Dear Friends,
O greenest branch, I greet you,
you who budded in the winds of the questioning of the saints.
The time came for you to blossom in your branches,
I salute you!
The sun’s heat distilled in you the fragrance of balsam.
For in you bloomed the beautiful flower
which gave fragrance to all the dried out spices.
And they all burgeoned in their strength and greenness.
(Hildegard von Bingen)
Today we celebrate the Assumption, one of the principal Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the others being the Annunciation, and the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, and—while a Feast of Our Lord—Candlemas).
Mary, Mother of Our Lord, is vitally important to our faith. She is Theotokos, God-bearer. She is a ‘yes’ to God’s invitation and salvation in the Incarnation. Not some passive channel for God entering the world, rather an active participant in liberation, holding before us the Christ Child. Holding before us on the journey her own questions about who this Jesus is. Holding before us the broken body of her son at the foot of the cross. Holding before us in life and in death what it means to bear God into the world. Holding before us a vision of God’s kingdom in the Magnificat we hear this morning and at every Evensong.
Mary is bearer of Emmanuel, God with us. She is the pattern for what we may be in our time, a ‘yes’ to God’s invitation: bearers of God through struggle and joy and questioning and pain to a world which needs the liberating Good News of the Incarnation.
We especially celebrate at the Assumption (called in the Eastern Church the Dormition, her ‘falling asleep’) Our Lady’s birth into the unending life and joy of heaven, where the faithfulness and blessedness of the Virgin Mother of God is made complete in the presence and life of the Godhead. Her prayers for us are part of the unending intercession of all the Saints, their continuing ‘yes’ to all that God may do for, in, and through us.
I would like to thank David Gray for all his recent work following the restoration that has been done in the church. Through his submission, S. Michael’s has been successful in achieving a Hagley-Ferrymead Community Board Award (to sit beside that for the School) for that work. Well done!
May God bless you all.
Fr Tim Hurd
