The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mass Readings

• First Reading Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
• Responsorial Psalm Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16
• Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:20-27
• Gospel Luke 1:39-56

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In 2027 the Assumption falls on a Sunday and replaces the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. These are the readings for Mass during the Day; the Vigil Mass has its own readings.

Step Into the Story

Revelation was likely written around 95 A.D., under Domitian, by a John exiled to Patmos. The vision opens with the Ark of the Covenant, lost since the Babylonian sack of 586 B.C. Then a woman appears clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet. Jerusalem kept Mary’s Dormition by the fifth century, and the emperor Maurice fixed it on August 15 around 600 A.D. Pius XII defined the Assumption in 1950.

1. 586 B.C.The Ark is lost
2. 40 B.C.Rome names Herod king
3. 27 B.C.Octavian becomes Augustus
4. c. 20 B.C.Herod begins the Temple
5. This week’s scene: c. 6 B.C.Mary visits Elizabeth

Set out from Nazareth with a pregnant girl, likely around 6 B.C., while Herod still rules in Jerusalem. The hill country of Judah lies eighty miles or more to the south: days of walking on roads that climb and drop, through villages where no one knows her. Luke says she went in haste. Feel the road in your legs and the sun on your neck as the hills of Judea rise ahead.

Come at last to the house of Zechariah, a priest, in a town Luke does not name. Follow Mary through the doorway as she calls a greeting to Elizabeth, six months pregnant after a lifetime of barrenness. Stay close beside Mary. Watch the old woman’s face change, and listen to what she says.

Encounter the Lord

Walk with Mary up into the hill country of Judah. She is young, newly pregnant, and she hurries to serve her elderly cousin. At the door Elizabeth cries out a blessing, and Mary answers with a song: “The Almighty has done great things for me.”

The greatest of those great things is what we celebrate today. Mary, who gave the Son of God His body, was taken body and soul into the glory of heaven at the end of her earthly life. She shares already in her Son’s Resurrection. Where she has gone, we hope to follow. St. Irenaeus says that by her obedience she became a cause of salvation for the whole human race. The New Eve is now our mother in heaven, and she prays for us.

Pray the Magnificat slowly today. Then pray a decade of the Rosary, the fourth Glorious Mystery, for someone who is facing death.

Know Your Faith

Assumed into Heaven

The Immaculate Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory. Her Assumption is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians (CCC 966).

The New Eve

Mary, the New Eve, cooperated in the work of the Savior by her obedience, faith, hope and charity; she is our mother in the order of grace (CCC 968-969, 494). Taken up to heaven, she continues to obtain for us the gifts of eternal salvation (CCC 969).

Icon of the Church’s Hope

In Mary the Church already reaches the perfection by which she exists without spot or wrinkle. She is the eschatological icon of the Church, the sign of certain hope for the pilgrim People of God (CCC 829, 972).

At Prayer with Mary

Because she gives us Jesus, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust all our cares and petitions to her (CCC 2677). The prayer of the Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary (CCC 2679).