Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the ancient Roman liturgy, before the definition of the dogma of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII and the composition of the beautiful Mass that we now sing on this feast, the Gospel read on this day was that of Our Lord’s visit to Martha and Mary in Luke 10. This choice surprises at first until we realise that just as Martha and Mary welcomed Jesus into their home during His public life, so Our Lady welcomed Him into the the home of her virginal womb when He was looking for a means of coming to save humanity. On the feast of the Assumption, it is Jesus who receives his Mother into His eternal home in Heaven where she can for all eternity sit at His feet and listen to His word as Mary, sister of Martha did in Bethany. She has truly chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.
But why, we may ask, was it necessary that she be in Heaven with her body? That is indeed what this dogma is about: Mary is not just in Heaven with her soul, but also with her body. For the rest of the saints, their bodies lie in the dust and will not be resurrected until the last day. Mary’s body, however, did not know the corruption of the grave. The reasons for which God willed it so can be reduced to two.
The first is that death and the corruption of the body is the direct result of sin. Since Mary had no sin, not even original sin, it would have been unbecoming, and even unjust, that her body fall into corruption. Furthermore, her virginal body had been the abode of the Word Incarnate for nine months, and just as the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Law was made of incorruptible wood, so too was the Ark of the New Covenant to be incorruptible.
The second reason is for us. Mary is the image of the Church, and in her person she already realises the fulness of the eternal destiny of the Church. One day, all of the elect will be around the throne of God with their glorified bodies. Mary, our Mother, together with her Son, is already there, giving is hope and confidence that what has taken place for her will also happen for us, in its time.
Our Lady is henceforth immersed in the ineffable joys of the beatific vision. If we love her, the knowledge of this stupendous reality should give us great joy, for She is our very own Mother, and what child is not proud to know that his/her mother is so eminent and glorious. With all the elect, Mary sees God face to face. Her soul is inundated with the sight of the Godhead whom she loved and served so faithfully.
In one thing, however, is she different. Unlike the other saints, our Blessed Mother retains in Heaven what we here on earth call duties of state, that is to say, she is given the task of watching over the Church and all the faithful, and indeed, she has been given as mother to all those who truly seek God with a pure heart. It is due to this special role that She intervenes occasionally in human history. As a good mother she seeks to keep us in line, and when we go astray, she calls us back to the straight and narrow path. Numerous times in modern history has she stepped in to remind us of eternity and call us back to fidelity to our God, to a life of greater purity and devotion, and to the duties of a life of prayer and penance. As humanity rushes madly toward its ruin, our heavenly Mother steps in to pull us back and out of our torpor.
Since Our Lady truly has our own good at heart, and since she wants us to join her in eternal glory, we can rest assured that if she comes from Heaven to speak to us, it is in our interest to listen carefully.
So let’s listen carefully once again to what was revealed to us at Fatima in 1917.
“…Pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, for she alone can be of any avail.”
“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make a sacrifice, ‘O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.’”
“Pray, pray much, and sacrifice for sinners, for many souls go to hell because there is no one to sacrifice and pray for them.”
Indeed, on the 13th of July 1917, Our Lady showed them a terrifying vision that Lucia would recount later as the first part of the Secret of Fatima:
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
Mary commented:
You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that is God, something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it, a Bishop dressed in White. We had the impression that it was the Holy Father. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
In a 1981 interview, Pope John Paul II was asked about the third part of the secret which had not been revealed at that time. This is what he said:
“We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed. How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong, … we must entrust ourselves to Christ and to His holy Mother, and we must be attentive, very attentive, to the prayer of the Rosary.”
Although there is a fair amount of controversy about the Secret of Fatima and its interpretation, a number of points are incontrovertible. First of all the apparitions themselves cannot be doubted. Their reality was corroborated by the stupendous miracle of the sun on 13 October 1917, which was eyewitnesses by at least 70,000 people. Second, the message calls us to repent, to pray, to offer sacrifice in order to avoid further catastrophes and above all eternal damnation. Our Lady wants peace. She wants us all to live in harmony and save our souls. But there is only one way to that: the souls turn to God, keep His commandments and stop sinning.
On this great feast, let us turn with renewed confidence to our Blessed Mother on her high throne, for she wants to be near to us. St Louis de Montfort, one of our Lady’s greatest bards, was fond of saying that whoever serves Mary devoutly is as sure of his salvation in Heaven as if he were already there. Indeed, if we are close to her, she will shield us from the wiles of the enemy, she will give us a meek, humble, chaste heart that will pass unscathed through the trials that lie ahead.
