Assumption of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth
A Meditation as a Preparation for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the B.V.M.
August 15, 2013
This great feast of the Assumption of Mary, the Mother of God, is special for all of humanity because it is a concrete witness to that which gives us confidence that our expectations of Eternal Life are rewarded. Human hope is that our life, as we know it, is not ended in the here and now but that it is changed. God's initial plan was that by our cooperation with Him through a living faith in Him and His grace we will hold fast with confidence that what we believe in and hope for as believers is true. Far too much focus on life as ending with the darkness of the grave. Far too many look at life and its challenges as indicative of hopelessness rather than a call to us to believe in what God Himself revealed to Abraham and his posterity and finally in His Son Jesus Christ.
Darkness is all around us, many find themselves low in hope because of circumstances that ring more of despair than of hope. Families are being driven apart, division in the Church and in much of society show that there is no positive and wholesome leadership which points out with a prophetic voice that God IS and all are called to be one in Him the "I AM." Jesus is proclaimed by many of His followers as the Light and Hope of the world but they do not live His commands. He declared long ago that these are not too difficult to live, yet many treat these commandments of God as impossible to live and are not the sure guide to a life of peace and happiness. Why, because God Himself is being denied as the beginning and end of human life. The constant today by the agnostic, the atheist, is to demand that believers have no right to force them to believe in One whom they do not see or know, thus to make people believe that a Creator is not needed, that God is not Provident or caring, that the powerful people of the world can and do take care of human lives better than believers. Over and over again, through the past centuries, especially since the middle of the nineteenth century, humanists have tried to convince others that we do not need God but in their ways and doings, they act like gods, as controllers of all things seen and unseen. The dictators killed people they judged did not measure up to their ideal — intellectually, physically, emotionally, relationally and more — and eliminated the undesirable (by their standards) as they determined to make the perfect society, designed in their image and likeness. In the midst of all this arrogance there is one person who stands out as the perfect, ideal and truly the shining star in all the common sense of that word. Yet she is ignored and vilified because she always points to Truth, a truth they painfully work to evaporate because they are a people of the lie and truth annoys them.
This singular person is the one who came to know God in her mind, heart, soul and will — so that she was addressed by William Wordsworth writing in his Poem The Virgin: "Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost.1 With the least shade of thought to sin allied; Woman! above all women glorified, Our tainted nature's solitary boast."
Mary, in her single-mindedness, her undivided heart, her purity of soul and her united will with the Father's will is the one who reminds humankind of its destiny as well as its beginning, for she was always one with God in His righteousness. So states one antiphon from a Mass for the common of the Blessed Virgin Mary: "Blessed are you, O Virgin Mary, who bore the Creator of all things. You became the Mother of your Maker, and you remain ever a virgin." Her Virginity means that no corporeal or secular pleasure ever held sway in Mary's life. This reality certainly urges our age to return to the virtue that gains the hope of eternal glory. Thus the Assumption and the Crowning of Mary as Queen present hope to a generation that desires to move from darkness into God's marvelous Light — His Glory, His Ever Lasting Love.
1 uncrost (Old English)= unharmed, unhurt