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The Gates Are Open into the Land of Grace: Homily for 15 August, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
By Fr. Dennis | August 15, 2008
Well, someone recently left a comment wondering how I would tie the local memorial of Elvis Presley with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Here’s my homily for today, of which the first few paragraphs are indebted to the website RareElvisPresley.com.
Readings for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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As the sun shined, on a crisp and clear Memphis morning, on a Monday in February, 1957, Virginia Grant was coming out of the old Lowenstein’s Department Store in the Poplar Plaza Shopping Center, which is now divided between the Pet Star and the Spin Street CD and DVD store. And there she spotted “the most gorgeous pink Cadillac [she’d] ever seen.”
Inside the car was a woman named Gladys Presley, who happened to be the mother of Elvis Presley, whom we know today as the King of Rock and Roll. Her husband, Vernon, was inside Lowenstein’s doing some shopping. Well, Virginia Grant was a real estate agent, and she had heard Elvis and his family might be needing a new home due to all the fans tying up traffic in the neighborhood near Elvis’ then current home on Audubon, so she offered to show Gladys a few places the family might be interested in. Gladys was very nice about it and told her they would get back to her after they returned from visiting Elvis in Hollywood.
A couple of weeks later, Virginia was showing Gladys and Vernon a property outside the Memphis city limits on US Highway 51 in the suburb of Whitehaven. The large colonial mansion on 17 acres near the Whitehaven Plaza was called “Graceland.” After seeing the property, Gladys loved it because, once a proper fence was in place, she would be able to raise a few chickens, and there would be room to hang the laundry to dry outside without fear of star-struck fans sneaking into the yard and stealing the laundry.
When Elvis came home from shooting his latest movie in Hollywood called “Loving You,” he went and saw the property and bought it immediately. He could see why his momma liked the house, and he wanted nothing more than to please her.
And that’s more or less how Elvis came to own Graceland, more or less. He bought it because he liked it, but mostly he bought it because he wanted a special place for his momma.
Now Elvis was the King of Rock and Roll, and no one disputes his claim to that title. In spite of that, though, he would have been the first to admit that he was not the King of Heaven and Earth. That title belongs to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And like Elvis, he too has a mother whom he loves very much.
From all eternity, he, the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, had chosen Miriam of Nazareth, or “Mary” as we call her in English, to be his mother.
As the Ark of the Covenant had carried the words of God and the power of God through the desert when the Israelites were brought up from the land of slavery, so she would be the Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant, bearing the Word made Flesh, God himself, into the world to raise all people up from the slavery of sin and death.
Now, today is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and here’s a key to understanding what this feast is about. Mary always points to Jesus, and the Church always points to Jesus, and everything the Church ever says about Mary points to Jesus. And that’s true for the Church’s teaching about the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well. The feast says something about Mary, but the truth of it flows out of, and points back to, what we believe about Jesus.
In the year 431 AD, in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today, the Church held a council of all the bishops of the world, together with the pope, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Much like the Second Vatican Council, all the bishops gathered to wrestle with theological ideas and the issues facing the Church of that day. That council was called the “Council of Ephesus,” and at the council the Church declared that Mary was the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God, who bore Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, into the world. She received this title after the Church’s long deliberation over how to interpret the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Was he fully human? Was he fully divine? Was a little of both? How could he be both? How could he be like us in all things except sin? How could a man be the Word made flesh? If Jesus is fully human, then how could he be divine? If he is the divine Logos, the Word of God, how can he be called human? But if he were not human, how could he die on the cross, for God does not die? All these questions the Church had wrestled with, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, she finally settled the matter once and for all.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, is fully divine as the 2nd person of the Trinity, and fully human as the child born to Mary through the mystery of the Incarnation.
And Mary, the Blessed Virgin, is the Mother of God.
To be the Mother of God, to be the perfect and holy tabernacle of the fullest revelation of God, the Mother of Jesus who is the perfect Sacrament that all other Sacraments reveal, she herself must have been pretty special.
Today, we celebrate what Jesus did for his mother out of love for her. Before she was born, from the moment of her conception, her Immaculate Conception which we celebrate every December 8th, she was preserved from the stain of original sin. And preserved from sin, she was also preserved from the consequences of sin.
The consequence of sin, of course, is the separation and pain and decay that comes from death. But as the first reading from the Book of the Revelation, chapter 12, tells us, she who “gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod,” whose child was “caught up to God and his throne,” was also she who “had a place prepared” for her “by God” (Rev 12:5-6). At the end of her earthly life, she was taken body and soul into heaven.
As much as Elvis Presley, who was not perfect, loved his mother and would deny her nothing, so much more than that does Jesus Christ, who is perfect and who is perfection itself come down from heaven to live among us, love his mother. And he brought her to the true and eternal Land of Grace, the Kingdom of Heaven, where she can be with her Son and with all the people who have followed him faithfully, with all the saints and angels, joining in their song of praise.
And the Good News for us is that we can join them. Unlike Elvis’ Graceland, the gates of that heavenly Land of Grace are never locked when the tour buses stop running. Our entire lives are an open invitation to enter through those gates. And if we follow Mary in her devotion to her Son, and love him as she did, we will enter those gates one day in that Land of Grace where death is destroyed forever.
And like author of the book of Revelation, we will hear the voices of heaven proclaim:
“Now have salvation and power come,
and the Kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Anointed One” (Rev 12:10).
Topics: History, Homilies, Mary |
August 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I liked your homily, Fr. Dennis.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I’d never heard the story about how Graceland was acquired & I love the tie-in with Jesus & our Mother! Just wonder if anyone got up & walked out when you said Elvis wasn’t perfect
August 26th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Great job, Fr. Dennis!! Every Elvis fan knows how much Elvis loved his mama and how he would have done anything to make her happy. So, I love how you showed how much even more Jesus would do something wonderful for His mother because Jesus really was perfect. I think most Elvis fans know that Elvis was not perfect too, but he was a struggling man who loved God and his family and his fans, and of course we love him in return. Thank you for tying him into Mary’s feast day again. Heaven is a very special place and Graceland is too. God bless you!