Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
This great feast is a twin to the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Then, if you recall, the preface of the Mass contained these words: “Christ is the beginning, the head of the Church; where he has gone, we hope to follow.”
Today we celebrate the first of us to do just that, as we remember Mary following Our Lord into heaven. She is the First to follow him ‑ but not the last: this feast should open our eyes to our final destination ‑ heaven. This feast pushes us right back into the Easter Season, to thoughts of death and resurrection: it is the second reading which underlines all this.
It talks of the `gradual’ resurrection of the dead: Christ first, then “those who belong to him”. Of these, the first is Mary, she who was without stain of original sin, she who was “most blessed of all women”. In her, today, we see the fulfillment of the vision of the First reading: the end of death, and the victory of life in Christ..
