Dear Parishioners,
This Tuesday, August 15th, is the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary. We will have on this solemnity of Our Lady two masses, 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it on November 1,1950 in these words: “We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by God that the immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”
The declaration was built upon the 1854 dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which declared that Mary was conceived free from original sin, and both have their foundation in the concept of Mary as the Mother of God. It leaves open the question of whether Mary died or whether she was raised to eternal life without bodily death.
The equivalent belief (but not held as dogma) in the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Dormition (the passing of the Virgin Mary from earthly life) of the Mother of God or the "Falling Asleep of the Mother of God."
The word “assumption” derives from the Latin word assūmptiō - meaning "taking up.”
On this feast, we hear Luke’s account of the Visitation and the Magnificat. We ask ourselves, “What does it mean to give birth to something that will threaten the world with its goodness, its joy, its beauty? What does it mean to resist and persevere in faith?”
In Mary’s Magnificat, we learn that “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”
The recent movie, “The Sound of Freedom,” brings awareness to human trafficking. It is not without controversy and certainly not for the faint of heart, but it does highlight an underworld of evil and the efforts of good people to make a difference by going at great lengths to “lift up the lowly.”
Peace,
Fr. Mike Meany
