The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption to Heaven

Revelation 11: 19a, 12: 1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 44; 1 Cor. 15: 20-26; Luke 1: 39-56

Read: Then Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour because he has looked upon the his servant in her lowliness. Yes, henceforth all generations will call me blessed, for the almighty has done great things for me. Holy is His name and His mercy is from age to age on those who fear Him. He puts forth His arm in strength and scatters the proud hearted. He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises high the lowly, He fills the starving with good things; sends the rich empty away. He has come to protect Israel His servant, mindful of His faithful love – according to the promise made to our ancestors – of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants for ever”.

Reflect: Mindful of the reality of death and of the deterioration of the body in the grave, we need to have great courage to believe that the Lord is the God of the living and to have hope in another life away from the life that we are now living. In today’s feast, we have before us that person who always had faith in God……Mary. Her relation Elizabeth tells us: “Content is the one who believed in all that she was told by the Lord”. Mary responds with a canticle of praise to the Lord; the Magnificat.

Every evening during Vespers (the Evening Prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours), the Church sings this canticle. This is done so that those who believe, probably tried by all that they will have experienced during the day, will maintain their belief in the faith by which Mary was capable of understanding and discerning all that she was going through in her life, and the story of her people. Mary assures us that not only now, but always, for eternity, God will remain faithful to us. He is never going to go back on his promise of love for us, and, surely, He is not going to abandon us at the moment of our death.

Pray: O everlasting God who has infinite powers, You took up to the glory of heaven, with soul and body, Mary your Son’s Mother; render that our thoughts will always be on heavenly things, so that we will be worthy of a place with her in the glory You gave her.

Act: Like Mary, may we be guided by faith and not by our bodily sight (see 2 Corinthians 5:7).