Assumptions about the body
On the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Dr Nicolete Burbach of the London Jesuit Centre reflects on how this feast upends our expectations and calls us to build a world in which the dignity of women cannot be ignored.
The Assumption of Mary is a strange idea.
As Catholics, we believe that our bodies are consigned to death because of original sin. We also believe that Christ saves us by raising us from the dead; “I believe in the resurrection of the Body”, as the Creed goes. However, this is only something that only happens in the future.
In contrast, Mary’s Immaculate Conception means that she was unmarked by original sin. This also means that her body was never consigned to death.
This is why Catholics believe that, rather than dying and leaving her body behind, she was taken up (“assumed”) into heaven – body and soul.
Pray and reflect on the glorious mysteries of the rosary, which include the Assumption.
The strangeness of the Assumption lies in the way that it subverts our expectations about bodies.
We often think of heaven as an immaterial, spiritual place. And in doing so, we often put it in opposition to the material reality of the body. In this opposition, spiritual realities are seen as having heavenly value. While material realities like the body are seen as lacking this value.
In contrast, in the Assumption, Mary’s body is taken up into heaven.
This reveals something important about bodies by upending this opposition. Mary’s body belongs with the spiritual. In this, we can glimpse another view of the body; one in which it has heavenly value.
Our Blessed Model
We can see the significance of this in the ambiguities of the figure of Mary herself.
On the one hand, Mary models the importance of women: she is Christ’s mother, and thereby also shows the dignity of motherhood. She is highly honoured and enjoys great authority. Traditionally, the Church has even described her as the “Queen of Heaven”.
In a certain respect, she is also a model of women’s empowerment. Mary’s fiat, or her free decision to say “yes” to bearing Christ, is held up as the pinnacle of holiness and virtue.
On the other hand, feminist theologians have long argued that the model of womanhood found in Mary is not so good for women. They argue that this model makes women less important than men.
For example, all of Mary’s importance and authority comes from the masculine figures around her – Christ, or the Father (who is not a human man but is described in male terms). Even her fiat is her saying yes to their demands. That is, the empowerment she models seems to be for women to do what men want.
Likewise, for all its authentic significance, Mary’s motherhood is often emphasised to the exclusion of all else. She has often served as a model of womanhood in which women are expected to only be mothers and wives, raising children, serving the men in their household with no independence.
Furthermore, while Mary is a woman who enjoys great authority, construing this authority in terms of heavenly “Queenship” places it within an ultimately patriarchal model. This is because queens traditionally have less power and authority than kings – at least in the European contexts that have informed this theology.
Finally, from a more republican perspective, the way that kings and queens get to wield authority without democratic mandate is inherently unjust. In this context understanding Mary’s authority in terms of queenship might serve to baptise unjust political models.
This is significant not only because our solidarity should extend to all victims of injustice. These political models are part of a wider culture of hierarchy in which women lose out.
Is Mary a real woman?
These problematic views of Mary flow from the way that she is idealised. Mary’s ‘spiritual’ dimensions – her purity, holiness, and heavenly significance – are often emphasised in such a way as to detach her from the worldly realities of women’s lives.
In turn, the models of womanhood found in her are often similarly detached. Consequently, the things that those models value are often unhelpful for women.
We can see this in the examples above: Mary becomes a model of agency, but one that preserves men’s authority. She becomes a model of motherhood, but one that leaves little space for anything more. She becomes a model of political power, but one that preserves existing patriarchal power structures and injustices.
Furthermore, those models of womanhood often actively devalue the realities they neglect.
These devalued realities include bodily ones. Christian societies are, historically speaking, patriarchal ones. Hence Christians have historically viewed women’s bodies as less valuable than those of men.
In particular, Christian cultures have historically stigmatised the worldly, messy realities of women’s sexual activity, periods and childbirth. The overly spiritualised models of womanhood found in Mary play into this. There is no room for these stigmatised realities in Mary’s idealised womanhood.
This is the dynamic I mentioned above: the spiritual is opposed to the material, devaluing it. And it is a problem for ensuring women are treated fairly around the world
This is because it is part of the way that these dynamics objectify women. Stigmatising women’s bodies obscures their dignity. Instead, women are turned into objects to be controlled and exploited. In turn, societies can then ignore the demands of justice that their dignity entails.
These tendencies make women victims of injustice. And they create societies in which men are complicit in this injustice. As a result, neither men nor women can find their fulfilment in living the just, dignified life for which God created us.
The dignity of the body
The Assumption of Mary can show us another way. In the Assumption, God takes a woman’s body up into heaven, in all its worldly, material reality.
By doing so, God affirms the heavenly value of her body: Mary’s body belongs in heaven. In this way, God upends the opposition that devalues women’s bodies in general.
This is even more significant given the centrality of the Immaculate Conception to the Assumption. Mary’s freedom from sin lends itself to spiritualising her life, and thereby opposing it to the body. However, the Assumption confirms that sinlessness does not mean leaving the body behind.
In short, the Assumption is a call to recognise women’s dignity in their bodies. In this, it is also a call to look beyond the idealisations of womanhood to recognise women’s authentic needs and the demands of justice for them.
And it is therefore a call to build a world in which this dignity is no longer ignored.