Conductricem te habeam
redeundi ad patriam,
ne callidus diabolus
via perturbet invidus.

May I have You as my guide
in my return to the heavenly homeland,
so that the envious devil
may not lead us astray with his wiles.

Hymn. O Maria piissima

In the splendid Marian antiphon Salve Regina we pray to the Blessed Virgin with these words: Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende, After this our exile, show unto us, the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Post hoc exilium: because our earthly life is precisely an exile, a forced and painful separation from the Father’s house, from the place of our true affections, from our heavenly homeland; an exile that makes the world a vale of tears, not only and not so much because it is hostile and inimical to us, but because in this time of trial we are temporarily prevented from returning to our heavenly homeland, to the place where we were destined to remain, had our first parents not deserved to be expelled because of original sin. The world is also a vale of tears because in this life we must atone for the sin of Adam and Eve, which the new Adam repaired on the Cross, and the new Eve in the Co-Redemption.

Mary Most Holy, preserved by a very special privilege from every stain of sin in view of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, was likewise exempted from the corruption of the flesh, like her Divine Son, by being assumed body and soul into Heaven. And it is in Heaven that the Virgin Mother and Queen rediscovers Christ triumphant, also seated on the throne of glory that the Holy Trinity has prepared for her from eternity. She is Soli secunda numini, second only to God, made omnipotent by Grace. Yet, even though we know full well that this is a vale of tears and a transitory phase on the way to the final goal, we cannot resign ourselves to the idea that even on this earth it is possible to build a paradise – if not eternal, at least lasting and comfortable – in which to somehow anticipate or even replace the blissful eternity that awaits every soul in God’s grace. This is a hellish illusion, a deception set for us by the three enemies of our salvation: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world, which keeps us tied to creatures rather than elevating us to the Creator; the flesh, which keeps us captive to the false seductions of our sin-corrupted nature and prevents us from elevating our souls to the things of the spirit; the devil, who seeks our damnation by offering us miserable and chimerical surrogates for the True and the Good.

In this foolish illusion of being able to achieve on earth what we can only achieve in heaven, we lose sight of eternity in pursuit of fleeting dreams and deceptive promises. Some, without denying eternal life, believe it is possible to build on this earth a new Jerusalem that fulfills the invocation of the Lord’s Prayer: sicut in cœlo et in terra.

Yet, it is precisely in that as in heaven, so on earth that we should understand that the model that a society that honors Christ as its King must be inspired by, is an eternal and perfect archetype, while its concrete realization remains inexorably provisional and subjected to trials, dangers, temptations, sins and weaknesses of human nature. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven: it is not heaven that must conform to earth, it is not God who must adapt to man, but vice versa: because Our Lord – true God and true Man – is the center of the divine κόσμος, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of all things.

The Assumption of Mary Most Holy into Heaven shows us what our true homeland is, and brings us back to reality; a consoling and comforting reality, because it removes the illusion of being able to create by ourselves a paradise on earth, and reminds us that we can rediscover the Eden from which we were expelled only by passing through Our Lord Jesus Christ – who said of Himself: Ego sum ostium, I am the door (Jn 10:9) – and through Mary Most Holy, Quæ sola fuisti porta per quam Christus ad hunc mundum processit – you who alone were the door through which Christ entered this world. The Lord and His Most August Mother are both – and indissolubly, by divine decree – the gateway between earth and heaven, between contingent temporality and immutable eternity. The Holy Church herself, the only means of salvation for humanity, finds in the Virgin the figure of the new Jerusalem, the holy city surrounded by solid walls that comes down from heaven (Rev 21:1). It is in Her that she identifies herself, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinaria (Song 6:10), fearsome as an army drawn up for battle, quæ sola cunctas hæreses interemisti in universo mundo, you who alone have destroyed all heresies in the entire world. And the Church, which in its earthly reality is militant, will endure triumphantly for eternity at the end of time, when the Last Judgment will close the time of trial and mercy.

The apocalyptic clash between the Woman and the Dragon (Rev 12:1) is anticipated in the Protoevangelium, where the Blessed Virgin is made the Serpent’s eternal enemy: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). It is no coincidence that Satan is called the princeps huius mundi (Jn 12:31), the prince of this world: the world is, in fact, the place where the Lord allows him to tempt us to test us, and his principality – which is not a kingdom – is temporary and destined for defeat, already definitively condemned. This defeat of the most rebellious, proud, and impure creature will be all the more devastating when it is inflicted by the most obedient, humble, and pure of creatures: She whom the filth of the world, the flesh, and the devil cannot even touch.

In the flow of time and in the events of the human race, the History of Salvation unfolds, projecting us into eternity and showing us the irruption of the Divine into the human, of the Eternal into the transient, culminating with the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity in Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, the Firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15), the new Adam. An Incarnation accomplished through the cooperation of the most perfect, the purest of creatures, called to be the Mother of God, the Most Holy Theotokos. Paradisi portæ per te nobis apertæ sunt – the gates of Paradise are open to us through you, who today triumph in glory together with the angels, recites an antiphon from today’s Divine Office. Mary Most Holy opened the gates of Heaven for us, giving us her Son and bringing us to Him. Tu Regis alti ianua, et porta lucis fulgida (Hymn O Gloriosa Domina), you the Doorway of the divine King, shining Gateway of Light.

Quærite primum regnum Dei et iustitiam eius (Mt 6:33), Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, says the Lord. The kingdom of God is not to be sought in the things of this earth, for all that is temporal is ephemeral, destined to decay, rot, and dissolve into dust. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt 6:19-21).

May our hearts therefore be turned to Heaven, where our true treasure lies: the blissful contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity, together with the Virgin Mary and the entire Heavenly Court. It is there that She awaits us, for it is only there that our eternal destiny in God is fulfilled. And it will be this contemptus mundi, this detachment from a world that now reeks of putrefaction – iam fœtet (Jn 11:39) – that will allow us to be during our earthly life the salt of the earth and the leaven that ferments the dough, precisely because we are exiled from our heavenly homeland. And this is what the realization of the social Kingdom of Our Lord consists of: leading as many souls as possible to find the way back to the Father’s house, which awaits the return of the prodigal son.

Let us therefore invoke the intercession of the Queen Assumed into Heaven, that she may help us understand that every earthly battle, every action in this life, every trial and every grace cannot and must not be limited to a temporal perspective, but must be projected toward the homeland that awaits each of us after this exile.

I will go to see her one day, in Heaven, my homeland: I will go to see Mary, my joy and my love. These words of a popular song that we sing with fervor remind us of our true homeland. It is with this blessed hope, founded on the Savior’s promise and the powerful mediation of the Virgin Mary, that we can face every present adversity in view of the reward that awaits us in Heaven. For it is there that we must return, under the guidance of the Stella Maris.

May I have You as my guide
in my return to the heavenly homeland,
so that the envious devil
may not lead us astray with his wiles.

And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

August 15, MMXXV a. D.ñi
In Assumptione B.M.V.