Assumption of Mary

Four minute homilies

The Assumption

Once a year we are allow to look at heaven through a peephole. Today our mother asks us to accompany her and to have a quick look to our destination, at least with our imagination. It is important for us to fix our eyes on heaven, to connect with eternity, because we are too concern about the things here on earth. Social media makes us to lose perspective of what’s really important and we forget that everything here is going to disappear one day. If we go back to read the news from last year, we‘d realise how relative current events are. The more our mind is up there, on the things that last for ever, the better.

Once a holy monk asked for the grace to see heaven. So he did persevere, that eventually he was allowed to go up to heaven for a few seconds. When he came back, he couldn’t recognise the monks in his monastery; two centuries had passed. We wouldn’t like to come back and not have anybody familiar to us. We are not ready for heaven, otherwise our whole attitude to life would change. We forget that in heaven there is no time, everything is happening at once. You are at the centre of a spinning wheel, where you can tap into the present, the past or the future. Everything is in the present time, because time doesn’t exist. It is difficult for us to imagine a place with no passing of time.

How can we be more orientated towards heaven? We can look at the things here on earth as sparks of heaven. They really are. Anything good here has nothing to do with the things there, but they can be reminders of what is to come. Do the pleasures of this life help me to remember heaven or do they incline me to hell? We can look at them either as pathways leading us to eternal life, or things that bog us down and distract us from the right path.

Saints enjoy very much the good things here on earth because they look at them with the perspective of eternity, with a measure that helps them to find the right balance. When they listen to music, it reminds them of the heavenly music, the one created by angels and sang by the saints. We normally depict angels with instruments, portraying them adoring the divine majesty. I like to see my guardian angel playing the drums, even though I don’t like heavy metal. When saints look at screens, they realise that are only screens, just a digital spark that goes through a computer chip. They know the real thing is behind the thin veil that separates us from the other side, like a tapestry, that can be seen from two sides. We are looking at the wrong side here and it’s difficult to figure out what is the main theme of the tapestry. We need to wait patiently to see the amazing forms and colours that God is weaving if we could only cooperate with him more.

When saints touch the smooth and soft surfaces of fabric, when they smell the beautiful scents of a kitchen, they are getting ready to taste the heavenly banquet promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. And they know that our five senses we have here to experience the physical world, and our way to learn the footprints of our creator, are nothing compared with the infinite number of spiritual senses, that we are going to come across, when Jesus tells us, accompanied by his smiling mother: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” This is what our mother is going check today, when she enters her heavenly kingdom as our Mother and Queen.

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