15/08/2011 - ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
1Reading Rev 11,19a; 12,1-6a.10ab Psalm 44 2Reading 1Cor 15,20-26 Gospel Lk 1,39-56
Mary is assumed to heaven; the choirs of angels rejoice, Halleluia! This is what
we sing before we listen to the Gospel. And we add that not only the angels rejoice,
but we too and more than them! They rejoice because their Queen arrived home, she
of whom the Psalm proclaims: "the king is taken away by your beauty. He is
your Lord: give him homage". The queen is the joy and the pride of the king:
with the king all his subjects rejoice. Today we partake in the joy of God for Mary:
the Father, who found joy in the Son, cannot not find joy in the one who loved his
Son and brought him to the world. Therefore, we can continue and repeat the words
of Elisabeth: "Blessed are you among women...! Blessed are you who believed!".
Praising God for Mary we echo the joy of the Father and that of the Son, who was
helped by his mother from Cana in Galilee and consoled at the foot of the cross.
We partake also in the joy of the Holy Spirit, who found the Mother in prayer together
with the Apostles, when they were waiting for him in Jerusalem in the upper room.
The feast of today is the feast of the angels and of the saints because it is the
feast of God. He enjoys showing us what is awaiting us, where he wants to take us,
because where there is Mary, the sons and daughters are to be there too.
Mary partake from the glorification of her Son, our Lord. She shows us the way of
all the Church. After all the persecutions she had to go through and overcome in
the various world situations, shall be waited in glory. The Book of Revelation tells
us about the situation of the first Church, that had to run away into the desert
to protect herself from the violence of persecution. The Church has been several
times at the edge of distruction because the great dragon presents himself infront
of her to take away the Son, as he wanted to take away from the Woman, Mother. But
God prepares always a place of refuge. We too live in a very difficult time with
regards to our faith, for the unity of our Church, for the salvation of our comunities.
We are not to be discouraged or desperate, because this is the way that all our
brethren in the past or in other places of the world share with us. The difficulties
for our faith are not new, because they are trails that permit us to show our belonging
to the Son of God, Son of Mary, hence to be her joy and that of the Father.
Showing our faithfulness to the Lord Jesus, we too can continue to sing the canticle
of Mary: "My sould magnifies the Lord and my spirit exhults in God my saviour".
And we can still say to one another, and pass it on to our children, the certitude
that not the powers of the world, nor pride, least of all richness, are to give
us life, is to keep strong our joy, is to make us brothers and sisters. We shall
become first and foremost, ready to leave all our things, our rights, not to loose
our humility of the heart and the kindness to those around us. This is the teaching
that Mary continues to proclaim through her canticle. At her school we shall live
in the world without following the empty models that are being proposed to us, but
the internal inspirations of the Holy Spirit. We shall live not like all the rest,
but like her, who kept present as an end the happiness in heaven.
Mary, assumed to divine dimensions, knows how to take us by hand and guide us securily
to listen to her Son and to "adore the Father in spirit and truth"! Here
on earth we are no to fear and we won't let ourselves be carried away by sadness
because our heart rest on that of the mother. Let us take her as our teacher of
prayer, praying the rosary and place her at the center of our homes to bring us
together around her as we contemplate the mysteries of the life of her Son. In our
families she shall be the Queen, who draws on us and on our families the blessings
of the Father and those of Jesus!