Every year in mid-August, I find myself praying with the image of the Assumption. I imagine what it was like as the Blessed Mother was assumed body and soul into heaven and encountered her resurrected Son — the Son for whom she gave over her whole existence — the Son who is both her savior and ours. 

In The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander talks about the Blessed Mother’s “great findings” of her Son — the first when she found him in the temple as a child and the second when she found him on Calvary. Houselander writes, “The condition of finding Him was the loss of herself. She had to die, even out of her self-donation to God” (p. 142).  

Her assumption is another finding (not mentioned by Houselander). And while the Church has no official stance on whether Mary died beforehand — we are permitted to hold either way — it remains true that she had to lose herself and live out an existence of self-donation after the Resurrection. She lived on for the sake of mothering the Church until the time she was brought into heaven, and she still mothers us. We celebrated this on the Solemnity of the Assumption, but eight days later, on the octave of the Assumption, we celebrate the culmination of the Blessed Mother’s existence — the crowning of her as Queen of Heaven and Earth. This feast is one that is very important to all of us, for it shows us what we are all called to, that for which we were created: to share in the divine nature.  

When establishing her queenship as a new feast in 1954, Pope Pius XII wrote in his encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam: 

“It cannot be doubted that Mary most Holy is far above all other creatures in dignity, and after her Son possesses primacy over all. ‘You have surpassed every creature,’ sings St. Sophronius. ‘What can be more sublime than your joy, O Virgin Mother? What more noble than this grace, which you alone have received from God’?” (§ 23) 

Mary, who was conceived without sin, who lived without sin, lived out union with God to the highest extent of any other creature. She was entirely aligned with the Lord’s will, accepting all of the grace he offered her. While we can never achieve her level of sanctity, her coronation shows us something about our own calls that we sometimes overlook. We, too, are meant to be in God’s family and are meant to become “partakers of the divine nature” (1 Peter 1:4). St. Athanasius as quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (460). The Assumption and the Coronation of the Blessed Mother remind us that we are meant to one day live eternally body and soul in heaven as acknowledged adopted members of God’s family.  

The Blessed Mother gives us an example of how to live as members of God’s family, to run the race, to receive the imperishable crown (1 Corinthians 9:24-25). We only have to look to the Blessed Mother and see how to live out our creatureliness.  

Writer Gertrude von le Fort in The Eternal Woman explains that “[i]n the humble fiat of her answer to the angel lies the mystery of redemption insofar as it depends on the creature” (p. 9). The only response Mary gave to God, and the only one we are asked to give, is Mary’s “let it be done unto me” of Luke 1:38 in every moment of every day.  

All we are, our whole being and existence, has been given to us by God, and all God wants from us is ourselves in return. Le Fort explains: “For his redemption, man has nothing to contribute to God other than the readiness of unconditional surrender” (p. 9).

Like the Blessed Mother and her Son before her, we are all called to respond with our whole selves. In fact, “Surrender to God is the only absolute power that the creature possesses” (p. 18). When we surrender ourselves to him, we become one with him. 

This surrender is not as easy as it sounds. But the handmaid of the Lord, who is the Queen of Heaven, has done it all before us. She models the attitude of surrender for us and offers us the Lord’s grace to do so.  

St. Bonaventure once preached: “For the grace of God, which is a healing for the human race, descends to us through her as if through an aqueduct [...]. By position the Virgin Mary is a most excellent Queen towards her people: she obtains forgiveness, overcomes strife, distributes grace; and thereby she leads them to glory” (Roman Breviary, Vol. II.). 

As our Queen and Mother, she sees our needs and she responds with love. She is our best model of surrender to God’s will.  

She knows what it is like to face a lifetime of unknowns. She knows what it is like to see a child suffer, to lose her parents and her spouse. She knows what it is like to feel oppressed by government powers, to live on a small income. She knows what it is like to live far from loved ones, to move away from one’s homeland. She knows what it is like to have neighbors that misunderstand her. She knows what it is like to seek Jesus in a crowded, noisy world. She knows what it is like to face the abyss and pass through it with hope. She knows what it is like to wait for reunion with her loved ones, to long for her eternal home. And while knowing what it is like to be a helpless creature, she also knows what it is like to live a life full of grace and wants the same for us. She wants us to join her in heaven, beside her Son, with her as our Queen and Mother. 

She does all of this after the example of her Son — for she shows us ultimately how to live as Christ did. She is our guide on how to imitate her Son. So, as we celebrate the Blessed Mother this month, let us turn to her for her intercession, seek her aid, and ask her to help us, like her, partake in the divine nature that her Son so generously offers us.