Assumption: Who longs to see the face of God?

A woman wrapped in the gold of the sun, bedecked with the jewels of the universe.  A woman through whom God shines so fiercely that even infants in the womb can sense the radiance. It is hard not to be bedazzled by the lavish images and extraordinary promises of this feast, by the share in Christ’s glory that is Mary’s and that we pray might be ours one day.

Yet my imagination is caught, not by Revelation’s dragons and diadems, or even the queen draped in gold of Ophir, but by the woman in labor.  I can feel my body recall the times I labored to give birth to my sons. To be in labor is to yearn with your entire being, to be wracked by an ineluctable longing to come face to face with what has been kindled within you.  

So I hear the reading from Revelation and the response that springs from my heart is not the prescribed psalm nor Mary’s Magnificat.  Instead, Psalm 24 insistently asks: who shall climb the mountain of the Lord, who will stand in his holy place? Those who long to see the face of the God of Jacob. 

Mary once labored to bring God’s hidden face to light, so that we now might to yearn with all our being to see the face of the God of Abraham and of Jacob.  Of the God who promises to lift up the lowly, to show us mercy — and to raise us from the dead.  — From Give Us This Day, 15 August 2014

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Santa Maria Assunta in Arricia, Italy, just down the road from the Vatican Observatory. Designed by Bernini. Photo above is of main altar, taken on the feast in 2018.