Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
August 15, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081523-Day.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with our dear Mother, Sister, and Friend – Mary, mother of Jesus.

For this feast and others over the years, I have offered a good bit of Marian theology which you can access through the search function on the right of my homepage. But for today, I feel like just a simple, quiet prayer with Mary might be the right thing for our reflection.

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This passage is from The Flowering Tree by Caryll Houselander.

She is a reed,
straight and simple,
growing by a lake
in Nazareth:

a reed that is empty,
until the Breath of God
fills it with infinite music:

and the breath of the Spirit of Love
utters the Word of God
through an empty reed.
The Word of God
is infinite music
in a little reed:

it is the sound of a Virgin’s heart,
beating in the solitude of adoration;
it is a girl’s voice
speaking to an angel,
answering for the whole world;
it is the sound of the heart of Christ,
beating within the Virgin’s heart;
it is the pulse of God,
timed by the breath of a Child.

The circle of a girl’s arms
has changed the world–
the round and sorrowful world–
to a cradle for God….

Be hands that are rocking the world
to a kind rhythm of love;
that the incoherence of war
and the chaos of our unrest
be soothed to a lullaby;
and the round and sorrowful world,
in your hands,
the cradle of God.

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Music: Ave Maria – Daniela de Santos playing the Bach/Gounod version of this beautiful prayer