The Gospel for the vigil mass of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is taken from St. Luke. 11th chapter 27, 28th verse. While Jesus was speaking, a woman came from the crowd, called out and said to him, blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed. He replied, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. Jesus so often teaches something, and you have to ponder what he meant when he said the words that he said that would bring that truth to you until you find it.

And it’s interesting that here he sees someone giving praise to his mother who deserves all the honor in the world, in a sense. But he makes a simple point. Yes, the world is blessed by the woman who opened her heart and enabled the Messiah to be born in the flesh. But the real blessing is what she brought into the world, the one who then is born into us and fills us with truth and light and love. Closing Prayer Father, as we ponder the story of your entering into the world, your humanity is so important. We need to know that God wanted us to see something so clearly that a man born of a woman represented for all of us the intense desire that you have in your heart to bring us into life.

Bless us with a greater awareness of the humanity of Jesus as the model of who we are to become. And we ask this through Jesus name, Amen.