Introit

  

Collect

Almighty ever-living God,
who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son,
body and soul into heavenly glory,
grant, we pray,
that, always attentive to the things that are above,
we may merit to be sharers of her glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

First Reading Rev. 11:19a,12:1-6a,10ab  

God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. 1 A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days. 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah.”

Responsorial Psalm 45:10,11,12,16

R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

 

Second Reading 1 Cor 15:20-27  

Brothers and sisters, 20 Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21 For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. 25 For Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Alleluia

 

Gospel Lk 1:39-56 

Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 56 And Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and then returned to her home.

Catena Nova

What does Mary say to us? “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior!” She fell asleep in the body but was taken by God to himself and to full wakefulness. She was taken up so as to proclaim the greatness of her Lord and God, and ours, unsleepingly and forever. Aren’t we called to do the same? Aren’t we called to wake up and praise the Lord so that all the earth can know God’s glory and God’s love for all human kind? What God called Mary to do was to bring Christ into the world for the world’s salvation. What God calls us to do is receive Christ and to show him to all the world. To see Christ in truth is to seek the God who reveals himself through Christ. That is salvation. To show salvation to the world is our vocation as it was that of Mary (Modestus of Jerusalem).

By God’s mysterious choice Mary is the mother of all Christians. You have been blessed by being called to bear the name of Christian and by dedicating your entire life freely to the service of God and Christ. Mary shows herself a true mother by care and loving attention. Her heart is never hardened against those in  need. The womb of her merciful love never ceases to bring forth the fruits of a motherly compassion. She remains ever fruitful. We too can by God’s grace be ever fruitful of compassion and caring concern. Within the locked garden of her chastity there is a never-failing well-spring of charity. It is channeled to the entire  world and its waters are there for us even in courtyards and streets. Charity delights to bestow its gifts even on enemies. It seeks to help everyone as Christ is formed in them. How much more of us who have given our lives to proclaiming the glory of God and shouting out God’s word to all who will listen? (Bl. Guerric of Igny).

It was fitting that the Holy Virgin should share in every aspect of her Son’s providential care for all of us. Just as she had given her flesh and blood to Jesus and had received in return a share of his graces, so likewise she shared in his pains and sufferings. When his side was pierced by the lance as he hung on the cross, a sword pierced his mother’s heart, just as saintly Simeon had foretold. After our Savior’s death, she was the first to conform herself to the Son who resembled her; she shared in his resurrection before anyone else. ...Thus, the grave received her body for a short time but heaven soon took it from the grave as a new earth, a spiritual body, a treasure of our human life more revered than the angels and holier than the archangels. His proper throne was restored to the King, paradise to the tree of life, the sun’s orb to the light, the tree to its fruit, the mother to her son. In every respect she was in accord with her Child (Nicholas Cabasilas).

If we practice the contemplation taught and shown to us by Our Lady, we will find that our experience is like hers. If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, if we are recollected then we know that however insignificant our own life may seem to be, Christ is forming himself in us and that is never insignificant. If we go with eager wills, in haste, to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that is what He wants—that He wants to be in that place, we will find that we are driven more and more by the impulse of his love. And there are the answers we get from others as the Christ life in us awakens impulses of love in them. They are awakened too into a leap of joy at the life they find is growing within them as well.... We need to be swift to obey the impulses of Christ-love as we carry Him to wherever he longs to go. Those who recognize his presence will be stirred by a new life within them. They will know Christ’s presence, not by anything special about us, but in the way the bud knows the presence of the light, by an unfolding in themselves. They are putting on the new beauty God is giving them as bearers of Christ. It seems to me that this may be Christ’s favorite way of being recognized. He prefers to be known, not by his own human features but by a quickening of his life in the hearts which respond to his coming within them. After the Resurrection he wasn’t known by the familiar features people had once known. He was now known by the love in the hearts of others, as in the heart of Magdalene. He was known by the fire in the feet of the travelers to Emmaus as they hurried return to Jerusalem to tell about him. He was known by the wound in his side and heart, as touched by Thomas. He is known in the deeds of love he does in and with us.  That’s how we imitate Our Lady in showing him to all the world (Caryll Houselander).

