Feast of the Assumption of the Mother of God into Heaven Body and Soul
“And 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” (Revelation 12:1).
This sign is the great and ever-virgin Mary, the all-holy Mother of God. She appeared in the Revelation of John in heaven as a woman clothed with the sun: her thoughts and desires were always heavenly. She is of the line of Eve, the first woman, whose curse Mary undid when God sent his Son, the Sun of justice and righteousness, born of a woman, born under the law, who redeemed us with his pure and precious blood.
The Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, body and soul, every year on 15 August. This feast reminds us of the Virgin, Mother of the Lord, blessed among women and blessed in the fruit of her womb; it reminds us of her exalted place and her great power of intercession, and of how the Almighty, whose name is holy, did great things for her, among them this fitting assumption into heaven, where her Son is and where heavenly glory is.
It is the feast of the crowning of the Virgin Mary as Queen of heaven and earth; it is the feast of hope and light, in which God’s promises to his beloved daughter, the loving Mother of the Lord, were fulfilled. It is a feast that reminds us that the last word
belongs not to evil and death but to eternal life and heavenly glory;
not to despair but to hope;
not to darkness but to light;
not to death but to life;
not to the powerful but to the humble.
It is the feast in which Christ honours his mother,
for he did not allow the holy body in which she carried him, the body whose coming made Elizabeth’s child leap for joy, to see decay and corruption in the tomb like other people.
The truth of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, body and soul, is a divine truth, and it could not be otherwise. It is the power of divine love that turned the curse of the cross into resurrection, that created life out of nothing, that defeated despair with hope and death with life; this same power took the Virgin Mary up into heaven body and soul. It is the fulfilment of the divine will, the divine tenderness lifting up Mary our mother, body and soul, to the fullness of divine love. So the Lord teaches us that the Virgin’s death was a falling asleep: she entered this world free from sin and the corruption of evil, and left it safe and whole, free from the corruption of the grave. For he said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
Prepared by Rita of the Sawt el Rab team
