Solemnity of Mary Assumed into Heaven
Massimo Palombella
Celebrating today’s feast means opening a fissure, letting some light into the deep inner room where we make our choices, decide in relation to implicit criteria, shape, perhaps without always realising it, that face we will have forever.
To proclaim Mary’s assumption into heaven is to affirm the value of our historical life, not as something to be escaped, but as the place where through our freedom, our everyday choices we slowly sculpt our eternity.
That body we will have in that dimension where there is no longer space and time will be our transfigured historicity. Our desiring, our need for meaning, our loving, our being loved, our continual inward work, suffering and rejoicing to realise here and now the people we can and should be. All this we will carry with us forever, it will be our being, our face, and it will find fulfilment, definitiveness, ‘life in abundance’ forever.
The Offertory Antiphon of today’s Celebration has the following text:
“Assumpta est Maria in coelum:
gaudent angeli, collaudantes benedicunt Dominum, alleluia.”
(Mary has been assumed into heaven,
the Angels rejoice and praise the Lord, alleluia).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The interpretation is by the Choralschola der Wiener Hofburgkapelle conducted by Hubert Dopf. The music track can be found on the CD “Gregorian Chant for the Church Year” published by Universal International Music B.V. in 1997.
A blessed Solemnity and heartfelt greetings.
