A reading from the Holy Day Mass
Responsorial Psalm 45
The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
The queen takes her place at your right hand in gold of Ophir.
Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear, forget your people and your father’s house.
R.The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
So shall the king desire your beauty; for he is your lord.
R.The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
They are borne in with gladness and joy; they enter the palace of the king.
R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
Jesuit churches like to put up paintings in their church sanctuaries. In many of them, they depict the Blessed Mary and the works often show her to be as a young virgin teen who is simple and poor but beautiful. It is a striking difference to the Psalm 45 image of what she shall be like in Heaven, as the Queen standing by Christ, as the mother who served Him for God’s Incarnation to the world, and saw Him be raised up as our Great Hero and Savior and Messiah-Lord.
But to look up at a painting in a church and to see a twelve year-old village girl of 1st Century Palestine. Look who God had His eyes on for His mother. See her simplicity yet radiant disposition of a young lady in a life of pure grace. Look at her gentleness in the painting, and to her arms which will cradle Baby Jesus. Capture her love in the artwork, and the Immaculate Heart beneath the clothes she has on.
These kind of paintings are there to help us see how important she is in the Gospel Story. She said Yes to the Lord’s Coming, and she will bear Him on the First Christmas. She is chosen to be the one in the divine plan of ABBA which is a plan continuing on to today. Mary remains Mother and Jewish maiden as well as Queen to the Church in 2025. She shares her example of faith, even in this portrait I am describing, as seen in a courageous young girl. She’ll be Christ’ first believer and key believer and model for all believers to follow.
No wonder that God would bestow the Assumption to her.
This Feast Day invites us to draw our attention to Mary for who she is as a person. Mary always draws us to the Child she would bear.This young teenager knew Him more than anyone else ever could—as the mother. So she draws us through her motherhood towards Christ Jesus.
The Feast of the Assumption in the Roman Catholic Church invites us to celebrate her as playing that unsurpassed central role in showing us Jesus as his mother.The Roman Catholic Church teaches that this role was so pivotal, that she was so intimately tied to her Son, that at the end of her life she was assumed body and soul into the joy of heaven to remain at his right hand. As I write about this mystery a bit more in our bulletin, it is a belief going back through all the ages, that Mary was given this body and soul call up to God. Just as on earth she was at His side, she is now granted the glory and the privilege of being with him in eternity.Because she was his mother.
On the right stands the queen in garments of gold’ Indeed!
This is a feast which shows us above all this intimacy of the mother and son who cannot be separated.
When I was a teen, I heard a song by Paul Simon and it had me think of how its lyrics were almost the opposite of the fact of the Assumption. It is called A Mother and Child Reunion.
I know that Simon did not write it about Mary and Jesus. In fact, Simon says the title came from a Chinese Restaurant menu for a dish, called a Mother and Child Reunion. But Simon’s song is all negative, as it goes
No, I would not give you false hope On this strange and mournful day
That the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away
Actually, I can’t think of a more mysterious beautiful day, then when Mary slept into her death but then was taken to Christ the Son in Heaven for their reunion. I also long to one day go to the Lord and also see my mother there, for she has lived the Catholic faith well, and been a good example to me. We’ll hopefully have a great mother and child reunion.
Simon continues: I can’t for the life of me Remember a sadder day I know they say let it be Paul Simon said that his dog died at the song’s writing, and that the song was his fear of aging and losing dear people at that time, giving him a likely worse feeling than losing his pet. When he says, I know they say “let it be” – he is talking of how in the world people want to pass by the issue of death coming for all
Yet It just don’t work out that way And the course of a lifetime runs Over and over again No, I would not give you false hope (no) On this strange and mournful day
That the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away it seems strange to say I never been laid so low In such a mysterious way And the course of a lifetime runs\ Over and over again
Perhaps if we were only left with the scene of Mary holding the Dead Christ, her son, after his being taken down from The Cross— and if Jesus never rose from the dead—then we might think that God’s Salvation and Help maybe don’t work out and give people a Heavenly reunion—yet JESUS DID RISE FROM THE DEAD, HE ASCENDED, AND HE SITS AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER, AND HE DID GIVE MARY HER ASSUMPTION.
It is not false hope, Paul, but a real hope that we get in the Assumption of Mary. Heaven is Real. Our faith gives us such a comfort today, and in that the Blessed Mother, Jesus’ Mother, will be shared to us—that we can see her in Glory, too. For the Queen stands at the Right Hand, arrayed in gold.
It’s all real. Heaven is real.