The Solemnity of the Assumption
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
The Entrance Antiphon of the Vigil Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption says: “All honor to you, Mary! Today you were raised above the choirs of angels to lasting glory with Christ.”
The First Reading of that Mass narrates the translation of the Ark of the Covenant, its moving, to its definitive resting place (1 Chron. 15:3-4, 15-16, 16:1-2).
David convened all Israel, ordered the priests to purify themselves, and named singers and dancers, so that the procession would have the greatest possible solemnity and adornment. With boundless joy the Ark was moved to the city of David, and placed in the duly prepared Tabernacle. Its final repose lay in the perpetual dwelling place that God Himself had chosen on Mount Sion (Ps. 132:14).
The Ark was the sign of the presence of God in the midst of His People. Inside, His Word was kept, inscribed on “the two tablets of the law” (Deut. 9:15).
This passage is mentioned today because we speak of Our Lady as being “the Ark of the New Covenant.” In her womb, said one writer, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, dwelt for nine months (cf. C Pozo, Mary in Scripture and in the Faith of the Church).
With her Assumption into heaven she found her final abode in the heart of the Blessed Trinity. St. Amadeus says, “Mary was brought up to heaven amidst acclamations of joy and praise. She went directly into God’s presence, and there took her throne in glory above all the angels and the saints” (Amadeus of Lausanne, 8 Marian Homilies).
St. Paul VI says the Ark of the Old [Testament] was built with precious materials, and adorned with gold in its interior. In the case of Mary, God bestowed on her untold gifts. Her external beauty was a reflection of the plenitude of grace within (cf. Paul VI, Address, May 17, 1975). And so, she was the new dwelling place of God in the world.
We shouldn’t forget today that where the Ark was, was a place of privilege for the Jews, since God heard their prayers there. We’re told in the Book of Kings, “My Name shall be there” (1 Kings 8:29).
Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, is special too, because she joins her voice to ours, so that God listens to our pleas which are all the more efficacious.
Recourse to Our Lady is the best way to beseech God. She herself intercedes for us from above, and redirects our petitions if they’re not altogether perfectly well-intentioned.
The Second Vatican Council has said, “Taken up to heaven she does not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation” (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 62, November 21, 1964).
St. Josemaría in the Furrow says: “Our Mother went up to heaven, body and soul. Tell her often that we, her children, refuse to be separated from her. She will hear you!” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 898).
Mother of ours, you who are so close to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, don’t let us go from your hand…don’t let me go, or them, my Mother.
What great security devotion to Our Lady gives us all the time! She’ll always listen, no matter what circumstances we’re in.
According to ancient Jewish tradition, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon the prophet Jeremiah brought the Ark away and hid it in a secret place. No one has seen it since.
Only St. John tells us—and we are reminded in this Mass—that he saw it in heaven, a clear allusion to the most holy body of Our Lady: “The sanctuary of God in heaven opened, and the Ark of the Covenant could be seen inside it,” said the Book of Revelation (Rev. 11:19).
“No one can tell for sure when, from where, or in what way the Blessed Virgin left the earth, but we do know where she is. When Elisha was taken up to heaven, the sons of the prophets of Jericho asked Elijah if they could go out to look for him.
“They said to him: ‘It may be that the spirit of the Lord has transported him to the top of a hill or has left him in a crevice in the valleys.’ Elijah consented to their wish grudgingly.
“When they returned from the fruitless search, he reproached them: ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go?’ he says in the Book of Kings (2 Kings 2:16-18).
“The same situation arises concerning the body of Our Lady. Nowhere in Christendom will we ever hear a rumor about her whereabouts. So many churches throughout the world enthusiastically affirm that they possess the relics of this or that saint. Who can say for sure if St. John the Baptist lies in Amiens or in Rome? But no such claim will ever be made regarding Our Lady.
“And if anyone were still hoping to find so priceless a treasure, we know that the Holy Father declared an end to all investigation of the sort some time ago. We know where her body is. It is in heaven. Naturally, we already knew it before,” says Ronald Knox (R. A. Knox, Feasts of the Liturgical Year).
Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption as a dogma of the faith on November 1, 1950, and he said: “With the course of her earthly life brought to completion, the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, was taken body and soul into celestial glory” (Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, Points 40, 44, November 1, 1950).
