Assumption

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin MaryRevelation 11:19, 12:1-6, 10; Psalm 45; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56

How do you perceive of death? Is death a letting go of this world, of family and friends, of possessions? Or is death an outward movement; an expanse, an embrace?

Many people perceive and experience death as a dragon waiting to devour them. You may have had to watch your loved one slowly being engulfed in pain, withering away…devoured by a cancer, memory loss or addiction. In that experience death seems more like the last destroying enemy rather than “the last enemy to be destroyed”.

Other people, especially as they grow older look forward to death; to embracing death as an old friend departing this life as equals.   

If death can be spoken of as an embrace, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux experienced it as a thirst, “How I thirst for Heaven…”  Do you and I thirst for heaven?  …for Jesus?

Saint Teresa of Kolkata taught that “If only we could make people understand that we come from God and that we have to go back to God! 

We will sing as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in Communion, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love Him.”    Dorothy Day asks, “But do I love Him?

That question and our answer gives insight into how we perceive death – enemy, embrace, devouring dragon, thirst, a returning…

And how we perceive death gives insight into how we perceive heaven. Do we look forward to heaven; to eternity? We profess in the Creed that we do. “I look forward to the resurrection of the death and the life of the world to come.”

The questions of death and eternity are related.  They come together in the image of the Virgin Mother of God being taken up into the heavens…”a sign of sure hope and comfort to [a] pilgrim people”.[Roman Missal, Preface for the Assumption]

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The world’s your ship and not your home.Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

I wonder what day I shall die on — One passes year by year over one’s death day,as one might pass over one’s grave.                Saint John Henry Newman