Yearnings of a Yo-Yo

 Solemnity of the Assumption of the BVM

Readings: Apocalypse 11: 19, 12: 1-6, 10; Psalm 44 (45): 10-12,16; 1 Corinthians 15: 20-26; Luke 1:39-56

Picture: CC Bartolomej Jahoda on Flickr

Have any of us ever played with a yo-yo? It can be fun right? Especially if we know how to perform tricks with it. But what does it feel like to actually be a yo-yo? To have to keep scrambling back to the safety of the player’s hand, after being flung out into the unknown… And to have to do this again… and again… and again… In ways beyond our control… Until our body gets too old for the game… Or until it eventually breaks apart and is discarded or simply forgotten… If a yo-yo could speak, what might it say?… I’m not sure, but perhaps it’ll use words similar to those spoken by a 71-year old prison inmate in a recent CNA news report. Reflecting on his experience of being jailed no less than 14 times over the last 50 years, he says: It’s like a monkey clinging on to my back, this heroin, I just can’t take it out. And then, moreover, due to ageing, I have lost my sense of worth already… Sometimes I think to myself, it doesn’t make any difference… whether I’m outside or inside…

Although he doesn’t say it explicitly, after decades of yo-yo-ing in and out of jail, isn’t the inmate grappling with a truly profound question? The same question I recently heard someone else pose from behind the bars, not of a prison, but of a viewing gallery at the local crematorium. As the casket slowly made its way into the furnace, one of the mourners, a person of another faith, turned to me and asked rhetorically, What’s the point?… Faced with the stark simplicity and apparent finality of what he was witnessing, in his grief, the mourner was moved to question the very meaning of it all. Not just what’s the point of fighting to be free of addiction, and to stay out of prison. But what’s the point of struggling with the inevitable ups and downs, the unpredictable and repeated yo-yo-ing, of life itself. If this is how it all ends, then why even bother?

What’s the point? Isn’t this question capable of haunting not just inmates and mourners, but any one of us as well? Except that we Christians see neither the prison nor the crematorium as our true end. Isn’t this the deeper significance of the feast we are celebrating today? We are recalling and reaffirming our belief, not just that, at the end of her earthly life, the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. But also that this great blessing, bestowed on the one we call Mother of God and Mother of the Church, is bestowed also on us, the disciples of her Son, and her children by adoption. We rejoice in the belief that, like her, we are not meant for destruction or disintegration, but for wholeness and integrity. Like a yo-yo making a final return to the safety of the player’s hand, all of us are destined to remain, both body and soul, in the loving embrace of God.

For as the second reading reminds us, the raising of Christ from the dead isn’t just a one-off event. Rather, Christ was raised as the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep… Meaning that, just as the Master was raised, so too can his disciples expect to be raised. Just as we believe Mary was raised. For more than just his mother, wasn’t she also his chief disciple? Like the string wound around a yo-yo, didn’t the rhythms of her Son’s Life, and Death, and Rising––the rhythms of this Eucharist–––govern her whole life? A life she devoted to the furthering of his kingdom? Isn’t this what she is doing in the gospel?

The reading tells us that, after the Annunciation, after accepting the invitation to bear Christ to the world, Mary set out. The word translated as set out, shares the same root as the one used elsewhere to describe Jesus’ rising from the dead. So even before she had given birth, Mary arose and bore Christ to the members of her extended family. Like a yo-yo, she allows herself to be flung out, while paradoxically remaining safely within the hand of God’s holy will. Something she will keep doing again and again… At the wedding in Cana… At the Cross on Calvary… In the Upper Room on Pentecost Day… And amid the many ups and downs of discipleship, like the inmate and the mourner, Mary too is moved to reflect on her own existence. But in a different way. Instead of asking, What’s the point?, she sings the praises of God. Just as her life remains wrapped up in the Divine Will, her soul proclaims the greatness of God… The One who has routed the proud of heart… and exalted the lowly…

All of which may remind us that in order to share in how Mary ended her earthly life, we need also to partake in how she lived it. Isn’t this the deeper message of the first reading? Scholars tell us that, even though we typically associate the woman in the reading with Mary, in the biblical context, she also represents the young Christian community. Flung out to live in the mighty Roman Empire. And under constant threat of being either persecuted for its own beliefs, or seduced by the empty promises pervading the surrounding culture. Just as a helpless baby might be in danger of being devoured by a scary red dragon. Yet God keeps her safe, by preparing for her a refuge in the desert. Allowing her to remain spiritually apart, even as she strives to keep bearing Christ in the world.

And isn’t this our vocation too? Living as we do in an economically advanced, yet rapidly ageing society, anxiously grappling with its own failure to reproduce? Could it be that beyond material support, what’s needed is also help to ponder the yo-yo’s question? What’s the point? Sisters and brothers, how might the Lord be helping us address this question today?