For the forthcoming Feast of the Assumption of Blessed Mary

Friends in Christ,

That's what the Byzantine Liturgy tells us at Matins of today's Feast:
If the Fruit she bore [that's Christ, of course]… by whose favour she passes to heavenfreely endures the tomb insofar as he ismortal, how can she refuse the tomb,she who unwedded bore the Child?
Mary dies as we do because it is congruent with the Christ-pattern so to do. It's all of a piece with his life and hers. On each case, and all along the line, the theme is self-giving in humility, sacrifice, abandonment.
And this is why she is glorified by being taken to heaven body and soul. Her dying was the final seal on her holiness, the ultimate and definitive seal. So it had in her Assumption (and Coronation, which we celebrate as the 'octave' of the Assumption in a week's time), the ultimate and definitive reward.
But still her life for us goes on, her mediation with her Son, which now takes the form of her offering herself as a channel of his graces, lavished on others. Because that too is part of the pattern. The French have a saying, Noblesse oblige: 'nobility obliges'. That states a truth about spiritual nobility too. The higher the degree of glory a creature reaches, the heavier its responsibilities -- and above all the responsibility of communicating the divine goodness to others.
Occasionally, at any rate, whether off our own bat or by making our own the prayers the Church puts into our mouth, we ask God to make us holy. On the Assumption in particular, we petition our blessed Lady to draw us with her in the Holy Spirit, through the Word, to the Father. Do we always realize to what we are committing ourselves in such a request?
We are asking to be stripped of our privacy as she was, to be so opened up that the whole world can walk into our hearts. Is that really what we want? We must beware, there is no private holiness. That is also the message of the this Feast day today.

With every good wish in Christ,

Ed....