Scripture for
meditation: Hosea 13:14
I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will
redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is
your destruction?
Scripture for
reflection: 1 Corinthians 15:55
O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your
sting?
Venerable Fulton
Sheen tells us: In Mary there is a triple transition. In the Annunciation
we pass from the holiness of the Old Testament to the holiness of Christ. At
Pentecost we pass from the holiness of the historical Christ to the holiness of
the Mystical Christ, or His Body, which is the Church. Mary here receives the
Spirit for a second time. The first overshadowing was to give birth to the Head
of the Church; this second overshadowing is to give birth to His Body as she is
in the midst of the Apostles abiding in prayer. The third transition is the
Assumption, as she becomes the first human person to realize the historical
destiny of the faithful as members of Christ’s Mystical body, beyond time,
beyond death, and beyond judgment. Mary is always in the vanguard of humanity.
She is compared to Wisdom, presiding at Creation; she is announced as the Woman
who will conquer Satan, as the Virgin who will conceive. She becomes the first
person since the Fall to have a unique and unrepeatable kind of union with God;
she mothers the infant Christ in Bethlehem; she mothers the Mystical Christ at
Jerusalem; and now, by her Assumption, she goes ahead like her Son to prepare a
place for us. She participates in the glory of her Son, reigns with Him,
presides at His Side over the destinies of the Church in time, and intercedes
for us, to Him, as He in His turn, intercedes to the Heavenly Father….As the
World fears defeat by death, the Church sings the defeat of death. Is not this
the harbinger of a better world, as the refrain of life rings out amidst the
clamors of the philosophers of death? (The World’s First Love, Ignatius Press,
1952).
Prayer: Dedicated
to the Woman I Love
The Woman whom even God dreamed of
Before the world was made;
The Woman of whom I was born
At cost of pain and labor at a
Cross;
The Woman who, though no priest,
Could yet on Calvary’s Hill
breathe,
“This is my Body; This is my Blood” –
For none save her gave Him human
life.
The Woman who guides my pen,
Which falters so with words
In telling of the Word.
The Woman who, in a world of Reds,
Shows forth the blue of hope.
Accept these dried grapes of thoughts
From this poor author, who has
no wine;
And with Cana’s magic and thy Son’s Power
Work a miracle and save a soul –
Forgetting not my own.
Fulton J. Sheen ( dedication in his book, The
World’s First Love, Ignatius Press, 1952)
My thoughts: Many
people wonder why the Church demands total respect for a dead person’s body.
Ashes cannot be scattered; bodies cannot be left to rot on battle grounds. The
reason for this is illuminated in the Assumption of Mary. She is in heaven,
body and soul, just as our bodies will be united to our souls “on the last day.”
God gave us these bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit who resides in each one
of us. Just as a holy object blessed by a priest cannot be desecrated, so, too,
our bodies, blessed by God on the day of our birth, cannot be defiled. We must
look to Mary as our hope for eternal life, as our example of what our life in
heaven will be like, and as our Mother, who will lovingly pray us to herself
and her Son. Take care of the dead, honor them and inter them with dignity and
respect, and demand the same for yourself. Then live every single day in
preparation for the last.
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