A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture:
Did Mary die before she was assumed body and soul into heaven?
We are free to believe either that she really died, or that she did not die before she became the “woman clothed with the sun.” Tradition favors her really dying. But what we know for sure is that what will happen to all of us at the final resurrection, being “assumed” body and soul into heaven, or hell,” happened to her out of the normal time frame, because God was so delighted with her that He couldn’t wait!
So history was “short-circuited!”
Wonderful, and yet so very right and just! Her song, The Magnificat, says it all — just as Mary, remembering Hannah’s canticle in the first book of Samuel, and remembering all that the Hebrew Scriptures say about God lifting up the poor and the weak, composes a mystical prophecy of the final vindication of all the oppressed and the tortured and the poverty-stricken of all the ages.
And, even though five more swords of sorrow would pierce Mary’s heart, it would happen to her: this vindication, this justification, this crowning touch of the Divine Artist.
And, oh! The dazzling background for a painter’s brush, what with angels and saints, her parents, and her beloved Son, Jesus, to welcome her, the special throne for the Queen of heaven to occupy! And, oh! What music! How truly now she can sing forever:
Msgr. Paul Whitmore
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