We welcome another harvest and look across the fields with grateful joy. Our toil has not been in vain. Soon, crops will be gathered into barns and rich, ripe fruits will gladden every heart. Our labour and the persevering efforts of family and friends have indeed been blessed and we echo the much-loved prayer of Belfast (seen for long on city transport), "Pro tanto quid retribuamus? ("How shall we give thanks for such goodness?") Harvest marks labour's joyful end and we realise that another stage in life is now over. Soon, others will enter into our labours. Remembered summers shine across the grass and the heart remembers morning.
Life and liturgy to be valid must be closely linked. Our Christian life is our prayer lived. Generosity, fidelity and love will be the crop of sincerity, conversion and resolve. "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord! Lord!' will enter the kingdom of heaven." Mary, first and most faithful disciple of her Son, is welcomed home having faithfully followed her own advice to those at Cana's wedding feast: "Whatever He says to you, do it!" Nazareth, Galilee, Bethlehem, Calvary and the Upper Room echo with her songs of generous fidelity and heartfelt praise. Her "fiat" at the Incarnation was the consistent theme song of her lifelong journey. Her final pilgrim chorus is sung today as her Divine Son welcomes home His most living mother.
By the River Jordan this gracefilled celebration was kept as early as 550 AD. St John Damascene (contemporary of the much-loved Bede the Venerable) rejoiced that this harvest feast of hope was celebrated in Byzantine liturgy and in Roman rite. And now, in the Church of England, for the first time since the Reformation, the great festival of Christ's Mother (after deep prayer and reflection), is being kept once more as a redletter day, a celebration of highest rank. Mary, having finished the course of this earthly life, was taken body and soul into Heaven. Whether we use "Transitus" or "Dormition" or "Assumption", the truth is the same. We are made for glory. Eternal life is to be our final landfall when we accept Christ's saving Word and live by it.
This festival gives healing images of Christ's joyful news and of the central truth preached by Paul. Mary's Son has gone to prepare a place for us so that, where He is, we also may be. The apostle never allows us to forget: "We know that when the tent we live in, our body here on earth, is torn down, God will have a house in Heaven for us to live in, a Home Himself has made which will last forever." Lord, increase our faith!
We make our own the prayer of John Donne: "Bring us, O Lord, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling but one equal light, no noise nor silence but one equal music, no fears nor hopes but one equal possession, no ends or beginning but equal Eternity in the habitations of Thy majesty and thy glory, world without end. Amen. Alleluia!" Lord, That I May See.
In Scripture and in prayer, may Mary, Mother of the Church, lead us on to the Lord Jesus. May she lead us home. F.MacN