"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord [...] because he has looked upon the humility of his handmaid." Maria proclaims the greatness of God and herself as his handmaid. In her humility she opens herself to God's action and power. This is humility: emptying ourselves in order to let the power of God act fully in us and lift us up.
Mary is the one who best lives the words of Christ: "He who humbles himself will be exalted" (Mt 23:12). This explains today's solemnity of the Assumption. If pride is a living death, humility is a living and continuous resurrection and exaltation by God.
And so we see Mary in the first reading as the "great sign... in heaven". Earlier, at the beginning of Christ's life on earth, the "sign" had been his littleness in the manger: "Here is the sign: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger" (Lk 2:12). Now he is, in his humanity, at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33).
The humble handmaid is now the radiant Queen, clothed in the very splendor of the transformed and glorious creation: Mary is the "woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head". Let us not try to clothe ourselves with a false glory, the pale glory of fabrics that wither and fade.
An excessive preoccupation with external dress, out of prideful vanity, is like an "anti-assumption". Although it is good to dress elegantly out of a sense of our own dignity as children of God and out of charity toward others, only by letting God clothe us with his grace can we hope to participate, at least in some measure, in Mary's heavenly glory: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." (Gal 3:27). "And indeed in this situation we sigh, longing to be clothed with the habitation which is from heaven" (2 Cor 5:2).
Mary accepted the Word of God by saying yes to the word of the angel: "Mary answered, 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word'" (Lk 1:38). Today's first reading shows Mary giving birth to the child, the Word, Jesus Christ, as a continuous childbirth throughout history, as she gives birth to him in us, "the rest of her offspring" (Rev 12:17).
The glorious Queen continues to be the loving mother in travail together with creation and through the Church (see also Rom 8:22). The more we allow her to raise us up in her arms, to share in her Assumption, the more we will alleviate her pains.
