The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is August the fifteenth, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On this day the Church lifts her eyes to heaven and beholds the fulfillment of a promise: that the flesh which bore the Word made flesh would not see corruption, but would be taken, body and soul, into glory. What Christ accomplished as firstfruits, Mary receives as the first and most perfect of the redeemed.

The first reading is from the Book of Revelation. God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed One.

The responsorial psalm proclaims: the queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold. The queen takes her place at your right hand in gold of Ophir. Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear, forget your people and your father's house. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold. So shall the king desire your beauty; for he is your lord. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold. They are borne in with gladness and joy; they enter the palace of the king. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.

The second reading is from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. Brothers and sisters: Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead came also through man. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the firstfruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ; then comes the end, when he hands over the Kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for he subjected everything under his feet.

Alleluia, alleluia. Mary is taken up to heaven; a chorus of angels exults. Alleluia, alleluia.

The Gospel is from Luke. Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. And Mary said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever. Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

The woman clothed with the sun is Mary, and she is also the Church, for the Fathers never separated the two readings the Apocalypse gives us. St. Bede the Venerable teaches that the sun which clothes her is Christ himself, so that her glory is entirely derivative, entirely reflected, and entirely real. She does not compete with the light; she is wrapped in it. This is the deepest logic of the Assumption. Mary is glorified not because she generates her own radiance but because she withheld nothing of herself from the One who is Radiance itself. Her fiat at Nazareth and her crowning in heaven are the same act seen from two ends of a single life of surrender.

Cornelius a Lapide, commenting on this same chapter, notes that the moon beneath her feet signifies all that is changeable, mutable, and passing away in this world, now subjected and mastered by her. The woman stands above the tides of history precisely because she was, in St. Augustine's phrase concerning her fullness of grace, a soul in whom sin found no foothold from the first instant of her existence. Where Eve listened to the serpent and fell, Mary crushes the dragon's purpose by her unwavering obedience. The pains of her labor in the vision are not the pains of the fall pronounced on Eve, but the travail of the Church bringing forth Christ in every generation, a truth St. Ambrose draws out at length: the Virgin's motherhood becomes the pattern for every soul that labors to bring Christ to birth within itself through charity.

St. Thomas Aquinas gives us the theological ground for today's glory when he insists that grace perfects nature and does not destroy it, and that the fullness of grace given to Mary at her conception demanded, as its fitting term, the fullness of glory given to her body at the end of her earthly course. It would not be fitting, he reasons, for the flesh that gave the Bread of Life its very substance to see the corruption of the tomb. Death came into the world through disobedience, St. Paul tells the Corinthians, and Mary, the new Eve, is the first to taste the full harvest of the new obedience. She is, in the phrase Venerable Fulton Sheen loved, the first one saved by the Redemption in the fullest sense, the pattern of what awaits every soul who perseveres in her Son's grace.

And so the Visitation is not incidental to this feast; it is its narrative heart. Elizabeth's cry, blessed are you among women, is the Church's own cry echoed down every century, and the infant leaping in the womb is the created order itself rejoicing that God has, at last, drawn near. St. Cyril of Alexandria fought at Ephesus for the title Elizabeth gives her, Mother of my Lord, for on that title hangs the whole mystery of the Incarnation, and therefore the whole mystery of a body worthy to be taken up undivided into glory. The Magnificat that follows is Mary's own commentary on her Assumption before it happens: he has lifted up the lowly. The woman clothed with the sun is, first, the lowly handmaid of Nazareth, and heaven's crown rests only on a head first bowed in fiat.

Let this feast move you to one concrete act today: pray the Magnificat slowly, once, before you sleep, and ask Our Lady for the grace to say your own fiat more completely tomorrow than you did today.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.
EPISODE_TITLE: The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
IMAGE_PROMPT: Mary, the woman clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars, rising body and soul into heavenly glory above a crescent moon.