St. Laurence Brindisi: Assumption

Today the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Theotocos and Christotocos, is taken into heaven to that court where the King of kings sits upon his starry throne. While angels and saints rejoice together with Christ, it is fitting that we too celebrate and rejoice with them today. Our true Solomon, the King of Peace, seats his Mother, the true Bathsheba, at his right hand today in the heavenly Jerusalem above all the choirs of angels. Today the ark of the covenant of the Lord is brought into the temple and placed in the Holy of Holies. This is the same ark that John saw in the Book of Revelation. Then God=s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of the covenant could be seen in the temple.  After writing this at the close of Chapter 1 1, as if to clarify the vision, he follows it immediately with the opening verse of Chapter 12:

 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. Without doubt this woman is the Virgin Mary, for John adds that she gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all nations... Her child was caught up to God and his throne.

 Christ is that son who has been taken up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. The ark of the covenant seen by John in the heavenly temple, therefore, is the Most Holy Mother of God, the Ark of the Divinity, in whom dwells the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily. The ark was gilded inside and out; Mary is holy in body and spirit. The ark was placed between the cherubim; Mary was frequently among the angels in a totally angelic life. The ark was covered by the divine propitiatory; the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most high will overshadow you.

 Mary is the ark in which the tablets of the divine law were to be perpetually reserved by her perfect and unconditional observance of the law. She is that urn filled with heavenly manna; filled with grace: Hail, full of grace. She is that staff which miraculously burst into bloom and bore fruit; she conceived as a fruitful virgin, gave birth to the God-Man as a virgin and, after giving birth, remained a virgin. She is, therefore, halmah, a perpetual virgin. She is that heavenly ark seen by John in God’s heavenly temple.