MARY, OUR MOTHER

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

In 1950, on the Feast of All Saints, Pope Pius XII announced to the throngs of people in St. Peter’s square: “We pronounce, declare and define to be divinely revealed the dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, was, on the completion of her earthly life, assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven.”

Happy hour and happy homecoming! Mary, we rejoice with you. We who still wander in this world, we who are weak and weary and all too worldly, we, however, who love to call you Mother, who count upon your motherly protection, we, your children still upon this place of trial, we rejoice with you and with the angels and Saints and with the Blessed Trinity.

Now we have a Mother in Heaven to look after us, a Mother most loving and powerful. As with all your other joys, small as well as great, your going home to be with Jesus, your divine Son, makes us happy. It makes those in Heaven happy; it makes the Heaven-hungry happy too. Though bodily Mary was taken away from her children on earth, though bodily she seems far away, yet her leaving our planet must not make us lonesome. Rather, her Assumption should be to us a promise and an earnest of our own final glory with her. Her victory will be our victory.
Until that day of triumph we will struggle on, knowing that Our Mother is waiting and watching for us.

Who minds the discomforts and weariness of travel when he or she is going home to mother? Who minds labor, who minds burdens, who minds delays, who minds sacrifices, when they are making their way to the place where mother lives? Military men and women, college students, anyone separated from their families, coming home, will put up with every kind of inconvenience knowing that sooner or later they will be there--with mother. That is how we feel about traveling on the roads of time, looking forward to meeting our heavenly Mother. Jesus and Mary are waiting to welcome us, waiting to receive us among the happy inhabitants of that heavenly home, waiting to reward us for the smallest service. What joy that stirs up in our hearts!

Look down, O Mother Mary, look down from the heights of thy glory, look down and be to us--and be to all--a loving and powerful Mother. Thank God for the joy that is yours today. Thank God for the happiness and hope it gives us to pray the prayer Christ Himself taught us, and then to salute thee ten times in the Rosary, with your favorite greeting, the Hail Mary, as we think of your being received into Heaven body and soul. Thank God everyone for this joyful Mother. Amen.

[Excerpts are from a sermon by Father Arthur Tonne, Didde Printing Co.]