August 15, 2026
Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Mass during the Day
Lectionary: 622
Reading 1
Revelation
11:19A; 12:1-6A, 10AB
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.”
Responsorial Psalm
R. (10bc) The queen stands at your right hand,
arrayed in gold.
The queen takes her place at your right hand in gold of Ophir.
R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear,
forget your people and your father’s house.
R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
So shall the king desire your beauty;
for he is your lord.
R. 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.
R. The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.
Reading II
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
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Mary is taken up to heaven;
a chorus of angels exults.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
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.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081526-Day
Commentary on
Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6,10; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56
Today’s feast celebrates the special place that Mary has in
the life of the Church. This place is first of all defined by her being chosen
to be the mother of Jesus, his only human parent. This alone gives her a
uniqueness which is shared by no other person who has ever lived.
As with the case of Jesus’ resurrection, we need to look at
the meaning of what the feast is about rather than being too literal in our
understanding of how it is described. It is probably not helpful to try to
imagine that, as soon as Mary’s dead body was laid in the grave, it
immediately, as it were, escaped from its earthly darkness and floated up ‘body
and soul’ into ‘heaven’.
By using the image “assumed body and soul into heaven”, what
is really being said is that Mary, because of the dignity of her motherhood and
her own personal submission to God’s will at every stage of her life, takes
precedence over everyone else in the sharing of God’s glory—which is the
destiny of all of us who die united with Christ her Son.
She remains, of course, fully a human being and thus lower
in dignity than her Son and much closer to us. With us, but leading us, she
stands in adoration of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. She cannot, even in glory,
be given in any way the worship that is proper to the Persons of the Trinity.
What she can do is to intercede for us in our needs, offering her human prayers
on our behalf. This is something our non-Catholic Christian brothers and
sisters do not always understand, and perhaps we Catholics have by our words
and actions given a distorted idea of the place of Mary in our Christian
living.
Mary’s role is well described in the Catechism of
the Catholic Church:
“By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his
Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin
Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a ‘pre-eminent
and…wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary
realisation’ (Latin: typus) of the Church.” (Section 967)
Today’s Gospel is the story of Mary’s visitation to her
cousin Elizabeth when both were expecting their first child. The story contains
most of the elements which contribute to the status we give to Mary in our
Church.
First, we see Mary setting out with haste from Nazareth to a
small town in the hills of Judea, not far from Jerusalem (where Zechariah
served as a priest in the Temple). She went to visit her older cousin,
Elizabeth, who was pregnant with the child we know as John the Baptist. Mary
herself, of course, is carrying her own child, Jesus. It is highly significant
that it is Mary and Jesus who go to visit Elizabeth and John. Already in the
womb, Jesus is showing that urge to serve rather than be served. Mary, too,
shares that urge. And, at the presence of Jesus and his mother, the child in
Elizabeth’s womb jumps for joy.
Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, excitedly bursts out
into praise. She recognises the special position of Mary and her Son:
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of
your womb.
Mary is indeed unique and blessed in being chosen to be the
mother of our saving King and Lord. Elizabeth is deeply moved that it is Jesus
and his Mother that come to her and John:
And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my
Lord comes to me?
And yet that is what is happening to each of us all the
time, and especially in every celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord comes
to us in the sharing of his Word and in the breaking of the bread and our
sharing in the cup.
And there is a special word of praise for Mary also:
Blessed is she who believed that there would be a
fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
This brings us to the second characteristic of Mary—her
faith and total trust in God. That was expressed in her fiat (“Let it be done
to me…”), when, even though not fully understanding what was being asked of
her, she unconditionally accepted to submit to God’s plan.
It is now Mary’s turn to sing God’s praises in the lovely
song we call the Magnificat, which the Church sings at its evening prayer every
day. It is full of reflections on what makes Mary great in the eyes of God:
He has looked with favour on the lowliness of his
servant.
