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As the Month of August draws to a close, as a final joyful reminder of the traditional dedication of this month to Our Blessed Mother assumed body and soul into Heaven, we are greatly indebted to our dear friend Fr Mark Elliott-Smith of the Ordinariate of OLW, for his homily preached at his church of eponymous dedication, Warwick Street, on this glorious feast a couple of weeks ago.
TODAY is a day of great joy and triumph!
It is the day when Our Lady, at the end of her earthly life was taken up, body and soul into the glory of Heaven.
Mary was, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, preserved from the stain of original sin: it is the ultimate triumph of grace, that she who stood at the foot of the Cross, most blessed of all women, should be crowned as Queen of Heaven. And there she prays for us: we can call her Mother, for we are all her children. Her presence in Heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet; and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, tells us of the victory of God’s love, and the resurrection of the body, and a pledge of future glory for all of us.
The dragon, the seven headed and ten horned horror that seeks to devour the child of her womb, is defeated, but he doesn’t give up. Although he knows that his days are numbered, although he knows that God’s love will always win in the end, he will try to drag as many souls down with him when his final defeat take place: when Christ, having put all enemies under his feet, delivers the Kingdom to God the Father. The dragon hates our Lady, for she is the Ark of the New Covenant who, without loss of her virginity, brings salvation to the world; so we, her children, fly to her for refuge, and her sure protection.
In the Gospel, we heard Mary sing her great song inspired by the Holy Spirit: the Magnificat. Such is the power of grace, making her way with haste and urgency to see Elizabeth, that the older woman, too, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and the child leaps in her womb.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’
The greatness of Mary lies in her humility, and her obedience. She acknowledges God’s greatness, and the great things that He has done for her. It is her worship of her Heavenly Father in Spirit and truth, in virginal purity and in utter obedience that makes her great, and makes her free.
It is this that makes her so hated and feared by the devil, because he cannot do to her what he tries to do to us: namely, tempt us by saying that we don’t need God. He has been doing it since the beginning, he does it now: he offers us a false freedom.
This is the greatest and most tragic mistake we can make, and society is making it again today: ‘Can we not do without God?’ ‘Why do we need to accept the demands the Gospel places on our lives?’ ‘Can we not live precisely how it feels good to us to live?’
This was the mistake of the Prodigal Son. He came to see his Father’s house, not as the place he was truly free, but as a place of restriction and rules and prohibitions. It was only after discovering that the far country to which he had strayed had in fact enslaved him that he realise what true freedom means: that God is great and worthy to be praised, and when we worship him, our own true greatness as God’s adopted sons and daughters is revealed in us. Mary is great, indeed the greatest, because God is great. The devil, the proud spirit, is vanquished, and the humble are exalted; and we, who are hungry for the Bread of Life and the Chalice of Eternal Salvation, are fed to our heart’s content.
And all this has happened because of Mary, conceived Immaculate, obedient to the Father, and Assumed, body and soul, to Heaven.
And it is because she is in Heaven that she remains close to us: she stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then went back home. But we can be sure that Mary, who rushed to be by her cousin’s side remained close to Elizabeth in prayer. We can be sure that Mary, who Jesus named as mother of all disciples while she remained at the foot of the Cross, remains with us and prays for us in the joy of the resurrection.
So it is the most natural thing in the world to ask Mary to pray for us. That simple act of prayer makes room in our hearts for God, to let Jesus be our Ruler and Guide.
Today we entrust ourselves to her Motherly intercession, we look upon her as the source of our hope, and the example of true freedom in obedience and humility. May the grace which made her the highest honour of our race, and most blessed of all women, be poured into our hearts, and that we made brought to the glory of the Resurrection.
Our Lady Assumed into Heaven. pray for us.
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