Did you hear the one about the priest who died and went to heaven, a holy assumption to begin with. When he got there, Peter welcomed him and told him that because of his sterling record on earth he would be granted any wish in heaven. Without hesitation, the priest said he’d like to have an audience with the Virgin Mary. In short order, even by heavenly standards, he was sitting in a lovely Victorian drawing room with the Virgin herself. She asked what she could do for this almost perfect priest who went straight to the point: “On earth we adored you and venerated you. Every sanctuary had statues and portraits of you. However, I kept noticing how depressed you seemed…how your countenance was always forlorn. Why was that so?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Mary responded.
“Of course,” he replied, “I’m a priest!”
After making sure they were alone, Mary leaned over, tilted her nimbus, grabbed her rosary and whispered in his good ear: “I always wanted a girl.”
The high and holy Feast Day of Mary’s Assumption happens annually on, or about, August 15. In other words, yesterday. You may assume that Presbyterians had no earthly idea about it. When I was growing up, we did not know what Advent or Lent were, since they were Catholic, and we weren’t. My only childhood association with my neighbor, Father McCarthy, was that he let me keep his Cocker Spaniel when he went back to Ireland in the summer. And Uncle William slipped me into the back balcony for Mass with him when he would sing “Ave Maria.” Let me also dispel the notion that this holy day had anything to do with the opening joke about Mary’s little secret, assumed or otherwise.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin was hearsay for centuries. Heavenly innuendo derived from the divine and immaculate obstetrics of that first Christmas, and the fact that Jesus lived at home for so long. But in 1950, the Pope sealed the deal. After consultation with the other guys — Bishops and Cardinals in their fancy getups — he defined the Assumption of Mary to be a dogma of faith: “We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory.” The Wikipedia rationale: “…since Mary is closely associated with all the mysteries of Jesus’ life, it is not surprising that the Holy Spirit has led the Church to believe in Mary’s share in his glorification. So close was she to Jesus on earth, she must be with him body and soul in heaven.”
A few innocent conjectures seem necessary. Joseph was not part of the assumption deal because he was assumed to be innocent of the original conception. One theory is that he got a job in purgatory running a home for unwed fathers. Of course, I believe there’s a more practical reason to assume Mary’s Assumption into heaven: she needed to be there for the interview with the priest in this morning’s first paragraph.