Mary was a simple unmarried girl living in obscurity in a
small town in an out of the way Roman province. About the town, Nathanael asked
rather cynically when told where Jesus came from:
Can anything good come from Nazareth? (John
1:46)
But in the New Covenant, reflecting God’s own bias, it is
the lowly and obscure who are specially favoured. Mary’s greatness does not
come from her social status; that has no relevance whatever in God’s eyes,
except in so far as those at the bottom of the social ladder tend to be denied
a fair share of this world’s goods.
From now on all generations will call me blessed.
This is not a statement made in arrogance, but in humble
thanksgiving and, of course, has been true since the day it was uttered. It was
indeed an extraordinary grace to be chosen to be the mother of the world’s
Saviour. Why Mary? we might ask, and Mary herself would be the first to agree.
But she rejoices and is deeply grateful for being chosen for this privilege.
Her being chosen is simply another sign of God’s desire that
the poor, the weak, the marginalized, the exploited and discriminated against
in this world should be the special recipients of God’s love and care. Mary
expresses this in the last part of her song:
He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
The rich and powerful of Mary’s day: where are they now? Who
were they? For the most part they have disappeared from history and memory,
while the little girl of Nazareth is still celebrated round the world.
But Mary’s greatness does not stop at the graces and
privileges which were showered on her. These, after all, were purely passive in
the sense they were gifts given to her. In a telling scene in the Gospel, a
woman who had been listening to Jesus suddenly cried out in a loud voice:
Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that
nursed you! (Luke 11:27)
In our own language today we might say: “May God bless the
mother who produced such a wonderful son as you!” And there is a deep truth
here, namely, the influence that Mary (and Joseph, too) actually had in the
formation of her Son. But Jesus immediately picked up the woman’s words and
said:
No, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and
obey it. (Luke 11:28)
In other words, it is not the graces that God gives us which
make us great, but the manner in which we receive and respond to them.
Mary’s greatness was not just in being chosen to be Jesus’
mother, but in her total acceptance of that responsibility in faith and
trust—accepting blindly all that it might entail. And, indeed, she had no idea
the price she would have to pay to be the mother of Jesus. But again, like her
Son, she had emptied herself into total service to his Father and today we
celebrate her reward, her being raised to the highest place among the human
race.
This is indirectly expressed in the Second Reading from the
First Letter to the Corinthians where Paul is speaking of the resurrection of
Christ as crucial to the validity of our Christian faith. And Christ, the Son
of God made flesh who died on the cross, is indeed the very first among the
risen, seated at the right hand of his Father. He is, in Paul’s words:
…the first fruits of those who have died…
But further on Paul says:
…for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in
Christ. But each in their own order.
Jesus is first of all, but next in order surely comes his
Mother.
The First Reading from the Book of Revelation has clearly
been chosen as a symbolic description of Mary in glory. There is first a brief
vision of God’s Temple in the New Jerusalem opening and revealing the Ark of
the Covenant within. The original Ark, a chest made of acacia wood, contained
the tablets of the Law and was kept in the Holy of Holies as the pledge of
God’s promise—his covenant—to be with his people. But this is the Ark of the
New Covenant, the permanent home of God among his people, the Risen Jesus in
his Body, the Church. On today’s feast, the image is applied to Mary, who bore
the maker of the New Covenant within herself. And so she is called in the
Litany of Our Lady, “Ark of the Covenant”.
Next, there is a much longer description of the vision of a
woman appearing from heaven. The woman is Israel, from whom was born the
Messiah and the community which believed in him. The description of the woman
is often applied to Mary in statues and images:
Clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet…on her head
a crown of twelve stars.
The woman is described as being pregnant, crying out in
birth pangs and in the agony of giving birth. This recalls the words of God to
our first parents after the fall, telling of the pain that would accompany
childbirth. But the child being born is the Messiah, seen both as an individual
and leader of the new Israel. The mother who bears him is suffering from
persecution and oppression.
