Karl Rahner on the Assumption of Our Lady

TCRnews Musings

'...Mary is the perfect achievement and work of redemption. [With the Assumption] the perfection of grace has entered its final stage because she has left this earthly life of space and time, and the entered the [eternal life]. [There] the harvest sown within the confines of time is gathered into God’s eternity. . . She has attained her perfect beatitude - no one can doubt this who believes that she, sinless and full of grace, has accomplished her earthly course.' (Karl Rahner, St. Andrew Bible Missal, p. 948)

TCR: The Assumption of Our Lady is often dismissed as a sweet myth by neo-modernists. If some (not all) are willing to grapple with the Resurrection of Jesus, the Assumption is just too much. And yet they never found Our Lady's body, friend. And a Church which treasures the sanctity of relics would hardly have let 1st class relics of Our Lady elude it.

A little theologcal thinking will take a person into neo-modernist doubt, but a great deal of it will return one to belief in the Assumption. Our Lord shared the human nature of His Mother, Mary. Her heart pumped His most sacred blood---the Blood shed for the sins of all humankind, into His sacred veins. Such a sharing is the astonishing reality of the Incarnation which sets Mary utterly apart (even as she remains utterly with) the rest of humanity.

After the creation of the universe, every other miracle is a mere footnote. Especially this one, so intimately bound with the Incarnation for the sake of world. This miracle, above all, makes perfect sense once one begins to contemplate what one thinks. Our Lord said the Holy Spirit would guide the Church into all truth (Jn 16:13). And He did. You can take that to the grave.