God, Scripture tells us, created human kind male and female—as an image of God. Both the male and the female, then, have their prototype in God. An early Christian liturgical poem speaks of Mary as “mother of fatherly love”. The fruit of divine love is human love and love is wholly itself only as both male and female. It is this love of God, both maternal and paternal, which has become visible in the Only Son, and must become visible in us.... Only if we accept both the maternal and paternal into our way of living faith in Christ do we embody the “whole Christ” and make it present as living sacraments for the world of our day.... It is brought to fullness in the New Adam and the Church. This is the new humanity which we put  on when we become one with Christ. It is simultaneously Christ’s body and spouse. In this unity we see the true and eternal ideal for humankind, as God had planned from the very beginning. It is the perfect and indissoluble unity of male and female as realized both in men and in women. This is new. Our task is to learn how to live this newness in new ways of loving and so relating to one another. It is a newness our  world needs if all are to come to life’s fullness and the self we are in God’s sight. It depends on how men and women love each other (Aemiliana Lohr).

How should we approach Mary’s Assumption? It is a living fulfillment of Christ’s promise to all his disciples: He has gone to the Heavenly Father to prepare a place for us, because it is his will that where he is there we too shall be. With Him the glory that the Heavenly Father gave him will be ours too, and all that follows from it. So, it goes, almost without saying, that Mary’s Assumption into Heaven is a fulfillment of the promise made to all of us.... Mary’s assumption is the pledge of the glory Christ gives to all who are his spouse. He has already shared that glory with his mother.... Have you ever tried to imagine what that state of “glory”, as we call it, will be like? We know that it is already realized for Mary and for endless other saints in her train. We also know that Christ’s ascension didn’t mean that he had left us to our own devices in our present condition. He has gone only to prepare a place for us with him. Where he is we are soon to be. Yet his going didn’t, and doesn’t, separate us from Christ! Now apply this to Mary. She has been taken to Heaven and is with Christ but as Christ is with us still so is Mary. She can’t be absent from wherever he is because he has promised we will be with Him always. The same is true for us. If we want to imagine what it is like to be with Christ, we have to begin from the fact that it means we won’t be absent from any of those who are still on earth—after all Christ is with them and we will always be with Him. Mary’s blessedness has been made perfect and it doesn’t separate her from us any more than does Christ’s. The same will be true for us. But Christ always stands interceding for us before the Heavenly Father. So does Mary, and so shall we. Everyone, in the bliss of an eternal Eucharist, shall be one of innumerably many bearers of blessing. With her we will ever be united with her Son and our Savior, interceding and bringing blessings upon all. That is God’s will for us, fulfilled already in her. Don’t be afraid! Christ is with us always (Louis Bouyer).

The fundamental doctrine of Christianity proclaims that eternal glory is now a possibility in the history of our world, of our humanity and our flesh and blood. In the flesh and blood of Christ, which is a part of this world, our reality is already in eternal glory. How are we to think of this possibility and promise personally? We can begin from the perfect achievement of the work of redemption, we can think of Mary. The perfection of the grace given her is in its final stage because she has left earthly life, the life of ordinary space and time, and entered into glory. Nothing more takes place for her as events take place on earth but the harvest sown in her and through her within the fields of this world is gathered into God’s eternal barn. In her life on this earth Mary was the highest and unmatched realization of God’s redemption of humankind. It was the redemption of a human person endowed with the grace of being the Mother of God. Consequently she was the perfect type and perfect representative of the very essence of redemption. She has already attained the perfection of beatitude, has accomplished her earthly course. What is more, in the chronology of sacred history the hour is far advanced in such a way that the perfection and beatitude of soul and of body is already possible. That is what it means to proclaim that Mary has been taken up into heaven in body and soul. That is what is promised to us who believe in the Risen Lord Jesus and entrust ourselves to God in and through Jesus (Karl Rahner).

Homily (Pope Leo XIV)

The Magisterium of the Church teaches us that Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November 1950) and points out to us, in this Mystery, the fulfillment of the most perfect grace that God bestowed upon her at her Immaculate Conception (cf. ibid.).

