Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 1: 39-56

On 1 November 1950, Pope Pius XII promulgated the dogma: “The immaculate Mother of God, always virgin, at the end of the earthly life, was assumed to the heavenly glory in soul and body.” In the account of the Acts of the Apostles, when Jesus entered into the glory of the Father, the disciples returned to Jerusalem joyful and happy, not because Jesus was gone, but because Jesus is now in a condition in which he is always close and always in the midst of the community of his disciples. In the same way, Blessed Mother has not abandoned the community, the Church after her life on this earth. She simply changed the way of being with us. ‘Heavenly glory’ is not a place but the new condition where our Mother has entered from this world into the world of God. She is always near to the believing community. What had happened to Jesus, has happened to Mary. And so happens also with every one of us who enters the world of God when we finish our pilgrimage on earth. Every child of God, at the time of death, is immediately received with the whole of his or her person into the world of God. The Assumption of Mary brings us this joyful God-news: Death is not a thing to be afraid of; rather it is the glorious moment of our entry into the world of God. This solemnity of the Blessed Mother presents to us our destiny – a live in the World of God together with Jesus and Mary, Our Mother. That is why the joyous cry of our Mother becomes our own prayer of thanksgiving: “The Almighty has done great things for me.” This expression: ‘great things’ is used in the bible to present the extraordinary interventions of God, the one who is able to defeat death. On this day, together with Mary, we thank God, for ‘He has shown the strength of his arm’—only his arm could bring down the monster of death. ‘He has scattered the arrogant’—the arrogant are those create a world of death. God of life has scattered them and made them disappear. The Church invites us to join Our Mother in her proclamation of salvation. The ancient world, the world of death is defeated. The Lord’s powerful arm has created a new world in which death is eliminated and we too are promised to be received into the Heavenly Glory.