The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 2003

            The thing to do these days, it seems, is to share your journey.  How often we hear the invitation to do so at almost every small group gathering that is of a religious nature.  Journey sharing.  Talk to us about the road you have traveled, is the repeated request.  Travel, journey, personal story -- these are all fine and good things.   But there is more to life -- your life, my life, the life of the whole world -- than the past, than history.  There is the future; there is the destination.

            The other day I was in an outfitter store looking through the store’s collection of guide books for some hiking that I want to do.  My eye caught sight of a T-shirt on display that had emblazoned across its front, “The Journey is the Destination.”  I sort of laughed to myself and thought about asking the salesperson that if the journey is the destination, why would I need a guidebook, why would this outfitter feel the need to sell material that so carefully and accurately informs people on how to get from one place to another, from this point to the goal, the destination.

            Why indeed?  Why not, if “the journey is the destination,” why not just set off in any ole direction without guidance, without map, compass, descriptive details of the land?  Well, because I really do want to get to the top of mountain so-and-so, because I really do want to reach a place that makes the journey worthwhile.  Oh, sure, part of the reason I hike is just to get out in the country, but even that much – the desire to get outdoors and make my way around in the beauty of nature – even that, when you think about it, is a kind of goal:  I want to get from here to over there; journey from here to that locale.

            “The journey is the destination,” makes no sense in the light of human activity and experience.  Humans have always been rather goal-oriented people.  Thus our games, sports (imagine trying to play basketball without a hoop or football without goal line!), business projects, our saving up for retirement, and, yes, and most especially, our religion, that which is about the most important, by far, goal of all. 

            How cruel an interminable train ride would be or an everlasting flight, even in first class.  The finest of cars gets cramped on those long vacation trips.  As exciting and exhilarating as the journey is, we do eventually hope for arrival at the destination.  The trip would hardly have much meaning or purpose without a goal or end.  And so we read and re-read the guidebook that tells us about Paris, the Irish countryside or the exotic far east.  The journey is exciting because we are going somewhere. 

            And so it is with life.  Life, certainly, is a journey.  It is good to talk about it, the roads we’ve traveled, the things we have experienced.  But how little we speak of or hear about the destination.  Who really talks about heaven these days?  Yet, hopefully, that is the goal of our lives. 

            Heaven.  In our secular world, with all the over-preoccupation with the here-and-now, the word itself has begun to take on either a funny or foreign ring to it.  Heaven.  Yet heaven -- that is, the blessedness of eternal life in God’s presence -- is the goal of human life that gives it meaning, purpose.  Without an end, a destination, what a strange and galling thing a journey would be.  It would be, well, frankly, a good description of hell.

            And when we travel, we need signs, directions so as to reach our goal.  Today we celebrate one of the greatest and clearest signs that God has given to us to point the way for us -- the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven.  (There’s that word again.)  Into heaven, Our Lady was assumed body and soul at the end of her earthly life, both as the reward for her perfect following of her Son, Jesus, and as a sign for us who are still on the journey.  She points the way and to the destination.  Our Lady enjoys, even now, that full resurrection life offered to us all in Jesus, in and through His own death and resurrection.  Her Assumption into heaven is a foretelling, a marvelous description of the glory and splendor that awaits all who follow her Son in this world. 

            For Jesus too made a journey -- through the land of Galilee and Judea, preaching, teaching, healing; finally to Jerusalem to the hill of Calvary, into the darkness of death of the grave.  But His journey did not end there.  He rose from the dead, body and soul, and journeyed back to the Father.  And the Blessed Virgin is the first to taste the fullness of His victory over sin and death. 

            With Mary of Nazareth as our model and her destiny as our sign of hope, we too can travel the road that she did, the road of companionship with Christ, the road to heaven.  This feast of her Assumption breaks into the sometimes hum-drum events of our own personal journey and refreshes us with the joyful news from a far country, heaven.  Her life, her end makes our travel through life make sense.  She is a sort of travel guide that we can read all along the journey and thus remind ourselves of just where we should be headed.           

            May the glory of her Assumption fill us with hope!