THE ASSUMPTION OF OUR LADY

Today we celebrated The Assumption of Our Lady at which Father Mervyn was the celebrant and preacher. He reminded us that Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth shortly after the Angel had appeared to her. Elizabeth who was herself pregnant experienced the baby, St John the Baptist leaping in her womb. She greeted Mary proclaiming her of all women the most blessed and in reply Mary proclaims “My soul magnifies the Lord” Father Mervyn pointed out that the words Mary used then were as relevant today as they were when she first said them. In our broken society we had seen bankers who had lost millions of pounds and had nearly brought the UK to bankruptcy through unmitigated greed still awarding themselves millions of pounds in bonuses, we had had politicians prepared to swindle their expenses, footballers paid obscene amounts of money, was it then any wonder that we should experience the criminal activities of a minority who would or who could never aspire to anything like the income these others had, people who had no work and, it seemed were not likely to get any in the near future and so had determined to help themselves. We had experienced this criminal looting in our own town of Romford, in Ilford, in Barkingside and Hainault. There had been the terrible incident in Barking of the Malaysian who had been robbed when he lay injured by local thugs who appeared to be helping him and who instead were helping themselves to his phone etc. But as children of Abraham, we had the promise that the mighty would be put down from the seats and the humble would be exalted, that the hungry would be filled with good things whilst the rich would be sent away empty. Those who had been responsible for such terrible things needed to hear the message of the Gospel that God would put things right, that was the promise contained in the Magnificat and that God’s way was not the way they had pursued. We rejoice today that God had taken Mary body and soul into heaven.