pray for us!

 

Finally, at the end of her earthly life, Mary fulfills the typology in an utterly new and dramatic way. The original Ark underwent a long journey from its creation near Mount Sinai to its final resting place in the Jerusalem Temple. But for the Blessed Virgin Mary the parallel journey is from her earthly dwelling (either in Jerusalem or, if you prefer, Ephesus) to her destination in the heavenly Jerusalem. In an eighth century sermon on the Dormition of the Theotokos, Saint John of Damascus writes this:

 

Today, the holy, incomparable virgin enters the heavenly sanctuary that lies above the universe … Today, the holy, living ark of the living God, the one who carried her own maker within herself, comes to her rest in the temple of the Lord not made by hands. David—her ancestor and God’s—leaps for joy; the angels join in the dance.

  

So, we rejoice. We don’t know what happened to the original Ark of the Covenant. But we do know that the true Ark is in heaven. There she prays for us; there she waits to welcome us on the Day of Resurrection. May God grant us grace to be found worthy of sharing the eternal life and glory that Mary already enjoys there in the company of her divine Son and all the angels and saints. Amen.

Acknowledgment: Some key ideas for this sermon came from Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah (New York: Image, 2018), pp. 41-70.