The Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven

The Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven is celebrated to honour Mary as someone who in a complete and selfless way co-operated in God becoming human in Jesus Christ. I remember Archbishop Fulton Sheen speaking on Our Blessed Lady and he used a lovely image; if we could have pre-existed our mothers and were given a part in her creation, wouldn’t we make her the most beautiful, the most special of all women? Jesus pre-existed his mother and he made her immaculate.

And by and large we all have wonderful mothers. Whether our mam’s are on earth or in heaven, they are still our mothers and we love them.  Listen to the requests in the newspapers, on social networking sites, or on radio stations each mother’s day or at their birthdays and you’ll see something like; “To the Best mother in the world...”

The first reading at today’s Mass from the book of the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:19, 12:1-6. 10) talks about the battle between good and evil and how the woman (Mary) is a key player in the story of how evil (the dragon) is defeated. Looking at the Gospel (1:39-56) we see Mary in her Magnificat seeking no praise or notoriety in this at all on hearing Elizabeth bless her. She is conscious that because of what God has done for her in choosing her to be the mother of the Son of the Most High, she says “Holy is his name.” Couple that with the vanity of the Dragon in Revelation and we see how vain evil can be. It seeks to stay hidden in lies yet it wants to be on prime time television, it loves to grace the pages of the news media, and it wants to be famous. Mary prefers to be like all mothers in putting their family first, the needs of the children first, and their own will in the back burner. I met a woman today who reminded me of how her mother went without dinner in order to give the food to the children. And that’s not the first time I heard that. We all have our own personal memories of selfless mothers, selfless parents.

We pray for all mothers on this Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven.