Today the Church celebrates a magnificent truth of our Faith, the truth that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God, having arrived at the end of her life on earth, was assumed body and soul into heaven.  Since the very earliest centuries of the Church, Christians have rejoiced in the knowledge that Mary, who had no sin, did not have to pay the price of sin, human death.  She passed from this world by a process that can hardly even be called death: the Church in the East refers to it as her Dormition, her falling asleep.  With the fall of Adam and Eve, sin and death entered our world.  Now, after the Fall, two things which were never supposed to be separate, the body and the soul, are torn apart at the moment of our death.  This is why death is a painful and sorrowful experience for us.  In the deepest sense, it’s not natural.  It’s natural in the sense that it will happen to all of us.  It’s absolutely unnatural in the sense that it’s not supposed to be that way.  But, in Adam, we do indeed die.  In Christ, though, we are all brought back to life.  And what has been wrong about our race since the Garden, is made right again. 

The woman Eve in her sin became the mother of the dying.  But Our Lady, through her life of grace, has become the Mother of the living, the Mother of those born to eternal life.  And so she is a sign for us and a promise.  For her, who had no sin, preserved by a special grace of God from all stain of sin from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, body and soul were never to have this unnatural breaking apart.  And so she is a sign of hope for us.  This is a Feast of Hope more than anything else.  In heaven, right now, there is a human being who is the culmination of all that we hope for.  An example of the fullness of time for all of us, when our souls and bodies will be reunited in glory. 

For us, today is like a continuation of Easter, a continuation of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Our Lord.  Christ rises from the dead and goes back into eternal glory, body and soul himself, but completely by his own power.  Mary is different.  She can’t get there on her own, not even she.  She is a creature like each one of us.  Like us, she must be called.  She must be graced.  And so her Assumption is what we hope for.  It is a sign of hope for us for our own eternal life and the future resurrection of the body which we profess to believe.  The Assumption of the whole being of Mary to be with her beloved son, is the great promise to us, that we also will someday be with God in heaven, our bodies and souls reunited, all pain and suffering and sorrow and death wiped away forever. 

Today, on this, one of the greatest feasts of the Church’s year, our prayers are full of confidence.  Confidence, because Mary has gone before us and now lives in the fullness of Eternal Life which we all hope for.  Confidence, because she is our greatest advocate.  Our Advocate, the Ark of the New Covenant and the Mother of Mercy, has been brought up to heaven.  And she pleads with Almighty God there for all of us.  She strengthens our hope.  We are still pilgrims on this earth, we are still subject to many pains and sorrows, but our Mother has gone before us and she is already showing us the rewards of all our efforts, the rewards of our perseverance.   She reminds us that the goal of heaven is possible for us to reach.  She shows us that if we are faithful, we will surely reach our hope of eternal life with God.  And so, the Assumption of Mary fills us with joy, and encourages us along the way that still remains before we reach heaven.  She helps us have the courage and the energy to reach the sanctity we are all called to by our vocation as Christians.  We must struggle to be good sons and daughters of God, using all the spiritual tools the Lord and the Church give us.  In this way, we can be confident that we will reach heaven: not in the same way as the Holy Virgin, because we are not free from original and personal sin as she was.  Nevertheless, if we die in God’s grace, after an opportunity for some additional purification in purgatory if we need it, our soul will go to heaven.  Later on, at the final resurrection of the dead, our bodies will also rise, and be reunited in glory with our souls: and we will be whole again.  Then, we will experience and enjoy the fullness of the eternal reward.  We will join our Lord Jesus Christ, his most holy Mother, St. Joseph, St. Patrick, and all the angels and saints, in endless joy.  And we will hear those words we all long to hear when we stand before the Judgment Seat of God: Well done, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy of your Father’s house.