Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary
August 15, 2021
A great sign appeared in the sky: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
Readings
First reading
Reading from the book of Revelation 11, 19a; 12, 1. 3-6a. 10ab
God’s sanctuary was opened in heaven, and his ark of the covenant appeared in his sanctuary.
A great sign appeared in the sky: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head; and she is pregnant, and she cries out in labor pains and in the torment of giving birth.
And another sign appeared in the sky: a great red dragon that has seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads seven diadems, and its tail drags a third of the stars in the sky and cast them on the earth.
And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth to him.
And she gave birth to a male child, who is to shepherd all nations with a rod of iron, and his child was snatched up beside God and beside his throne; and the woman fled to the desert, where she has a place prepared by God.
And I heard a great voice in the sky saying:
“Now the salvation and the power and the kingship of our God, and the power of his Christ have been established.”
Psalm
Ps 44, 10. 11-12. 16
R /. Standing to your right is the queen, bejeweled with Ophir’s gold.
Daughters of kings come out to meet you,
standing to your right is the queen, bejeweled with the gold of Ophir. R.
Listen, daughter, look: incline your ear, forget your people and your father’s house;
the king of your beauty is captivated: bow down before him, for he is your lord. R.
They bring them between joy and excitement, they enter the royal palace. R.
Second lecture
A reading from the first letter of Saint Paul to Corinthians 15, 20-27a
Brothers and sisters:
Christ rose from the dead: the first of all. If death came through a man, resurrection has come through a man. If for Adam all died, for Christ all will come back to life.
But each one in his place: first Christ, as the first fruit; later, when he returns, all who belong to Christ; then the last ones, when Christ returns to God the Father his kingdom, once all principality, power and strength have been annihilated.
Christ must reign until God makes his enemies his footstool. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Because God has subdued everything under his feet.
Gospel
A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke 1: 39-56
In those days, Mary got up and hurried up the mountain to a city in Judah; she entered Zacharias’s house and greeted Elizabeth.
It happened that, as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, she jumped the child in her womb. She filled Elizabeth with the Holy Spirit and raising her voice, she exclaimed:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
Who am I that the mother of my Lord visit me? Well, as soon as your greeting reached my ears, the creature jumped for joy in my belly. Blessed is she who has believed, because what the Lord has told her will be fulfilled ”.
Maria said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior; because he has looked at the humility of his slave.
From now on all generations will congratulate me, because the Mighty One has done great works in me: his name is holy, and his mercy reaches his faithful from generation to generation.
He does mighty feats with his arm: he scatters the proud in heart, he casts down the mighty from their thrones and exalts the humble, he fills the hungry with good things, and the rich he dismisses empty.
He helps Israel, his servant, remembering mercy – as he had promised our fathers – on behalf of Abraham and his descendants forever.
Maria stayed with Isabel for about three months and returned to her house.
Commentary
This year we celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Sunday. We do not celebrate a title, a name or one more celebration of the Virgin Mary, but “The Assumption of our Lady into heaven in body and soul”, one of the four fundamental dogmas or truths about the Blessed Virgin Mary that, together with the divine motherhood, her immaculate conception and her perpetual virginity, the Church invites us to believe and profess. The readings that we comment on today are those of the Solemnity.
What does what we celebrate mean and what consequences does it have for us?
We celebrate that Mary is glorious and exalted in heaven, in eternity, together with her Father and her Son, Jesus Christ of her, in the totality of her corporeal and spiritual being. This is how a modern Dominican theologian formulates it:
“What is celebrated is the death and resurrection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that is, the mysteries of the end of her life and her resurrection by the grace of God who associates her as an inseparable companion of his eternal Son in eternal life. The realism of death is a necessary imprint of our redemption – we have been redeemed by a humiliating death – and we cannot surreptitiously silence it or hide it. And also the life of the Virgin sanctified by that redemption had to pass through death, with its authentic and universal sense of leaving mortal life forever, the expired body with which we are born. And, secondly, but already outside of time, to be resurrected by the work of God to new and immortal life. This was the death and resurrection of Christ and it is the one that is configured by the death and resurrection of his most holy mother. The opposite would be to hide the meaning of Christ’s death ”.
