Each year, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Aug. 15, the day I write this reflection.

The Assumption of Mary is a dogma in the church, declared in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. But the popular belief that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven upon her death stretches back to the early centuries of Christianity.

Whatever your personal thoughts are about whether the Assumption took place the way the Church teaches, it is a beautiful concept to consider: that due to her unique and honored role in mothering Jesus, God would save her the experience of earthly death, and raise her immediately, body and soul, into heaven.

One of my favorite writers is Sue Monk Kidd, best known for her book “The Secret Life of Bees”, which was turned into a major motion picture.

“The Secret Life of Bees” takes place in the summer of 1964 in South Carolina. Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens’ mother accidentally died when Lily was a young child, and Lily escapes her abusive father with her caregiver. They seek refuge in a town called Tiburon where her mother had spent time, and find shelter with three black beekeeper sisters who offer Lily a sense of belonging and a connection to her mother through their honey business and their devotion to a black Madonna statue. Lily learns about beekeeping, the power of female community, and the importance of forgiveness as she grapples with her past and navigates the complexities of race and identity in the pre-Civil Rights-Act South.

Throughout the story, Lily engages with the Boatwright sisters and their friends in devotion to the Black Madonna, sharing in the legend of “Our Lady of Chains.” Lisa Steiner, an associate of the Ursiline Sisters of Louisville, writes on the order’s website:

“The Black Madonna in ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ is called Our Lady of Chains. This figure was the masthead of an old ship that was found on the shores of a southern plantation. The slave master wrapped chains around her to entrap her and teach the slaves a lesson, yet the story is that she miraculously escaped.

“In the novel, Our Lady of Chains was described as a hopeful icon for the Black slaves. She broke the chains of bondage and was a symbol of freedom. ‘Our Lady filled their hearts with fearlessness and whispered to them plans of escape,’ the author writes. (p. 110) Importantly, they saw themselves in her: ‘When they looked at her, it occurred them for the first time in their lives that what’s divine could come in dark skin…everybody needs a God who looks like them.’ (p.141)”

With her biological mother gone, Lily’s struggle to find a mothering figure in her life is satisfied as she daily grows in maturity with the Boatwright sisters, who are named August, May and June. Each of the sisters mother Lily in a different way, and collectively they and their friends are mothered into internal strength by Mary through their devotion to her, during difficult times in their lives.

At the end of the book, we see Lily permanently living with the Boatwright sisters and enrolled in school in Tiburon. An aspiring writer, she reflectively considers her spiritual growth and the mothering aspect of God that Mary symbolizes.

“Each day I visit black Mary, who looks at me with her wise face, older than old and ugly in a beautiful way. It seems the crevices run deeper into her body each time I see her, that her wooden skin ages before my eyes. I never get tired of looking at her thick arm jutting out, her fist like a bulb about to explode. She is a muscle of love, this Mary.

“I feel her in unexpected moments, her Assumption into heaven happening in places inside me. She will suddenly rise, and when she does, she does not go up, up into the sky, but further and further inside me. August says she goes into the holes life has gouged out of us.”

When I first read this book many years ago, this quotation left me spellbound. Mary’s Assumption was an ongoing process in Lily’s life. In the everyday rising from death to life through the circumstances of her life, Lily’s feminine spirituality was daily becoming more deeply embodied.

In like manner, Mary’s Assumption can be an ongoing process in each of our lives, as well.

Mary’s life was deeply intertwined with the life of Jesus. Any woman who has borne a child will understand this. If God desired that her earthly life would be so intricately a part of Jesus’s mission and ministry, then it doesn’t take a huge leap to think she would continue to do the same from heaven.

Indeed, blessed is she among women and blessed is the fruit of her womb.

And blessed are we to have her as our spiritual mother.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.