Since the beginnings of Christianity, the faithful have been convinced, Mary did not undergo corruption in the tomb, but was taken to heaven body and soul.
An ancient Father of the Church has written: “It was fitting for the one who preserved her virginity in giving birth to be conserved from any corruption after death.
“It was appropriate for her who had taken the Creator made Child into her womb, to dwell in the divine abode. It was right that she who saw her Son receive, heart and soul on the cross, what she had been freed from in giving birth, [that she] should contemplate him seated at the right hand of the Father. It was truly just for the Mother of God to possess the honor due her Son, and to be esteemed as Mother and Handmaid of God by all creatures” (John Damascene, Second Homily on the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary).
The Assumption of Our Lady can fill us with joy, and encourages us along the way still remaining before we reach heaven. She gives us the courage and energy to reach the sanctity we are called to by our vocation.
Furthermore, it is necessary that we struggle to be good daughters and sons of God, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo says, “to make an effort to keep our souls clean through frequent sacramental Confession and the reception of the Eucharist. In this way we will reach heaven, not in the same way as the most Holy Virgin, since due to sin our bodies will experience corruption.
“Nevertheless, if we die in God’s grace, our soul will go to heaven, perhaps by way of Purgatory first so that we might put on the wedding garment indispensable for entering the heavenly banquet where we will see God ‘as he is,’ says St. John (1 John 3:2).
“Later on, at the final resurrection of the dead, our bodies will also rise, and be united with our glorified souls, and we will then receive the eternal reward” (Álvaro del Portillo, Homily at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels of Torreciudad, August 15, 1989). We will then join Jesus and His most Holy Mother in endless joy.
Seeing the happy conclusion of Our Lady’s life, we understand the joy of being faithful each day. Being faithful is worthwhile.
We realize that “the struggle to say ‘yes’ to the Lord is worthwhile. In our pagan environment, we have the divine vocation to sanctify ourselves and to sanctify others. It is worth everything to reject firmly anything that can separate us from God, and to respond positively to whatever draws us close to him.
“Our Lord will help us, [since] he does not ask the impossible. Since he demands that we be saints, in spite of our undeniable wretchedness and the difficulties we encounter, he will grant us his grace. Therefore, we can say with what the sons of Zebedee stated in St. Mark: ‘Possumus!...we can!’ (Mark 10:39). We can be saints, despite our defects and sins, since God is good and all-powerful, and we have the Mother of God herself, whom Jesus cannot refuse, as our own.
“Let us then be filled with hope and confidence. In spite of our shortcomings, we ‘can’ be saints, if we struggle one day after another, if we purify our souls in the sacrament of Penance, and if we frequently receive the living bread that has come down from heaven (John 6:41), the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, truly present in the Sacred Eucharist.
“And when the moment to render an account of our soul to God comes, we shall not fear death. Dying will be like moving to a new home for us. It will come when God wants. It will be a liberation, the beginning of Life with a capital ‘L.’
”[We are told in the Preface for the Dead,] ‘Life is changed, not taken away’ (Roman Missal, Preface I for the Deceased). For we will begin to live in a new way, closely united to Our Lady, to eternally adore the most Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This then is the prize awaiting us” (ibid.)
In the meantime, Our Mother helps us from heaven each day in our troubles and difficulties. May we not neglect to seek her patronage, in particular on her great feast days.
Since the fifth century the Church has held implicitly the belief in the Assumption of Our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. It can be deduced from the Liturgy, from pious documents, and from the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
We’re told in Genesis, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15). And so, Our Lady appears associated with Christ the Redeemer in the fight against and the triumph over Satan. This is the message of the first book of Sacred Scripture, the divine plan Providence prepared from all eternity to save us.
In the last book of Scripture, the Book of Revelation, we find the admirable scene: We’re told, “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head” (Rev. 12:1).
Our Lady enters, body and soul, into heaven after finishing her life among us. The Mother of God arrives to be crowned Queen of the Universe. “So will the king desire your beauty,” we’re told in the Psalms (Ps. 45:11).
The Apostle John was surely a witness of Mary’s passage to heaven, since the Lord had entrusted her to him, and he would not have been absent at that time. But in his Gospel, he says nothing concerning Our Lady’s last moments on earth.