There follows an apocalyptic description of a dragon
threatening to devour the child as soon as it is born. The dragon (along with
the serpent) was seen in Jewish tradition as representing the power of evil,
the enemy both of God and his people. Its tail sweeping a third of the stars
from the sky is an allusion to the fall of those angels who sided with Lucifer.
Nevertheless, the child is born. He is a son, who will rule all the nations
with a rod of iron. He is the promised Messiah. However, he is described as
being immediately snatched away and taken up to God. This refers to the
ascension and triumph of the Messiah which follows the dragon’s fall.
Meanwhile, the woman, the mother, flees into the wilderness,
the traditional refuge for the persecuted. God has prepared a place there for
her where she can be nourished for 1,260 days, which corresponds to the time of
the persecution.
It must be first of all emphasised that the writer is not
directly thinking of Mary here, and clearly, not all of this passage can be
directly applied to her. But Mary is the mother of Jesus, who in his Body is
the continuation of God’s presence among us. Mary now stands, glorious and
bejewelled, in the presence of her Son and his Father with the Spirit.
Today we join in her happiness. We look forward to the day
when we too can share it with her. In the meantime, we ask her to remember us
as we continue our journey on earth and to intercede for us with her Son, that
we may remain faithful to our call as faithful disciples. May we know God’s
will for us at all times and, like Mary, say our unconditional Yes to what he
wants for us.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/f0815r/
Saturday,
August 15, 2026
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Opening Prayer
Holy Spirit, Spirit of Wisdom, of Science, of Intelligence, of
Counsel, fill us, we pray, with the knowledge of the Word of God, fill us with
every kind of spiritual wisdom and intelligence, so as to be able to understand
it at depth. May we, under your guidance be able to understand the Gospel of
this Marian solemnity. Holy Spirit, we need you, you, the only one who
continually moulds in us the figure and the form of Jesus. And we turn to you,
Mary, Mother of Jesus and of the Church, you who have lived the inebriating and
totalising Presence of the Holy Spirit, you who have experienced the power of
his force in you, who has seen it operating in your Son Jesus from the time
when he was in the maternal womb, open our heart and our mind, so that they may
be docile to listen to the Word of God.
Gospel Reading – Luke 1: 39-56
Mary set out at
that time and went as quickly as she could into the hill country to a town in
Judah. She went into Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth. Now it happened
that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leapt in her womb
and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said,
'Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? Look, the
moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes,
blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be
fulfilled.'
And Mary said: My soul proclaims
the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; because he
has looked upon the humiliation of his servant. Yes, from now onwards all
generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for
me. Holy is his name, and his faithful love extends age after age to those who
fear him.
He has used the power of his
arm, he has routed the arrogant of heart. He has pulled down princes from their
thrones and raised high the lowly. He has filled the starving with good things,
sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the help of
Israel his servant, mindful of his faithful love -according to the promise he
made to our ancestors -- of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants
forever.
Mary stayed with her some three months and then went home.
Moments
of Prayerful Silence:
Silence is a quality of the one
who knows how to listen to God. Try to create in yourself an atmosphere of
peace and of silent adoration. If you are capable to be in silence before God,
you will be able to listen to his breath which is Life.
Meditatio
Key to the Reading:
Blessed are you among women
In the first part of today’s Gospel, the words of
Elizabeth resound: “Blessed are you among women”, preceded by a spatial
movement. Mary leaves Nazareth, situated in the North of Palestine, to go to
the South, approximately fifty kilometers, to a place which tradition has
identified as the present day Ain Karem, not too far from Jerusalem. The
physical movement shows the interior sensibility of Mary, who is not closed on
herself, to contemplate, in a private and intimate way, the mystery of the
Divine Maternity which is being accomplished in her, but she is projected to
the path of charity. She moves in order to go and help her elderly cousin.
