We are such a privileged people that we gather around the altar in which so much richness of God= s love is poured upon us in the sacrament of love, the sacrament of the mystery of redemption, the sacrifice and banquet of eternal life. Each time the liturgy celebrates particular facets of the mystery of God= s salvation for us we are given the chance to deepen.

Today we are on the threshold of eternity. The Blessed Mother= s life has come to an end. In that great mystery she participates in the mystery of death, death that Jesus conquered, by his passion and resurrection. So she participates in that victory. We are given by the church the gospel facets in which the Blessed Mother proclaims her testimony of God= s goodness; A the Lord has done great things for me@ . That greatness of God= s action on her life was from the very beginning a removing from her any heritage of original sin, any possibility of tainted ness from the human race which was no small beginning. Then, of course, in being a servant of the Lord in her life and called to be the Mother of God, the Annunciation, and so on down to the passion, death and resurrection and of course even the period in which the Blessed Mother mothered the early church. So the Blessed Mother gives her testimony of how many great things the Lord has done for her. And yet this is exactly what the feast tries to remind us, that what the Lord has been doing in her and accomplished, he intends to accomplish in us. Each of us is called to really participate in the mystery of God= s life given to us in Christ and therefore we have a destiny of glory. This is very important because in our present world a lot of people can= t live forward, toward the future, build a future because their life is too much embraced in either direct evil or failures to cooperate with opportunities to grow and blossom. So we see discouragement in a lot people and not only discouragement but even despair. If we look the larger scene, the nations, we see the present struggle with the Muslim community. We see in areas where this is even very strong. Already the people are realizing that the core group fanatics among the Muslims, even if it’s claimed to be only one-fifth, that means about two-hundred million people are people who find it very difficult to dialogue and seek real civil and social society to build the community. So this is no small task of our present world. For some people this is the opportunity for despair and not looking forward to the future at all.

So it= s very important to see that even though we are called to a life of glory it does not mean that the cross is not in our life and we don= t have challenges to face. But the question is are we doing it because if we don= t then we are not going to build our own future, we will be seeing ourselves as not accomplishing what God has called us to be and to do and the net result will be focused on our failures and lack of cooperation and even our sinfulness and not on the action that God is taking in the power of the Spirit to transform us also into Christ as he did the Blessed Mother. So this feast is important to us because it calls us forward and challenges us to live what we have been called to be.