He who spoke of Jesus’ death on Golgotha with so much clarity and force is silent when it is a matter concerning the one he cared for as his own mother, the Mother of Jesus and of all men (Marie-Dominique Philippe, Mystery of Mary).
Witnessed firsthand, it must have been like a sweet dream. St. Germanus of Constantinople said, “You are she who, as it is written, appear in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissolution into dust.
“Though still human, its life is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged, and sharing in [perfect] life” (Germanus of Constantinople, Homilies About the Virgin).
We’re told in the document of the 1^st^ of November, 1950, by Pius XII, “At the end of her earthly life, she is taken up into heavenly glory, body and soul” (Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, Points 40, 44, November 1, 1950).
There, her glorious Son Jesus awaits her, just as she contemplated Him after the Resurrection. With divine power, God saw to the preservation of the integrity of Mary’s body.
He preserves her perfect unity and complete harmony, without permitting the least alteration. Our Lady wins “the supreme crown of her privileges, to be exempt from the corruption of the tomb. Overcoming death as her Son conquered it previously, she is raised body and soul to heavenly glory” (ibid.). The integral harmony of the Marian privileges points to it.
We often contemplate the Assumption of Our Lady in the Fourth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary. St. Josemaría says, “The mother of God has fallen asleep. … But Jesus wants to have his Mother, body and soul, in heaven. And the heavenly Court, arrayed in all its splendor, greets Our Lady.
“You and I—children after all—take the train of Mary’s magnificent blue cloak; and so we can watch the marvelous scene. The most Blessed Trinity receives and showers honors on the Daughter, Mother, and Spouse of God. ... And so great is Our Lady’s majesty that the Angels exclaim: Who is she?” (J. Escrivá, The Holy Rosary, Fourth Glorious Mystery).
We too, full of admiration, rejoice with the angels. We can congratulate her on her feast day. We feel proud to be sons and daughters of so great a Lady.
Popular piety in Marian art frequently represents the Virgin in the midst of clouds borne aloft by the angels. St. Thomas Aquinas sees, in these angelic interventions on behalf of those who have left the earth and are already on the way to heaven, a manifestation of the reverence the angels and all creatures render glorified bodies (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Suppl. 84,1).
In the case of Our Lady, all that we can imagine is little, nothing, even compared with the way it must have been in reality. St. Teresa tells how she once had a vision of the [glorified] hand of Our Lord. Afterwards, the saint said, five hundred thousand suns reflecting in the clearest crystal were as a sad and dark night in comparison (cf. Teresa of Ávila, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus).
How would the gaze of Christ be? One day, if we are faithful, we will contemplate Jesus and Mary, whom we have invoked so many times in this life.
In the Preface of the Assumption, it says, “Today the Virgin Mother of God was taken up into heaven to be the beginning and the pattern of the Church in its perfection, and a sign of hope and comfort for your people on their pilgrim way.”
Let us look at Our Lady, already taken up into heaven. “Just as a traveler, gazing out to contemplate a vast panorama, seeks some human figure in his surroundings to bring the distant objects into perspective, so do we look towards God with amazement, but can identify and welcome a purely human figure at the side of his throne.
“A ship has finished its passage, a destiny has been fulfilled, a human perfection has existed. Through her, his masterpiece, we see God’s relations with humanity more clearly and with greater insight” (Ronald A. Knox, Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, August 15, 1954).
Our Lady’s privileges are related to her Motherhood and, as such, with our Redemption too.
Taken into heaven, Mary is an image and forerunner of the Church still on the way towards eternal life. From heaven, Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council says, “she shines forth until the day of the Lord shall come, as a sure sign of hope and solace for the people of God during its sojourn on earth” (cf. Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 68, November 21, 1964).
“By the mystery of the Assumption into heaven, there were definitively accomplished in Mary,” said John Paul II, “all the effects of the one mediation of Christ the Redeemer of the world and Risen Lord. …
“In the mystery of the Assumption is expressed the faith of the Church, according to which Mary ‘is united by a close and indissoluble bond to Christ’ (Lumen gentium, Point 53)” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, Point 41, March 25, 1987).
She is the assurance and proof that as her children, we will one day be in our glorified bodies beside the glorious Christ. Our aspiration to eternal life gains impetus as we meditate on our heavenly Mother above.
St. Paul VI says, “She sees and watches over us with a look full of tenderness, with more love, the greater our need” (cf. Paul VI, Address, August 15, 1963).