Indeed, this is how Saint Paul reminds us in today’s second reading. Christ has died and has risen in the first place, the first of all, pointing out the path that we must all travel, in which he wanted his most holy Mother to go immediately after him. She already enjoys the fullness to which we are all called. and to which one day we will arrive. She is the image of the new dead and risen humanity, the foretaste of what we will be, the pledge and the model of what one day, through faith in Christ and fidelity to the Father, with the power of the Holy Spirit, we will come to. to be. Christ is the new Adam and Mary the new Eve, heads of the new humanity in which there is no longer death or pain, but happiness and eternal life with God. Thus, today we celebrate Mary’s Passover, the fruit and immediate consequence of her Passover, her son, her Jesus Christ, with whom he wanted to associate her in a unique and unrepeatable way.
And here’s what this party means to us. By faith and baptism, all Christians have also been associated with Christ’s Passover and we hope to enjoy one day of the fullness in which our Mother Mary is already, crossing the threshold of death to reach eternal life with the Father. . We already live in hope what is reality for Mary. Our bodies, transfigured like that of Christ and that of Mary, will enjoy the resurrection of the flesh that we profess in the Creed. Because death is never the end of everything but a simple door to eternity. God has given us life in a unique, definitive and unrepeatable way, and he will never deprive us of it, but will fulfill it with the glory of the resurrection, and we will be with him and live with him forever.
But what is the way to get there?
Jesus already told us that He is the Way, and the Truth and the Life. But it seems as if his image and his example are somewhat difficult for us to assume, elevated to imitate. Perhaps that is why he saw fit to show it to us in a close and simple way in Mary, the servant of the Lord, the strong woman.
Today’s Gospel tells us, first of all, that Mary set out to the house of her relative, Elizabeth, to contemplate in her the work of God and offer her help. Mary, faithful to God and full of God, of her grace, she looked at others as God looks at us. Mary was at that time the best reflection of God’s mercy. Mary invites us to set out, not to let ourselves be trapped by the culture of evil and death, to look at the world from God’s eyes and reflect her goodness and her mercy in our words and deeds. Putting ourselves on the path towards God and towards others, detaching ourselves from what hinders and hinders us. A path that so often is not made of roses but of thorns, in which the cross appears at every step.
On this path, Mary was always a simple and humble woman, full of faith and truth. Her relative Elizabeth tells her blessed and blessed because she believed the Lord, she trusted her word. In the same way we, with Mary and like Mary, from the smallness of our history, from the humility and poverty of how little we are and have, we must reaffirm ourselves in faith in God and in the truth that only in Him can we find.
Faced with the smallness of her slave, Mary sings the song to the omnipotence of God. The Magnificat wonderfully captures the tension and the distance between the small of humanity and the great of God, between the apparently fragile and useless and the divine omnipotence, between the weakness of a young woman and the immense strength of the Most High for whom nothing is impossible. It is the best portrait we have of Mary, where we best define what she was and she continues to be for us: servant of God and also ours; Mother of God and also of each one of us.
Prayer
Mother hear me, my prayer is a cry in the night.
Mother guide me in the night of my youth.
Mother save me, a thousand dangers stalk my life.
Mother fill me with hope, love and faith.
Mother guide me, in the shadows I can’t find the way.
Mother take me, that I will be happy by your side.
Mother a flower, a flower with thorns that is beautiful.
Mother a love, a love that has begun to be born.
Mother smile, smile, even if it cries in the soul.
Mother build, walk, even if she falls again.
Mother I am only the desire and the flesh that fights.
I am your mother, in your hands I come to put myself.
Mother hear me, my prayer is a cry in the night.
Mother guide me in the night of my youth.
Hail Mary, you are full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among all women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
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