For this reason, many works of art depict her as a beautiful young woman physically rising from the earth toward the heavens at the end of her earthly life. These works are inspired by the scene described in the passage from the Book of Revelation that we heard in the First Reading: “A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet” (Rev 12:1), signifying that in Mary’s heart, heaven and earth, time and eternity, meet.

On the surface this image seems to contrast with our experience of what the passing of the years does to us. As we age, our bodies do not become more agile, but heavier; our skin does not become fresher, but shows the signs of old age; our hair does not gain color and luster, but turns gray and then white.  So, what do we have in common with the beautiful young woman depicted on the altarpieces of our churches?

To understand this, we must unite the two signs we have mentioned: the incorrupt body of the Mother of God and her immaculate heart. For it is the purity of the soul that, in Mary — as in us — by the grace of God, illuminates and transfigures the whole person, leading us to the glory of Heaven.

The glorification of Mary, body and soul, teaches us that our true beauty does not lie in hiding the signs of aging, but in revealing the signs of love that never end,  and are even impressed on our flesh (cf. 1 Cor 13:8).

With this in mind, we are invited to reexamine many of the aesthetic standards, predominantly hedonistic and consumerist in nature, that the world imposes on us. These standards risk trapping us in burdensome expectations, causing us to waste precious energy on what does not really matter and does not last forever.  In everyday life, we encounter people whose faces are marked by the years and by suffering, yet who are capable of radiating serenity, kindness and peace around them; just as we may observe others who are perhaps outwardly attractive but hard and cold at heart. It is easy to see where true beauty lies and where, on the other hand, there is still a need for conversion, forgiveness and healing.

If we truly wish to discover and nurture the divine beauty that surrounds us and for which we were made, and to share it with those around us, we must learn to see it in the wrinkles of an elderly person as in the tender face of a child as well, in the maturity of an adult as in the liveliness of a young person as well, in work clothes and tools as well as in festive decorations. We must listen to the unique love stories that each of these realities tells us, recognizing in them small glimpses of heaven.

Love is humanity’s most beautiful adornment. Love transfigures, transforms, ennobles and lifts us up, making us light, free and close to God, even amid life’s ups and downs.

Reflecting on the mystery of the Assumption of the Virgin, Saint Paul VI said that to understand its meaning, “we must transform the terms we use in earthly and temporal language into superlative and absolute ones […], to imagine the eternal on a small scale” (Homily, 15 August 1969). Regarding the encounter between the infinite and the finite in the Mother of God, Pope Francis wrote: “Mary was able to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 286).

The miracle that Mary, the maiden of Nazareth, experienced in her innocent heart, which led her to the glory of Heaven, is a meeting of extremes, as she herself testifies in the inspired words of the Magnificat, which we heard in the Gospel (cf. Lk 1:46–55).  In this canticle, through the humble expressions of her faith, the Mother of God speaks to us in simple terms of the magnificent mysteries she experienced, such as God becoming man in her to save humanity, and the Eternal One revealing himself within time to reopen the path to eternity for us.  At the same time, in her position as a “humble servant,” Saint Paul VI says that Mary shows us the “humble dimension” in which we too can encounter the Lord.

We need not look far to find the sublimity of the Mystery we celebrate. We can encounter it wherever there is true charity.  For example, in the eyes of a father and mother returning home after a long day, tired but happy to be with their children. In the faces of grandfathers and grandmothers who, despite the aches and pains of old age, are filled with unexpected energy as they care for their grandchildren. In the commitment of young people who strive to grow in morality and sincerity, ready even to go against the grain of “what everyone else does.” Finally, in the daily work of so many men and women who, with faith and dedication, help bring a little bit of Heaven to earth and the earth closer to Heaven.