Mary’s going to Elizabeth has the added connotation ‘in haste’ which Saint
Ambrose interprets as follows: “Mary set out in haste to the hill country, not
because she did not believe the prophecy or because she was uncertain of the
announcement or doubted of the proof, but because she was pleased with the
promise and desirous to devotedly fulfil a service, with the impulse that she
received from her intimate joy… The grace of the Holy Spirit does not entail
slowness”. The reader, though, knows that the true reason of the trip is not
indicated, but can get it through information deduced from the context. The
angel had communicated to Mary the pregnancy of Elizabeth, already in the sixth
month (cfr. v. 37). Besides the fact that she remained there three months (cfr.
v. 56), just the time so that the child could be born, allows us to understand
that Mary intended to help her cousin. Mary runs, and goes where there is an
urgent need, the need for help, showing, in this way, a clear sensibility and
concrete availability. Together with Mary, Jesus, in his mother’s womb, moves
with her. From here it is easy to deduce the Christological value of the
episode of the visit of Mary to her cousin: above all, the attention is for
Jesus. At first sight, it could seem to be a scene concentrated on the two
women, in reality, what is important for the Evangelist is the prodigious fact
present in their conceiving. Mary moving tends, in last instance, to have the
encounter between the two women.
As soon as Mary enters into the house and greets Elizabeth,
the small John leaped in her womb. According to some this leaping is not
comparable to the changing place of the fetus, which is experienced by every
pregnant woman. Luke uses a particular Greek verb which precisely means
“jumping”. Wishing to interpret the verb a bit literally, it could be indicated
with “dancing”, thus excluding a physical phenomenon only. Someone has thought
that this ‘dance’ could be considered as a form of ‘homage’ which John renders
to Jesus, inaugurating, though not yet born, that attitude of respect and of
subjection which will characterize his life: “After me is coming someone who is
more powerful than me, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his
sandals” (Mk 1: 7). One day, John himself will give witness: “it is the
bridegroom who has the bride; and yet the bridegroom’s friend, who stands there
and listens to him, is filled with joy at the bridegroom’s voice. This is the
joy that I feel and it is complete. He must grow greater, I must grow less” (Jn
3: 29-30). Thus Saint Ambrose comments: “Elizabeth was the first one to hear
the voice, but John is first to perceive the grace”. We find a confirmation of
this interpretation in the words themselves of Elizabeth which, repeating the
same Greek verb in v. 44. which was already employed in v. 41, says: “The child
in my womb leapt for joy”. Luke, with these particular details, has wished to
evoke the prodigies which took place in the intimacy of Nazareth. It is only
now, thanks to the dialogue with an interlocutor, the mystery of the divine maternity
leaves aside its secrecy and its individual dimension, to become a notable
fact, and object of appreciation and of praise.
The words of Elizabeth, “Blessed are you among women and
blessed is the fruit of your womb! Why should I be honoured with a visit from
the mother of my Lord?” (vv. 42-43). With a Semitic expression which is
equivalent to a superlative (“among women”), the Evangelist wishes to attract
the attention of the reader on the function of Mary: to be the “Mother of the
Lord”. And, then, a blessing is reserved for her (“Blessed are you”) and a
blessed Beatitude. In what does this one consist? It expresses Mary’s adherence
to the Divine Will. Mary is not only the receiver of a mysterious design which
makes her blessed, but also a person who knows how to accept and adhere to
God’s will. Mary is a creature who believes, because she trusts in a plain,
simple word and which she has vested with her “yes” of love. And Elizabeth
acknowledges this service of love, identifying her as “blessed as mother and
blessed as believer”.
In the meantime, John perceives
the presence of his Lord and exults, expressing with that interior movement the
joy which springs from that contact of salvation. Mary will be the interpreter
of that event in the hymn of the Magnificat.
