Today we experience a rare occurrence: the meeting of our weekly, Sunday celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord and the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15. It is the rarest of occurrences that affords the Church a unique focus for our prayer and worship on a Sunday in our Church calendar and in our lives.
From our gift of vision to see not an ark which bore the tablets of the Old Testament but the new Ark of the Covenant which carried and bore the Son who would suffer, die and rise for us, to our appreciation that Mary in her quiet witness to her Son during his life and ministry was destined for a place prepared for her by him and because of him, we have cause to rejoice in her and in her Son this very day! She is his mother and ours, she is the first of the New Creation to be raised to the joys of the heavenly Kingdom. Because of her Son, sin had no power over her, and because of her Son the trauma of corruption, even in death, was spared her. She has been one among us ...
she is us.
To celebrate this solemnity even on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, is not only a unique opportunity but even a great and powerful necessity. The Church proclaims with regularity during funeral liturgies that Jesus was raised to become the firstborn among all those who fall asleep in death. Allowing our minds and imaginations, our hearts and souls to be raised up in prayer, song, and physical participation in these Sacred Mysteries, is at the heart of our faith and of our mission in the midst of this world.
In Christ and in his Mother, Mary, we know the truth that wells up in us to cry out, with her: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, My spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor upon his lowly servant.”
Luke 1: 46-48