August 15 – The Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven (Solemnity)

Antiphons at Lauds - Psalms of Sunday of the 1st week

1. Blessed are you, Mary, for through you has the Saviour of the world come among us: you are now placed in glory, joyful before the Lord.

2. The Lord has raised the Virgin Mary over the hosts of angels: may all the faithful rejoice, and bless the Lord.

3. The Lord has exalted your name, so that peoples may never cease giving you praise.

Isaiah 61, 10

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Brethren, I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

And further that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all Principality and Power, Might and Dominion, and every name that is mentioned, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. For indeed, "he has put all things under his feet," and gave him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his Body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

For he has given you life, you who were dead in trespasses and sins. In time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

Yet God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has given us life together with Christ, - by grace you are saved! - and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that he might show in the ages to come the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

For your are saved by grace, through faith; and that not of yourselves, but as a gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

This feast is the most ancient and solemn feast of the Cycle of Mary, originating in the sixth century, in which the Church invites all her children in the Catholic world to unite their joy and their gratitude with those of the angels who praise the Son of God because on that tlay His Mother, bodily and spiritually, entered heaven.

Admitted to the enjoyment of the delights of eternal contemplation, she chose at the feet of the Master the better part which shall not be taken away from her. The Mother of Christ is happy among all others because, better than all others, "she listened to the word of God." This word, the Word, the divine Wisdom which, under the Old Law, dwelt among the people of Israel, dwelt in Mary under the New Law. The Word became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin, and now amid the splendour of the heavenly Sion, the Word fills her with the delights of the beatific vision.

Christ, after having lain for only three days in the tomb, rose again and ascended to heaven. Likewise, the death of the Virgin resembled rather a short sleep,hence it was called the Dormitio, and before corruption could defile her body, God restored her to life and glorified her in heaven. These three privileges are celebrated by the feast of the Assumption which follows logically from the privilege of the Immaculate Conception and the Mystery of the Incarnation. For sin never having defiled the soul of Mary, it was right that her body, in which the Word had become Incarnate, should not be tainted by the corruption of the tomb.

"The immaculate body of Mary remained without corruption and was borne up to heaven, before the general resurrection."

The final triumph of the Assumption corresponds with the initial privilege of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. As the feast of the Conception of the Virgin affirmed in certain liturgies how appropriately God almighty had made Mary a creature apart from her very birth, so the feast of the Assumption each year proclaims the same appropriateness when she leaves this earth. The harmony which reigns in the works of God required an earlier resurrection of the Mother of God, who, holy among all and ever virgin, deserved on the part of her Son an adequate reward worthy of her position as Queen of heaven and mediatrix of all mankind.

The Church on earth, like Martha, has to care for the necessities of this present life, but she also like her, invokes the help of Mary.

A procession has always been a part of the feast of the Rest or Assumption of Mary. At Jerusalem it was formed by the numerous pilgrims praying at the tomb of the Virgin, thus contributing to the institution of the solemnity, the same as it was by the clergy of Constantinople.

At Rome it is the Basilica of St. Mary Major where the Station is held at Christmas to solemnize the mystery from which flowed all the glories of the Virgin, and it is also there that the Assumption was solemnized, in which these glories culminate. Mary received Jesus who came in the Nativity to this world and it is Jesus who receives Mary into heaven in the Assumption.

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