A Song of Love:
In this song Mary considers herself part of the anawim, of the “poor of God”, of those
who “fear God” placing in Him all their trust and hope and who, on the human
level, do not enjoy any right or prestige. The spirituality of the anawim can be synthesized with the words
of Psalm 37: 79: “In silence he is before God and hopes in him”, because “those
who hope in the Lord will possess the earth”. In Psalm 86: 6 the one who prays,
turning to God says: Give your servant your force”: Here the term ‘servant’
expresses his being subjected, as well as the sentiment of belonging to God, of
feeling secure with him.
The poor, in the strictly
Biblical sense, are those who place their trust unconditionally in God; this is
why they are to be considered, qualitatively, the best part, of the People of
Israel.
The proud, instead, are those who place all their trust in
themselves.
Now, according to the Magnificat, the poor have a thousand
reasons to rejoice, because God glorifies the anawim (Psalm 149: 4) and humbles the proud. An image taken from
the New Testament, which expresses very well the attitude of the poor of the
Old Testament, is that of the Publican who with humility beats his breast,
while the Pharisee being complacent of his merits is being consumed by his pride
(Lk 19: 9-14). Definitively, Mary celebrates all that God has done in her and
all that he works in every creature. Joy and gratitude characterize this hymn
to salvation which recognizes the greatness of God, but which also makes great
the one who sings it.
Some Question for Meditation:
•
Is my prayer, above all, the expression of a
sentiment or celebration and acknowledgement of God’s action?
•
Mary is presented as the believer in the Word of
the Lord. How much time do I dedicate to listening to the Word of God?
•
Is your prayer nourished from the Bible, as was
that of Mary? Or rather am I dedicated to devotions which produce a continuous
tasteless and dull prayer? Are you convinced that to return to Biblical prayer
is the assurance to find a solid nourishment, chosen by Mary herself?
•
Are you in the logics of the Magnificat which
exalts the joy of giving, of losing in order to find, of accepting, the
happiness of gratuity, of donation?
Oratio
Psalm 44 (45)
The Psalm in this second part, glorifies the Queen. In
today’s Liturgy these verses are applied to Mary and celebrate her greatness
and beauty.
In your retinue are daughters of kings,
the consort at your right hand
in gold of Ophir. Listen, my daughter, attend to my words and hear; forget your
own nation and your ancestral home,
then the king will fall in love
with your beauty; he is your lord, bow down before him.
Her companions are brought to her, they enter the king's
palace with joy and rejoicing. Final
Prayer
The prayer which follows is a brief meditation on the
maternal role of Mary in the life of the believer:
“Mary, woman who knows how to rejoice, who knows how to exult,
who allows herself to be invaded by the full consolation of the Holy Spirit,
teach us to pray so that we may also discover the source of joy. In Elizabeth’s
house, your cousin, feeling accepted and understood in your most intimate
secret, you burst out in a hymn of exultation of the heart, speaking of God, of
you about your relationship with him, and of the unprecedented adventure
already begun of being the Mother of Christ and of all of us, holy people of
God. Teach us to give our prayer a rhythm of hope and tremors of joy, sometimes
worn out by bitter whining and soaked with melancholy almost as obliged. The
Gospel speaks to us about you, Mary, and of Elizabeth: both of you kept in your
heart something, which you did not dare or you did not wish to manifest to
anyone. But each one of you, felt understood by the other, on that prophetic
day of the Visitation and you pronounced words of prayer and of feast. Your
encounter becomes Liturgy of thanksgiving and of praise to your ineffable God.
You, woman of a profound joy, you sang the Magnificat, in rapture and amazed at
all that the Lord was operating in his humble servant. Magnificat is the cry,
the explosion of joy, which explodes within each one of us, when one feels
accepted and understood.”
Contemplatio
The Virgin
Mary, the temple of the Holy Spirit, accepted with faith the Word and
surrendered herself completely to the power of Love. Because of this she became
the Icon of interiority, that is all recollected under the look of God and
abandoned to the power of the Most High. Mary keeps silence about herself,
because everything in her can speak about the wonders of the Lord in her life.
