XIV. The Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin - The Desires of Mary

In the Fourth Book of Kings we read that the prophet Elias, without passing through the gates of death, was raised to heaven in a fiery chariot. Why, it will be asked, did not God show the same magnificence to His Mother? Why did He not send down His angels to anticipate and prevent the death which the Mother of His Son was to endure? The prompt resurrection of the Most Holy Virgin and Her glorious assumption into heaven are assuredly great privileges. But would not the total exemption from death have been more glorious and more just at the same time? It was by sin death entered into the world; but Mary was exempt from the least stain of sin. Having been conceived in the grace of God, it would seem that She had a rightful claim upon immortality. Sin and death are connected with one another in the designs of God; so likewise are original grace and immortality.

Let us not trouble ourselves. What God does is well done. In truth, death had no more rightful claim over Mary than over Her divine Son. Neither the tempest of His agony, nor the fury of His executioners, nor the tortures of the Crucifixion, nor the effusion of His blood through a thousand wounds could have caused the death of Christ the Son of God. Neither the anguish of Her compassion, nor the breaking of Her heart as She stood by his cross, nor the infirmities of age and of nature could have caused the death of the Immaculate Mother of our Saviour. The prophet Isaias tells us that Christ was offered up as a victim "because He willed it." Mary, after the example of Her Son, is offered and dies because She willed it. It is Her love of God that places Mary on the bed of death around which the apostles stand weeping.

From the day of the Ascension Mary was agitated by the desire of being reunited with Her Son. Her long exile was nothing but the languishing of love. This intense love was sufficient to wear away Her life and to break the ties which bound Her to this earth. This world, when stripped by death of those to whom we have given our hearts, appears no more anything but a dreary desert in which a thousand phantoms play with us and fatigue us with their presence as well as with their absence. There is only enough of the reality, it seems, to fix our lives in it while it lasts. There is only a sickly exaggeration of ill-regulated affections which we lavish upon creatures. This was not the nature of Mary's languishing. All Her love was centred in Her Son; but it was not for Herself alone She desired to leave the world in which She still loved those whom Jesus loved and had confided to Her care. In heaven God is better known, better loved, better glorified. Behold the reason why Mary languishes to be there; behold why Her holy soul, by a last effort, detaches itself from Her unstained body in order to bring it to perfection by its absence. Not one of the common accidents which affect us could ever have broken the most holy union of the spirit and the flesh in this Virgin most Admirable. She gives Herself to Death, but Death would not dare to lay his cold hand upon Her.

Poor sinners that we are, we dare not hope that Death will have such respect for us. Cruel labor without rest weakens our nature and steals away from it every instant some particle of life. Whether with a good grace or a bad grace, we must certainly submit. Yet God wishes that even this hard necessity should turn to our advantage, and that the desire of death should become one of our greatest merits.

But what kind of a desire is this? I see and I hear Christians who wish to die. Some of them say to Death: "Snatch me from this vale of tears, and bring me to a land of joy which I so much desire; deliver me from the miseries of this life, for I am disgusted with them; make an end of my conflicts, for the weight of these weapons is too much for my indolent hands; take this cross from me, for it weighs heavily upon me, and my tired shoulders can bear it no longer." This desire is mean and criminal. Others, clearly seeing that the world is only a place of passage, and that there is no true happiness to be enjoyed except in seeing and possessing God as He is, and that this possession is indeed the crowning of the aspirations of our nature, cry out: "O angels of heaven! open wide your gates, open the eternal gates, and let us in! " But this they say without remembering their unworthiness, without stopping to inquire whether they are innocent in action and pure of heart, whether they are strong and valiant in fight, or whether they have acquired the virtues which make of man a king of glory. Their desire is interested, rash, presumptuous.

Listen, Christian! The desire of those who are in haste to disarm the enemy, to purify themselves, to acquire merit, to consummate the work of their perfection in order to hear all the sooner the call of their Well-Beloved, so that they may never more offend Him, and that they may love Him more intimately and be able to sing His glory more worthily by an unfailing and unending song of praise - behold what a good desire is! Cherish it in your heart, and unite it with the most pure aspirations of the Blessed Mary.