Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The Collect
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
~BCP pg. 243

The Psalm
34:1-9

The Readings

Isaiah 61:10-11     +     Galatians 4:4-7     +     Luke 1:46-55

I will bless the Lord at all times; *
   his praise shall ever be in my mouth.
I will glory in the Lord; *
   let the humble hear and rejoice.
Proclaim with me the greatness of the Lord; *
   let us exalt his Name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me *
   and delivered me out of all my terror.
Look upon him and be radiant, *

   and let not your faces be ashamed.

~Psalm 34:1-5

Today's feast is also known as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or her Dormition (i.e. "falling asleep"). This describes the Roman Catholic dogma, similar to Orthodox tradition, that Mary was taken fully to glory, body and soul, at the end of her earthly life. Our Prayer Book collect artfully leaves open belief in this tradition without actually declaring on it. It may seem to some a bizarre tradition, and yet it can also be seen as a foretaste of the redemption and holy wholeness that is the resurrection hope of all who trust in Jesus.

In his book, Ponder These Things: Praying with Icons of the Virgin, Rowan Williams reflects on how Mary presents us with an image and example of this "borderland," this place where we see the wonder of the meeting of death by life, and its transfiguration; the taking up of humanity into glory; the place where we also hope to be, by the love and power of the Savior she bore.  

“What we call holy in the world – a person, a place, a set of words or pictures – is so because it is a transitional place, a borderland, where the completely foreign is brought together with the familiar. Here is somewhere that looks as if it belongs within the world we are at home in, but in fact it leads directly into strangeness … most importantly, there is the person who stands on the frontier between promise and fulfillment, between earth and heaven, between the two Testaments: Mary. That she can be represented in so many ways, thought about and imagined in so many forms, is an indication of how deeply she speaks to us about the hope for the world’s transfiguration through Jesus; how she stands for the making strange of what is familiar and the homeliness of what is strange. After all, it is she who literally makes a home for the Creator of all things, the strangest reality we can conceive, in her own body and in her own house, she whom we meet again and again in the Gospels struggling with the strangeness of her son, from the finding in the Temple to the station at the cross.” 

Closing Prayer
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

(This traditional prayer, associated most often with Catholicism, may be embraced by all Christians. The first two lines are drawn directly from Scripture--Gabriel's greeting to Mary at the Annunciation, and Elizabeth's greeting to her at her Visitation. The final line is grounded in our Christian belief in the communion of saints--that both those alive now on this earth and those alive in the nearer glory of God continue to be bound through the Spirit in prayer.)