August Allocutio 2026
The Assumption and its consequence
Fr. Paul Churchill, Concilium Spiritual Director
The Dogma of the Assumption (1950) carries with it implications worth considering. Mary is taken body and soul into Heaven. Whatever this reality is, it is beyond us. We can only see now in “a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12). “ … what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is” (1 Jn 3;2). The implication is that Mary now sees him as he really is, and so she is changed radically and as a result knows his will even more than she could see on earth. Mary, who had already followed God’s will on earth, must now be even more united with that will in Heaven. How better can she now see and understand God’s will?
Jesus is clear: “Those who are accounted worthy to attain … to the resurrection from the dead … cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels …” (Lk 20:35-36). How do angels of heaven do the will of God? To quote Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “Q. How is God’s will done in heaven? Immediately!”
This being closer to God and knowing with the greatest clarity what his will is has huge implications. Yes, Mary is the first of the redeemed in Heaven yet still remains radically a creature. She was not there with God eternally. She came into existence at the appointed time (Gal 4:4). But she is the creature conceived in the mind of God as he created our Universe to be the instrument of the Holy Spirit, through whom the Word would enter creation. She was creation’s special person who would receive the Word and enable the redemption to take place. And because of that it was only “right”, if you can put it so, to be the first to be taken to the eternal joys of God, not just in spirit but in body.
As our mother in Heaven, she can now see with a greater clarity what God’s plan is. From her viewpoint she knows how the journey has to be to get there. She knows the graces we need. As a mother she is not going to ask or give us what she knows would do us harm. She said to Bernadette, “I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the life to come”. Her loving heart only wants us to get to heaven. So, any grace she asks for us can only be good. If Mary knows as no other that the way to heaven is by way of the Cross, perhaps some of our sufferings, trials, disappointments, heart-breaks etc. are because she has won them for us so that we can get to Heaven?
She dovetails and synchronises always with the Holy Spirit. Frank Duff saw her soul as being made in the image of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, she is the greatest expression of the Holy Spirit. Across both Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant literature I have noted the view that the Holy Spirit reflects the female dimension in God. Scripture seems to support this. The Book of Wisdom speaks first of God the Creator (Wis 1:13-14), then of that man who challenges society so much that they test him with cruelty (Wis 2:10-20), then finally speaks of Wisdom (Sofia) and keeps referring to her in the feminine (e.g. Wis 6: 12-20. see also Sirach 24:1-2; 8-12). Mary is the highest expression of this relationship between the female and the Holy Spirit.
I note a similar view of saints across history. St. Albert the Great, because he too saw in her the custodian of what belonged to the Holy Spirit says, “She pours out and gives the wine of the Holy Spirit to whomsoever she wills and to the extent that she will!” St Augustine had earlier been quite explicit. He spoke of Mary as the fruit of an eternal deliberation by the most Holy Spirit, thus again pointing to her critical importance. St. Francis of Assisi had called Mary the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Saint Maximillian Kolbe, the great Martyr of Auschwitz, commenting on the Incarnation, said, “What kind of union is this? It is above all interior; it is the union of her whole being with the being of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, from the first instance of her existence, and he will do so always, throughout eternity …” I note Frank Duff’s comments that at the Second Vatican Council the Fathers considered having a chapter on the Holy Spirit but instead replaced it by one on Mary! “Therefore, in going to Mary one necessarily goes to the Holy Spirit …”
Chapter 8 of Lumen Gentium says, “she is also the beloved daughter of the Heavenly Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because of this gift of sublime grace she far surpasses all creatures both in heaven and on earth” (n.52) Thus higher that any angel (n.66)! Due to her Assumption she is “Queen over all things” (n.59). That includes grace. “She is mother to us in the order of grace” (n.61).
Mary’s role here is not to be exaggerated, e.g. elevated to the divine, or seen as supplanting God. No, she remains a creature, hence finite. She is always among the redeemed, the most redeemed, thus grateful to God for his mercies. But in heaven with God she lives in total accord with God and his will. Every grace that comes from her to us comes to us from God’s treasury of Grace because God wants it so. God is happy to do this since he knows that Mary, beside him in heaven, will do her work of dispensing grace to perfection.
