GO TO CHURCH!: It’s the Feast of the Assumption. Amy Welborn’s experience. My priest did something very cool, despite some time-wasting rambling at the beginning of his homily. He basically connected the Assumption of Mary into Heaven with the importance of the body. Catholicism is famous for being a very sensual religion; although it’s falsely accused, these days, of hating or rejecting the human body, it in fact honors the body and considers it a gift that God gives to us and that, in marriage, we give to each other. The priest didn’t mention this, but the homily reminded me yet again how many contemporary evils (especially sexual evils) arise from the fact that we don’t honor the body as Christ would have us do. Contraception (as opposed to giving one’s body wholly, including a woman’s natural cycle of fertility and infertility), abortion (it’s just a body, so it can’t have worth), promiscuity (what I do with my body doesn’t mean anything; my body is just a tool I use to obtain or give pleasure)–it all goes against the vision of the glorified body that we find throughout Church teachings. The resurrection of the body, the Eucharist, the Assumption of Mary bodily into heaven, Thomas putting his finger into Christ’s wounds–those are signs of a faith that respects the body and knows that, despite its evident corruption, decay, and failures, the flesh is good.