Solemnity of Assumption of BVM – 15 August 2026
In these middle weeks of August, we may have begun to notice something changing around us. The days are stretching out just a little longer. Darkness comes a little later in the afternoon. There is still plenty of winter chill in the mornings, but occasionally there is that hint of warmth in the air. In our gardens and along our roads, the wattles are beginning to blaze with yellow. Bare branches are showing the first signs of buds. There is a sense that winter, though not quite finished with us, is beginning to loosen its grip. We are standing on the threshold of a new season.
The Assumption of Mary into heaven is fundamentally a feast about a new season. It is a feast about what lies beyond the winters of human life. It proclaims that death does not have the final word, that the apparent ending of a human life is not simply an ending, that God is always drawing creation towards something more, towards fullness, transformation and life.
We need that proclamation. We live at a time when it can sometimes feel as though winter has settled upon our world. We see the terrible persistence of war and the displacement of peoples. We witness increasing division and suspicion between communities. We hear the anxiety of families struggling with the cost of living and housing. We recognise the loneliness experienced by many, particularly the elderly and the young. And within the Church, too, we know something of uncertainty and transition. We are conscious that familiar ways of doing things cannot simply be presumed to carry us into the future. Confronted by all of this, it can be easy to become discouraged. Yet nature itself teaches us something at this time of year. Winter is real, but winter is not final. Underneath what appears barren, life has been quietly at work. The tree that seemed lifeless has not been dead. The earth that appeared dormant has been preparing itself. Then, almost imperceptibly, something appears: a bud, a shoot, a blossom. What has been hidden begins to disclose itself. And therefore we believe that even when we cannot see what God is doing, God is at work. Even when circumstances seem barren, grace is stirring beneath the surface. Even when something familiar is passing away, God may already be preparing something that has not yet become visible.
Mary understood this perhaps better than anyone. Her entire life was lived in openness to a future she could not see. At Nazareth she says yes without knowing where that yes will lead. She carries Jesus without knowing what his life will mean. She stands beneath the Cross when everything she had hoped for must have appeared to have collapsed. Mary’s faith was never certainty about what would happen next. Her faith was trust that God would be faithful whatever happened next. Today we celebrate where that trust finally leads her. The Church professes that at the completion of her earthly life, Mary is taken body and soul into the glory of heaven. We do not know the mechanics of this mystery, nor do we need to. The Assumption is not primarily an explanation of how something happened to Mary. It is a proclamation of what God intends for humanity. The woman who gave herself entirely to God’s life is gathered entirely into God’s life. The woman who carried Christ within her is carried into the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.
The Assumption, therefore, is not simply a feast about Mary. It is a feast about us. In Mary we glimpse our own destiny. What we hope for has already been realised in her. The resurrection of the body, which we profess each Sunday in the Creed, is not simply some vague promise that something of us will somehow survive death. Christianity makes the much more extraordinary claim that God intends the whole of us for life. Nothing that has been genuinely human, genuinely loving, genuinely beautiful is destined simply for oblivion. Mary is, therefore, like the first blossom of spring in the garden of the new creation. One blossom does not make spring, but when we see it, we know that spring is coming. Mary is that blossom. In her Assumption, God gives us a glimpse of what he intends for the whole creation. She is the promise that the winter of death will pass. She is the sign that resurrection has already begun. She is the assurance that our human story is moving not towards extinction but towards transformation.
This is why Mary’s great song in today’s Gospel, the Magnificat, is so important. Mary does not sing simply about herself. She sings about what God is doing in the world: scattering the proud-hearted, casting the mighty from their thrones and raising up the lowly. Mary sees that God’s new world is already beginning. She sees, even before it has been fully realised, the new creation towards which God is drawing humanity.
The question, then, is not simply whether we believe that Mary has entered heaven. The question is whether we are prepared to live now according to the future that Mary reveals. If God’s future is one in which the lowly are raised up, then we must begin raising up the lowly now. If God’s future is one in which human dignity is completely restored, then we must defend human dignity now. If God’s future is reconciliation, then we must become reconcilers now. If God’s future is communion, then we cannot surrender ourselves to the divisions and hostilities of our age. If God’s future is life, then every choice we make for life, dignity, compassion, forgiveness and hope becomes a small sign that the new creation has already begun.
This brings us back to Mary’s yes. We sometimes imagine Mary’s fiat as one heroic moment at the beginning of her story, but in reality she had to keep saying yes. Yes at Nazareth. Yes at Bethlehem. Yes in the uncertainty of Egypt. Yes during the hidden years. Yes as Jesus left home. Yes as she struggled to understand him. Yes at Calvary. Yes in the waiting of Holy Saturday. Yes with the disciples awaiting the Spirit. Her life was not shaped by a single yes but by the fidelity of saying yes again and again.
And so it is with us. Most of us will not be asked to make one enormous, dramatic decision for God. Holiness is more often fashioned through the accumulation of a thousand smaller yeses: yes to patience when irritation would be easier; yes to forgiveness when resentment feels justified; yes to generosity when we would rather protect what is ours; yes to another person when it would be easier to walk past them; yes to hope when cynicism appears more sophisticated; yes to beginning again when we have failed. These small yeses are how resurrection begins to take flesh within us. Each of them opens a little more space for the new life of God to emerge.
So, in these August days, when we notice the first wattles along the road, when we see the first buds appearing on branches that have seemed bare all winter, when suddenly we realise that there is still light in the sky later than there was only a few weeks ago, perhaps we might allow these things to become a kind of sacrament for us. They remind us that God is not finished. God is not finished with our world. God is not finished with the Church. God is not finished with our communities. And God is certainly not finished with any one of us. There are always new possibilities of grace waiting to emerge. There is always another invitation to which we can say yes. There is always life stirring beneath what may appear barren.
Today, then, we ask Mary, assumed into heaven, to teach us to trust the new things God is bringing to birth; to help us say yes each day, especially when we cannot yet see where that yes will lead; and to keep alive within us the hope that beyond every winter God is preparing a spring, beyond every ending a beginning, and beyond death itself the fullness of life.
