Los Angeles archbishop: What the Assumption of Mary teaches about life and death
Archbishop José Gomez said the Solemnity, celebrated Aug. 15, reveals God’s love is stronger than death and calls the faithful to live in the hope of eternal life.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary offers an answer to modern fears of aging and death, according to a recent reflection from the archbishop of Los Angeles, who said death is not the end but the beginning of eternal life with God.
In his Aug. 12 column for Angelus News, Archbishop José Gomez drew on Pope Leo XIV’s warning that humanity’s relationship with life is in crisis as it focuses on the transhumanist pursuit of immortality.
“The transhumanist movement reflects even darker ambitions,” the archbishop wrote, “to use science and technology not just to improve human life and ease human suffering, but to ‘perfect’ the human person and offer us a kind of ‘immortality,’ that will allow our ‘consciousness’ to live on long after our bodies die.”
The archbishop contrasted that vision with the hope revealed through Mary’s Assumption into heaven.
“The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption into heaven, body and soul, calls us to remember that death is not the enemy of life or something to be feared and defeated,” he wrote. “Death is not the end. Death is a beginning, the natural threshold that we must all pass over to enjoy eternal life with God, to live forever in what the saints call the love that never ends.”
Archbishop Gomez said Mary was the first to experience the resurrection promised through Christ, but would not be the last.
“The Assumption calls us to set aside our fears and look to the glorious destiny that has been promised to each and every person,” he wrote. “Where Mary has gone, we know that we can go too.”
The archbishop said this belief changes how Christians understand human weakness and mortality.
“The Assumption tells us that God’s love is stronger than death and stronger than our fears of our limitations and vulnerabilities, our fears of growing old and dying,” Archbishop Gomez wrote. “Death will never get the last word in our lives. Death will surely come to each of us, but our bodies are destined to rise, as Blessed Mary’s did.”
The archbishop concluded by urging Catholics to begin living in the hope of the resurrection.
“Even now we can begin living the joy of the resurrection,” he wrote, “even now we can live the victory of life and love over fear and death.”
