Mary’s Assumption huge step forward for humanity – Pope Francis
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Addressing a holiday crowd from the window of his studio overlooking the square, the Pope said that in Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, we celebrate an infinitely greater conquest than the “giant step for mankind” when man first set foot on the moon. When the lowly Virgin of Nazareth set foot in paradise, body and spirit, he said, it was “the huge leap forward for humanity”.
This, the Pope said, gives us hope that “we are precious, destined to rise again”. “God does not allow our bodies to vanish into nothing. With God, nothing is lost!”
Mary’s advice to us, the Holy Father said, lies in her song, the “Magnificat” – “My soul magnifies the Lord”. “Mary ‘aggrandizes’ the Lord: not problems, which she did not lack at the time,” the Pope explained. She does not allow herself to be “overwhelmed by difficulties and absorbed by fears”. Rather, she puts God as the first greatness of life, which becomes the source of her Magnificat. Her joy is born “not from the absence of problems, which come sooner or later, but from God’s presence”, because He is great and he looks on the lowly ones. “We,” the Pope stressed, “are the weakness of His love.”
Mary, the Pope continued, acknowledges that she is small and exalts the “great things” that the Lord has done for her. She is grateful for the gift of life, she is a virgin yet she becomes pregnant, and Elizabeth, too, who was elderly, is expecting a child. The Pope said, “the Lord works wonders with those who are lowly …, who give ample space to God in their life”, for which Mary praises God.