John Paul II says, “She also has the specifically motherly role of being our mother in the order of mercy ‘at the final coming’” (John Paul II, ibid.).
She is our great advocate before God Most High. Truly, life on earth is a “valley of tears” (Ps. 84:6). We are called to make sacrifices and to endure suffering. Above all though, we are not in heaven yet. At the same time, Our Lord gives us many joys, and we have the hope of heaven so that we may look ahead with optimism.
Our Lady is one of our reasons for happiness, because she is “our life, our sweetness, and our hope.” We feel the affection of Our Mother in our lives as Christians. We tell her: “Turn then, your eyes of mercy towards us.”
Like her Son, she is full of mercy and compassion. She never withholds her helping hand from anyone who turns to her for help. In the Memorare we pray: “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection was left unaided” (Prayer of St. Bernard).
May we make ever more of an effort to seek the intercession of Our Lady, Queen of heaven and earth. May we fly to you, Refuge of sinners, and say to you: Show to us Jesus, whom we are in need of above all else.
For those who look to Mary in every circumstance, with the simplicity and confidence of a child before his mother, there is great security and joy.
A Father of the Church writes: “Just as the Virgin Mary was the most docile instrument in the hands of Our Lord, I desire greatly to be subject to her service. Grant me this request, Jesus, God and Son of Man, Lord of all creation and Son of your Handmaid.
“Allow me to serve your Mother in such a way that you will acknowledge me as your servant. May she be our sovereign on earth, so that you may be my Lord for all eternity” (Ildephonsus of Toledo, On the perpetual virginity of Holy Mary).
We need to examine the quality of our daily dealings with her. The Forge says, “If you feel proud to be a son of Our Lady, ask yourself: How often do I express my devotion to Our Lady during the day, from morning until night?” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 433)—the Angelus, the Holy Rosary, the three Hail Marys, perhaps before going to bed...
In the Communion Antiphon of today’s Mass we say: “Blessed is the womb of the Virgin Mary; she carried the Son of the Eternal Father” (cf. Luke 11:27).
The Assumption of Our Lady is a wonderful precursor of our own resurrection. It’s made possible through Christ rising from the dead. “He will refashion the body of our littleness, and conform it to the body of his glory” (cf. Phil. 3:21).
St. Paul reminds us of this in the Second Reading of the Mass: “As death came through one man through the sin of Adam, through the one man, Christ, has the resurrection also come. Through him, all things will be restored to life, but each one in its proper order.
“Christ as the first fruit, and then after the coming of Christ, those who belong to Christ. After that will come the end, when he delivers the kingdom [to] God the Father,” says St. Paul the Apostle (1 Cor. 15:20-24). The Apostle writes here of Christ’s coming.
“In the unique case of Our Lady, shouldn’t it be fulfilled ‘immediately’ when her earthly life ends? Life for all mankind ends in death. In the case of Mary, tradition more aptly refers to it as the ‘dormition.’ Our Lady is assumed into heaven!” says John Paul II, “and the angels rejoice and the Church rejoices.
“For us, the Solemnity today is like a continuation of Easter, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Our Lord. It is, at the same time, a sign and source of hope for eternal life and the future resurrection” (John Paul II, Address, August 15, 1980).
Today on this Solemnity, our petitions can be full of confidence. St. Bernard says: “Our Advocate rose up to heaven, so she will arrange for our salvation as Mother of the Judge and Mother of Mercy” (Bernard, Homily on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). She continually strengthens our hope.
In Christ Is Passing By, St. Josemaría says: “We are still pilgrims, but Our Mother has gone before us and is already pointing to the reward of our efforts.
“She reminds us that it is possible to reach it, and that if we are faithful, we will in fact do so. Our Lady is not only our example; she is also ‘Help of Christians.’ In light of this, our petition can be: ‘Show yourself to be a Mother. Show us that you are Our Mother.’ She could not, nor would she ever, deprive her children of her motherly care.
“‘Cor Maria Dulcissima, iter para tutum.’ Most Sweet Heart of Mary, prepare a safe way for your own. Guide our steps on earth with strength and security in our path on earth. Become for us the path we are to follow, since you know the way and the quick and most direct passage ways that lead through love of you to the love of Jesus Christ” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Points 177-178).
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW