God's Greatest Creation

Imagine with me all of God's great creations, close your eyes if you wish, and recall some of the most beautiful, amazing, and majestic creations of God:
> the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the galaxies and nebulae of space
> the blue whale, thoroughbred horses, the Serengeti Plains filled with lions, zebra, elephants, and beasts of various kinds
> Mount Everest, the Rocky Mountains, the most magnificent coral reefs
* Whatever you can imagine
* Close your eyes, remember them think on them for a moment

Now, realize this truth:
> None of them are as beautiful, amazing, and majestic as you
* You are a human person, a human body, endowed with a rational, personal soul, the highpoint of God's creation
* and NO OTHER CREATION is greater than you or me, because our body - the human body - is the only one capable of communion with the Creator, and NO OTHER CREATION is destined for eternity with Him

God desired this communion and created us for communion from the beginning
> But as the book of Revelation reminds us this weekend, Satan is at war
* He attacked the woman and her offspring in the Garden of Eden and succeeded in deceiving Adam and Eve
* Yet, even at the moment of original sin, which ruptured that original relationship, His plan of redemption was already in place
* In Genesis Chapter 3, he promises that the woman and her offspring would crush the head of Satan
> He eventually called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seeking to establish a people who were uniquely his own, a people who would be the cause of salvation for the entire human race
> Then he called Moses who oversaw the development of worship after he lead the Israelites out of Egypt
* Central to their worship was "The Ark of the Covenant"
* a wooden chest made, covered with gold and adorned with angels
* In this ark, the Israelites placed the Stone Tablets containing the word of God, The Staff of Aaron who was their first high priest, and Manna "The bread from heaven" which God provided to sustain them in the desert of Sinai before they reached the Promised Land
* This ark was a sign of God's presence and their communion because the Lord would descend upon in the form of a cloud and speak to Moses as a friend

But these Old Testament artifacts, were only shadows of what was to come
> they could never completely satisfy the desire for communion because they were for the most part, external to the human person
* They served to point to something greater in God's plan of salvation
> Only God Himself could bring satisfaction
* You see: Jesus had to become the Word of God made Flesh
* He had to be the Great High Priest, ministering in a heavenly tabernacle, a heavenly temple, not an earthly one
* And he had to be the True Bread from Heaven by which His people could have more than a merely nutritional supplement for their bodies, but one by which he nourished their very souls
> This being the case, to whom would God entrust His Son? Into what Ark could he place himself for the salvation of the human race?

At the fullness of time, God prepared a woman to bear His Son and together they would fulfill what God promised so long ago
> Our catechism states:
* 721 "Mary... is the masterwork of the mission of the Son and the Spirit in the fullness of time."
* 722 "...by sheer grace, [Mary was] conceived without sin as the most humble of creatures, the most capable of welcoming the inexpressible gift of the Almighty."
* By welcoming the conception of the Lord in her womb, Mary became the "Ark of the New Covenant" holding within herself the Word of God, the Great High Priest, and the Bread of Life
* She also crushed the head of Satan and became the Mother of God, the first disciple, the model and prototype of the Church, and the cause of our salvation
> Many people have wondered where the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant is today
* Some Archaeologists have gone to great lengths to find it
* And despite what we see in Raiders of the Lost Ark, no one really knows what happened to it after the Babylonian invasion in 586 B.C.
> There is no question as to where the Ark of the New Covenant is today
* Revelation chapter 12 makes it clear that as the New Ark, Mary, the woman, is already in the heavenly temple body and soul, clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet, and crowned with 12 stars
* She is the first among Christians to be granted that great victory over death in her body spoken of by Saint Paul
* As prototype of the Church, she is what we will be
* Truly, because of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, we too have hope of complete redemption of our bodies and souls
> In the face of every pain and suffering we declare with the Great Apostle:
* WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR VICTORY?
* WHERE, O DEATH, IS YOUR STING?

But we must never take our victory over death for granted
> The Gospel tells us that one of the primary reasons Mary was blessed is because she heard the word of God, believed it, and obeyed it
* One of the biggest errors Christians can make today is to think that faith is comprised only of those matters they can understand or matters that are in line with their own opinions
* Even the truth of Mary's Assumption into heaven is called into question and has been made a matter of opinion by some
> So, let us be clear a to what faith is:
* Although faith must involve reason, faith is not believing only in what we can already accept and understand
* As Mary demonstrates, faith is saying yes to God even when we are afraid of the circumstances and even when we cannot completely understand His ways

Revelation Chapter 12 also makes clear that the last thing Satan wants is for us to become like Our Lady
> With an irrational hatred and jealously he continues to make war on the woman and her offspring
* Satan's primary strategy is to rupture our communion with God by promoting offenses against the human body:
* like murder, human trafficking, physical abuse, substance abuse, gluttony, laziness, adultery, sodomy, abortion, euthanasia, contraception, cohabitation, and modern technology which attacks the embryo for research or exploits it for in vitro purposes
> Accepting Church teaching on some of these matters can be difficult
* We are roundly mocked for our teachings and considered backward because of our beliefs about such things
* but the Church is obligated to bring both faith and reason to bear even on our modern circumstances
* Because if we are to join Our Lady where she is, we need to make every effort to thwart the attacks of Satan with the Truths of the Catholic Faith and make every effort to be more like her for the glory of Her Son and the salvation of all

Today we have received the Word of God - we heard it proclaimed from this Ambo and with our own lips praised and thanked God for it
> Very soon, we will be offered a true communion with Jesus, our Great High Priest, we will receive Him as the Bread of Life and the Cup of Eternal Salvation and take Him into our own bodies
> Thus each of us becomes, in an way, an ark of the new covenant and in our bodies we realize this communion is what we were created for
> And we look forward to a new day when like our Blessed Mother, we are carried into the heavenly Jerusalem, into eternal communion with God and all the saints with a new and glorified body