By Ryan LeBlanc

I’m embarrassed to talk about this. I don’t even want to give any specifics at all. But there are things that I don’t like about my body.

I know God created it. I know, at some level, it’s actually pretty awesome. I know I’m basically stuck with it, and I should make the best of it. But there are things about my body I would change if I could.

A few of these things are about shape and appearance, while others have to do with how my neurology and organs function – that is, how I think and feel. Just a few tweaks, here and there, you know?

You probably do. I’ve met some people who are genuinely in love with their own bodies exactly as they are, but they seem to be pretty rare. Most of us, I assume, get frustrated with some aspect of our physicality at some point. Size, skin, muscles, nerves, appetite, aches, smells, effort, awkwardness, fatigue, restlessness – too much, too little, too odd, too normal, the wrong kind, the wrong time. You don’t have to give me specifics, because you already know what yours are. Many of us take it for granted that having a body is a pain in the … well, you know.

I find this widespread frustration challenged by the Catholic celebration of the Assumption of Mary on August 15.

Assumed? Mary just assumed she’d go to heaven because she gave birth to God? No, I thought that, too, until I looked it up. In the Assumption, Mary was taken up (assumed) by God into heaven, both her soul and her body, at the end of her earthly life.

Not just her holy soul, redeemed by her son’s sacrifice, but her body, as well, was acceptable to enter into God’s heavenly presence. For eternity.

How long does it take before I get frustrated with my body? About 30 seconds after I wake up, and my body doesn’t want to get out of bed.

How can the Blessed Virgin Mary be so at peace with her body that she takes it with her into the bliss and beatitude of paradise?

See this is part of the teaching – the mystery – of her Assumption, that the human body is such a wonderful creation that it belongs in the heavenly realm, where corruption and death have no place. What happened in Mary’s life becomes a promise and a guide for each of us body-and-soul human beings, most especially in those moments of self-conscious pride when we think we know better than the One who made us.

To follow her example, we need to see and understand how Mary’s life unfolded according to the plan God always had for her, and which she fully participated in with her fiat – her “yes”.

The flip side of the Marian teaching of the Assumption is that of the Immaculate Conception – the teaching that Mary was conceived without sin. Both through Christ’s cross and so that it could happen, God made Mary as he had made the first man and woman – perfectly aligned for heaven. Throughout her life, by the grace of God, Mary always chose to have God’s way rather than her own. Her trust in God healed the broken trust of Eden.

Her trust.

It seems to me that trust defines how she wrapped up her time on Earth. The teaching about Mary proclaims she was untouched by the stain of Original Sin and the power of death. Yet, Scripture tells us that beneath the cross she tasted bitterly of human violence – the immeasurable hatred inflicted on the body of Christ.

Tradition speaks of Mary’s presence with Jesus at the side of her husband Joseph as he died in peace. Historically, she would have experienced her son’s apostles brutally executed for the sake of his name. I think we have to say she knows what death is.

How could this woman accept her earthly time, her earthly body, so completely as to pass beyond with no more resistance than a drop of rain falling into the ocean? More to the point, I wonder what is different between me and her, that I resist my own creation on such a consistent basis, while she accepts both existence and nonexistence so peacefully that her heart rate does not even fluctuate.

While the Latin tradition generally depicts this moment as a departure similar to the Ascension of Jesus, Eastern Christianity speaks to us of her “Dormition” – that is, her falling asleep in such a way that she woke up with her body in heaven. This beautiful image of profound spiritual peace helps me understand how “full of grace” she is, while also confronting me with how far I have to go before I am ready to wake bodily in heaven and get up without complaining!

She is the one through whom Christ has come to us, the one most perfect disciple of her son who is more like Jesus than any other human being. And as we see in her Assumption, she loved her body enough to remain united with it – at the Father’s invitation and by His power – throughout her time on Earth and flowing into eternity.

Mary loved her body. Mary loved her body as the home of God himself, as the shared genetics and source of nourishment for her divine son, and even as the same messy eating, sweating, aching “meat sack” that the rest of us complain about. Mary loved her body in such a healthy way that she did not need to worry about whether it was good enough.

As much as we fret about being separated from our bodies in death, I suggest that we fret much more about being united with our bodies in life when we fail to love and accept our embodied selves.

Mary teaches us how to receive, accept and walk with God. It only ever happens with trust.

Something will certainly happen with our bodies that we would not choose. It’s happening right now, and it happened to Mary. Mary was vulnerable to condemnation, homeless and impoverished, separated from her son. Sorrows pierced her human heart like swords, as they do our own hearts.

You and I, fellow Christian, are invited to learn from the Holy Mother of God. When we notice a bodily experience that we do not like, let us trust God a little bit more than we did before the experience. We may ponder the experience and, through the gift of God, become a little bit “fuller” of grace. We can live without the fretting and the “tweaks” with which we would presume to correct our Divine Maker.

The Feast of Assumption teaches us we have a long way to go with our bodies, always towards glorification. We might as well make our peace as embodied creations right now.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a teacher at Bethlehem Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.