Today we celebrate the Assumption of Mary.

Echoing God’s infallible truth, the Catechism of the Catholic Church definitively declares:

 The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death. (CCC, 966)

Just as Jesus did not leave his body in the grave after His death to return as merely as pure spirit to the Father, but rather took His body with Him to allow it to share forever in God’s Glory, so Mary’s body was also taken into heaven.

Nothing of Mary’s personality has been lost. Her entire being has been transported to heaven. The old is not destroyed by transformed. Mary is, and remains, for all eternity a human being, but a glorified one.

Mary radiates hope for us all. Every person who dies in the love of God will be taken up to heaven, with their entire personality.

Nothing that is offered to God is lost. Everything is taken up and transformed – glorified.

Mary, Queen of the Assumption, pray for us!