What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

-T. S. Eliot

We celebrate the Feast of the Assumption this week. Catholic tradition tells us that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Perhaps this evokes questions in us and gives us pause to consider what we believe. We ponder the mystery of a Divine love that called her home with an immediacy that we can only long for. We acknowledge that God is infinite in power and majesty – and also in loving tenderness. We who are made of stardust must treasure in our hearts these bodies we inhabit and the planet on which we walk. The deaths of our mortal bodies call for great faith that there is yet within us the Divine image that transcends what we know now. Mary’s Assumption assures us that God has not abandoned us in death but called us home in fullness of life. What we perceive as an end to life becomes the beginning of what we trust is a grand new adventure into “what eye has not seen” but our hearts will know as homecoming. May our grief at the deaths of our loved ones be infused with faith that they rise in glory as Mary did.

Sister Laura Bregar, OSU