If anyone has "followed Christ" to
the utmost, without the least failing, it is Mary. How, then, could
He not but gather her with Him, body and soul, to the glory to which
the Cross is the way and the portal? What other "recompense" could
be imagined for Mary than this immediate and total participation in
the life of the Risen Lord?
Yet, this personal culmination of
Mary's experience is at the same time a new beginning. Mary is now
in eternal life. This means the joy and blessedness that comes from
loving and beholding the God who is Light, Life and Love. It also
means the fullness of communion with all who love God, with all whom
God loves. And God loves everything he has made, creation being the
effect of his love. But though the blessedness of eternal life is
true of all elect in heaven, it is true of Mary in a very special
way, not only by reason of the perfection of her glory, but also
because her Assumption enables her even now to live her blessedness
in the fullness of her glorified humanity.
And it does not mark the end of
"service." On the contrary, her service could now assume its
universal dimensions: "Taken up to heaven"--as Vatican II reminds
us--"she did not lay aside her salvific duty ... By her maternal
love she cares for the brethren of her son who still journey on
earth" (Lumen Gentium) (LG62)." Yes, Mary is now in a position to
exercise fully her "motherhood in the order of grace," without
interruption until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect (LG62).
And it is not immaterial, here as always, that Mary's maternal love
for us engages not only her soul but all the powers of her human
nature lifted up to glory.
And so, the Assumpta
becomes the Mother of the New World, and in an even deeper sense,
the mother of the fullness of times marking, according to John Paul
II, "the moment when, with the entrance of the eternal into time,
time itself is redeemed, and being filled with the mystery of Christ
becomes definitively salvation time." The Church's often rugged
journey happens and evolves, in the "fullness of time." "She
proceeds along the path already trodden by the Virgin Mary, who
advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and loyally persevered in her
union with her son unto the cross and beyond." This "fullness of
time" exorcises the many doomsday scenarios of the day and we can be
sure, that where Mary--the true "Morning Star"--preceeds, there is
safe conduct for the pilgrim humanity and, above all, there will
come the glorious rising of the "Sun of Justice."
To all the Cassandras of
Apocalypse and all the Sirens of Aquarius and Pisces, Mary proposes
her own song, that is, the joyful awareness that God is the saving
truth, that he is the source of every gift and also of the loving
preference for the poor and the humble. And so the Magnificat
becomes a manifesto of hope, an efficacious antidote against the
destructive and corrosive "Zeitgeist.
Mary, Mother of the New World and
Mother of the Fullness of Times is at our side on this Pilgrimage
toward the beginning of a new Millennium. In 1620, early Spanish
settlers built a chapel in St. Augustine, Florida, and dedicated it
to New World Mothers under the title of Nuestra Señora de la
Leche y Buen Parto (Our Nursing Mother of Happy Delivery). The
shrine houses a small replica of Spain's most prized Madonna, Our
Lady of La Leche. She will deliver and nurse us. The
kinship of faith that unites us with our Mother "in the order of
grace" takes its quality and strength in part from the fact that
Mary's glorified heart is immersed in God's grace. Precisely, to be
immersed in God's grace with her is both delivery and
nursing for all of us.
On this memorable day let us greet
the Assumption as the true Mother of the New World in Christ and let
us wish each other a happy delivery into the fullness of times, our
own and that of all faithful Marian pilgrims.
