Assumption: We are visited by Mary...

In the heart of the summer shines the feast of the Assumption, a celebration of the mystery which is deeply rooted in the Community since it began. Thus, we wish you a very beautiful feast by offering you today, a homily from Florin Callerand dated August 15, 1997, his last celebration of the Assumption. After reading the Gospel of the Visitation (Luke 1,39-56), let’s let him put us in the presence of the One he never stopped loving and celebrating!

The Community

On the occasion of the liturgy of the Assumption, Pope Pius XII and his liturgical team avoided giving the entire account of the Visitation, including the Magnificat. Only the first three verses of the Magnificat appeared. The original intention of Pius XII was not to lead us first into Mary's thanksgiving with the whole of the Magnificat, but he wanted us to realise that the Assumption of Mary was primarily, for us, a visitation for which God equipped and mandated her. And so, coming to us with the equipment of glory that her Son Christ and Lord gave her, Mary was immediately going to be able, from the mystery of her Assumption, to become effectively, realistically, our formative mother, directing us towards the things from above: Glory.

When Mary arrives near Elizabeth, she will receive from her a clear messianic direction that she could not have sensed beforehand. In order for Elisabeth to be set in motion in such a physical and psychological way, Mary had to let her know the reason for her visit in the manner she addressed her... Because in the Middle East, when people meet, they don't just say to each other: "Hello!” “How are you?", etc. but instead, they immediately say what's in their hearts: "Why are you coming to see me?" Mary said, "I'll tell you...".

What happened during those few minutes between Mary and Elizabeth, when Mary confides in her about what has turned her life upside down, and which, in turn will also turn Elizabeth’s life upside down? She never even envisaged that the Messiah announced by the prophets, would come this way. So Elizabeth cries out, in the Holy Spirit, as if she had just received a true Pentecost, thanks to Mary who came to her: "How come is all this happening to me, that the Mother of my Lord is coming to me. For you see, no sooner had the sound of your greeting struck my ears, had entered in me, than the child in me frolicked with joy like a young calf detached from the stable goes on to play in the meadow. Yes, blessed are you, you who believed in what was said to you on behalf of the Lord."

When Mary saw the effect that her visitation has just produced in Elizabeth who passed from the Old to the New Testament and entered into the mystery of the Incarnation, she is seized by the Spirit of Pentecost and exclaims: "It has happened, and I am now God's collaborator to bringing the Good News, the Gospel to all creatures." Her divine motherhood for humanity is born immediately after the mystery of the Annunciation, and Mary, in her Visitation, makes it the first application, the first exercise. Elizabeth is the first daughter of the Virgin Mary; the church has just been born. And then John the Baptist, and then the old Zacharias, who is also moved inside. Mary is the visitor who brings entirely all the greeting she bears of what God has just given her: Her Lord. For she is full of Jesus and she comes as such to Elizabeth, to John the Baptist and to Zacharias. That is why Pope Pius XII wanted us to focus on the mystery of the Visitation itself.

The "Magnificat" of the Virgin Mary is beautiful! Wanting to expand further on the Pope’s work, the second liturgical team added on and it did what it did, and that's good, that's fine! But then, it dilutes the fundamental motivation, the eagle intuition that Pope Pius XII had felt: Why the Visitation? The implementation of Mary's universal motherhood, the event of the Visitation, will be put into effect by Mary in the Assumption, not only with her legs when she walked the 150 kilometers between Nazareth and Hebron all the way to Ain Karem, but with "the wings of the Great Eagle". And the whole creation that does not yet know its Savior, the wilderness, is Mary’s scene (cf Revelation 12,6). She is fed there to visit all those men and women in the wilderness who do not know the meaning of their existence and their call to divine life: Mary intimately present to us by the grace of the Assumption-Visitation.

Every time we receive a grace, it is Mary who comes to visit us. She is fed with grace to do so, and if I may say, she has the physical means to move around all at once without having to move. She wishes for all men to move, to react like Elizabeth, like Zacharias, like the little John the Baptist.

The Visitation within the Assumption. The Assumption for the Visitation. Mary in the Assumption is endowed by her Lord with a power of universal presence and activity at the heart of each consciousness.

Hence our cry of prayer to Mary on this day of 15 August:
"O! Our Mother intimately-present-in-the-Glory-of-the-Assumption!" The Assumption is not the abduction of Mary elsewhere where she receives a well-deserved reward, the Assumption is an endowment of means "from above", means of glory, which allow Mary to now be the intimate contemporary of every freedom and every consciousness whispering from within the meaning of its predestination.

We are visited by Mary. This is the gift given to us by the open Temple in heaven: the Ark of the Covenant, Mary in the Temple. Jesus gives her to us!

Florin Callerand

La Roche d'Or, August 15, 1997

On the feast of the Assumption

French to English translation by Cécile Simon