Dear friends, the beautiful face of Our Lady of the Assumption is unique; it transcends any possible representation, and yet, at the same time, is familiar to us.  Even at this very moment, we can see her face in the people who are close to us, such as the brothers and sisters with whom, in faith, we share the daily offering of our lives. For this reason, the community of believers sees itself in the woman of the Book of Revelation, and the Second Vatican Council describes Mary as “the image and beginning of the Church, […] as a sign of sure hope and solace” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 68). I n her holy human nature, by the grace of God, we also see our nature; therefore, we too are called to live the same grace-filled life that she lived and to share in her glory.

When speaking of Christ’s resurrection, Saint Augustine urged the Christians of his time to make it the compass and focal point of their lives. He said: “Christ rose from the dead so that He might never die again […]. Change course, follow the light! Begin to rise from the very place from which he rose” (Enarratio in Psalmos, 126:7).

Let us accept his invitation. Let us follow the light of the Risen Lord, changing course if necessary. Let us do so, especially today, by looking to Mary, whom God has crowned with glory in body and soul, and whom he has given to us as Mother, guide, companion on our journey, and protector on the path to Heaven. 

Intercessions (Peter Scagnelli; Prayers for Sundays and Seasons)

For the church whose future glory is prefigured in the Virgin Mary: Like her, may God’s people magnify the Lord and bear Christ to the world.

For the world that longs to be free from war, terrorism and death: May Christ put all these enemies under his feet and far from our lives.

For innocent lives devoured by the greed and violence of the powerful: May their cause be championed by all who belong to the kingdom of God.

For believers who work to transform our society: May they strive to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things.

For those who have felt the sting of death and mourn the loss of loved ones: May the promise of immortality and the love of the community sustain them.

For those who assist expectant mothers in need, as Mary assisted Elizabeth: May they inspire us all to mutual charity and make our hearts leap for joy.

For us who proclaim the victory of Christ’s resurrection: May we, like Mary, be blessed for believing the fulfillment of God’s promises.

For the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, who celebrate today the anniversary of their foundation, that through the intercession of Mary, Help of Christians and Mother of Mercy, they might remain faithful to the charism and mission bequeathed to them by their founder, St. Gaspar del Bufalo.

For those who have gone to their rest with faith in Christ’s resurrection: May Christ come to reign in them and destroy death for ever.

 Faithful to your promise, O God, you have lifted up the lowly, clothing with heavenly splendour the woman who bore Christ, our life and resurrection. Grant that the Church, prefigured in Mary, may bear Christ to the world and come to share his triumph. We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen (ICEL; 1998).

Offertory Antiphon

Offertory Hymn (John Michael Talbot)

 

I found my Beloved, in the mountains On the lonely and far and distant isles;

Over resounding waters, I hear the whispering Of love's breezes, to heal my heart.

Oh tranquil evening, silent music; And the sounding solitude, of the rising dawn;

It is there that I hear You, there that I taste of You In love's banquet, to fill my heart.

And I found Your footprints in the sand, by the sea; And like Your maiden, I ran along the way.  To a secret chamber...

And there You gave to me, there You taught me, oh so well And I drank of Your sweet spiced wine, the wine of God.

And there I gave to You, keeping nothing for myself There I promised You, forever, to be Your bride.

And I found Your footprints, in the sand, by the sea And like Your maiden, I ran along the way.  To a secret chamber...

So, I have abandoned, all I ever sought to be; And in dying, my spirit has been released.

Communion Antiphon

 

Closing Hymn (John Michael Talbot)

 

Come my love, pass through my will
As through a window
Shine on my life as on a meadow
Like the grass to be consumed
By the rays of the sun
On a late summer's morning

Come my love, all through the night
I lay longing eagerly to wait for love's union
Like dawn's flower awaits
for the wedding with the sun
Consummated in the light

Your light, my love is stealing my heart
As a secret I'm left
Like a vanishing form that leaves no shadows
Exposed, naked, alone between
The heavens and the earth
Lifted high on the cross with the Savior

Oh life-giving tomb
Prepared through the night for dawn's dying
Like a womb, like the mansions of Heaven
Await the rebirth of a child, New Jerusalem
So come to my life, light of Heaven

Come my love, pass through my will
As through a window
Shine on my life as on a meadow
Like the grass to be washed
In the rays of the sun
On the late summer's morning