2026 Cycle A - Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Vigil: 1 Chr 15:3-4, 15-16, Chr 16:1-2; 1 Cor 15:54b – 57; Lk 11:27-28

Day: Revelation 11:19; 12: 1-6, 10; Psalm 45: 10-12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15: 20-27; Luke 1:39-56

Homily Theme

Our Heavenly Mother

This Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of Mary, Our Mother’s bodily assumption into Heaven. This was proclaimed as a dogma of faith to be believed by all Catholics by Pope Pius XII in 1950. The bells of all the Roman Catholic Churches in England peeled in jubilation after this proclamation, but the Anglican Archbishop of York in England, preached from the pulpit of York Minister regretting this new dogma.  He claimed he could find no evidence for such a teaching in either Scripture or Tradition.

The next morning in the National News Papers, a picture of the Archbishop was on the front page showing a stained glass window behind him; it depicted the Holy Mother’s Assumption into heaven. It had been there since the 12th Century. Roman Catholics were amused by this, as they also remembered that the 4th Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary, also from the 12th Century, was the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. Eastern Orthodox who had separated from Rome for over 10,000 years held this tradition from the earliest Centuries of the Christian faith. That takes care of the Tradition with a big T.

In the Scriptures, when David receives the Ark of the Covenant, he prophetically exclaims. “How is it that the Arc of my Lord should come to me?”  Today in Luke’s Gospel, Elizabeth exclaims to Mary, “How is it that the Mother of My Lord should come to me?” The Ark of the Covenant contained prophetic signs of the Priesthood, The Word and the Eucharist. Mary, the real Ark of the Covenant, contained within her womb, the living Word and the real bread of heaven. In the first reading from Revelation, she is the Ark of the Covenant that appears clothed in the Sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. This is how Mary appears in Guadalupe in Mexico, as Our Lady of the Americas.

In the second reading, St. Paul tells us that Christ is the first fruit of the resurrection but next. each will be in order. Christ is the second Adam and Mary is the second Eve, she is next in order. That takes care of scripture.

Pius XII, using the authority given to Peter by Christ in Matthew 16, bound it on earth and so it is bound in heaven. Mary is in heaven body and soul. It would be great if all the Church bells in every country peeled this Sunday to proclaim our faith in this dogma. It would be even greater, if all Christians truly believed it.  Mary is

Our Heavenly Mother and she awaits us, who each in turn, will rise again and be taken bodily into heaven to rejoice forever to be with her and her Son, Jesus.

Mary is our Queen and Our Heavenly Mother.