Enter the Mystery

On Sunday 14th August, we gathered again at St Mary’s Church, Butetown, to celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a barbecue, Vespers and Torchlight Procession.

The hot, dry weather meant that we called off the planned fireworks but we lit up the night with song and prayer! Here’s a reflection on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary from our celebrations at St Mary’s followed by a video of our Summer night!

Are you asleep, mother?

The ancient Celtic Christians of our land expressed their faith in poetry and song, and one of them imagines a conversation between Mary and Jesus:



‘Are you asleep, mother?’

‘No, I’m awake, dear son.’

‘Why are you awake, mother?’

‘Because I am distressed by a vision of you.’

‘What is that vision mother?’

It is a slim shadowed man, on a dark horse, with a long sharp lance in his left hand.  He pierces your right side, and blood gushes out.’

‘Where does the blood fall, mother?’

‘Into my heart and into the hearts of all that love you.”



Mary is the first to receive Jesus,

to accept him into her life.

The first to follow,

the first to hear the first spoken word,

of him who is the Word made flesh.



She is the first to love him,

he who is Love itself.



She is the first to watch him take his first steps,

The first to walk alongside him.

She never ceased to walk alongside him.

When he began his public ministry,

she was always there,

sometimes at a distance but never far away,

walking with him,

at his side.



She was the first to obey him,

And the first to learn the art of treasuring everything he said and did,

storing them in her heart.

She was the first at the cross

and the last to leave,

as she held the breathless, beaten body

of the one through whom the world was made.



Hers is the first heart into which his blood flows,

and so into the hearts of all who love him.  



And she is the first to share in his risen and ascended life,

back to the heart of heaven,

and the heart of God.

Her once swollen body

once filled with the one who made his presence felt

in kicks and dance moves

of divine proportions,

there in the Hill Country of Judah,

is assumed into Heaven,

each atom of her being

alive with God’s presence,

the beginning of a new creation

where all glimmers with the glory of God -

the possibilities of heaven

proven in a parent’s love,

as matter has a home in heaven,

and heaven has its home with us.



Heaven’s road is two-way,

a dual carriageway of love,

like Jacobs’ ladder,

angels ascending and descending

through heaven’s gate on earth.



And so we can take the words of an angel

and another woman as our own,

as Heaven and earth collide:



‘Hail Mary, you are full of grace,

The Lord is with you,

Blessed are you among women,’

and blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus.’