Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - The Assumption of Our Lady Saint Mary

For several weeks I've been busy on my Oxford University Department's Summer Schools. We've just finished the last, the Theology School, which runs for two weeks and is held at Christ Church. It's a wonderful occasion, hard work for the students in their seminars, but equally hard for the team that supports them. I work as Pastoral Director with the Academic Director, my friend, colleague and fellow canon, Angela Tilby.

It's a great atmosphere with people from different countries and Christian backgrounds, and a lot of interesting discussions take place. Binding us all is the presence of the Cathedral with its round of prayer each day. In that context Angela and I were talking about the feast of the Assumption and what it meant for us. My own faith was formed in a part-French background, with a good dose of Yorkshire Catholicism. So for me it is a big feast and Notre Dame, Our Lady, always a very important figure in my faith journey.

Our conversation opened up a reflection on the role and place of Our Lady in Christian faith and life. It's not anything new, but Angela shared an insight from an Anglican perspective, reminding me how at the Reformation something was lost which is now being rediscovered, also important for any of us who love and venerate Christ's mother!

It's nothing new, simply that if we want to really understand Jesus in his human life we have to deal with Mary. He gets his human life totally from her and only her, so the closest likeness to him is of course Mary, who gave him life in her womb and brought him up as her son. Mary is also the prototype of what we will become in Christ, when finally cleansed from sin, and through our own 'dormition', falling asleep in death, we have that hope, seen in this feast, of being called by Christ to be with him in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Paul reminds that the Assumption is also the promise of how we will all be bought to life, in our proper order, with Mary first amongst the saints: "..as all die in Adam, so all will be brought to life in Christ: but all of them in their proper order; Christ as the first fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him." (1 Cor 15: 21)

From the Byzantine Tradition: Kontakion Neither the grave nor death could contain the Theotokos, the unshakable hope, ever vigilant in intercession and protection. As Mother of life, He who dwelt in the ever-virginal womb transposed her to life.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain