Today, we see the goal of our lives! God calls us to be like Mary.

Since the early days of Christianity, believers celebrated the belief that Mary was taken up to heaven and reunited with her Son. We know it as the Dogma of the Assumption declared in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. The Orthodox Christians call this feast the Summer Pascha and the Eastern Church celebrates this feast as the Dormition of the Theotokos.

No one loved Jesus more than Mary. No one was more faithful to Jesus than Mary. Her whole life and while was a gift to Jesus. Saint John Damascene, eloquently states the fittingness of Mary’s destiny:

It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father. It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God.

Where Mary has gone, we hope to follow. Happy Solemnity.