Charles P
é
guy, was a French philosopher and poet who died at the front during World War I. He was a non-believer who eventually became a devout Catholic. He wrote: “Modern man suffers from an amnesia of eternity.” Modern man has forgotten the very goal of life…eternity with God in heaven. Today’s solemnity invites us to remember eternity…to look to life beyond this world, to contemplate the glory of heaven. A Christian is able to say, “The best is yet to come…the most beautiful is yet to be seen.”
Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven is a summons to heaven, an anticipation of what will be. It is the most ancient feast of Mary and it was defined as an article of faith by Pope Pius XII in 1950 when he pronounced: “Mary, the Immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.”
Why was Mary assumed into heaven body and soul? Why did God want this additional sign to the power and truth of the Christ’s resurrection? Mary’s Assumption underscores the profound bond that exists between Mother and Son. God would not allow her, Immaculate from the first moment of her conception, who, carried in her womb, the Eternal Son of the Father, to experience the corruption of the grave. In Mary’s Assumption, heaven cries out to earth to awaken us from our slumber, to cure our amnesia so that our thoughts might move from the earthly to the heavenly,
A few months before her death, St. Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower wrote, “I know that the country in which I live, is not my native country, that lies elsewhere, and it must always be the center of my longing.”
Thomas Merton, who in his youth was an atheist and became a Trappist monk and renowned spiritual writer, reminded us: “Your life is shaped by the end you live for.” What shapes our life? For what end to we live?
May Our Lady assumed into Heaven obtain for us the grace of a genuine longing for Heaven, the longing of Charles P
é
quy, Therese, the Little Flower, and Thomas Merton. Let us pray that the days the Lord grants us will not be useless sand but, through our active faith, hope, and charity, will be seeds for our future: seeds for the Paradise that awaits us and that will come faster than we can imagine.
