Meditation for August 15, The Assumption

Note: This is the last of the Meditations for Religious. We started one year ago with these meditations and I hope to find something worthwhile to succeed these wonderful reflections.
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The Blessed Virgin died from the burning desire of her soul to rejoin her Son; she died of love.

And the angels carried her blessed body into heaven.

As Mother of Christ the King, she is crowned queen of earth and of heaven.

From above she watches over poor humanity and waits for each one of us. At the moment of death, she will be present in spirit at my bedside, she whom I have so often invoked in my Hail Marys: Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

After the death of a Carmelite of Montreal, an act of resignation to death was found upon her heart. With all my soul I will make this act my own:

"I desire that my death may be an act of the most perfect adoration and of the most humble submission that a poor creature can render to its well beloved Creator. Yes, my God, may my death adore You in proclaiming your sovereignty. May my voluntary, free and loving resignation to it be agreeable to You. My soul bows down to accept it. I wish to die to obey You because You have thus decreed it. I wish to die because Jesus died. I wish to die for love of Him because he died for love of me. I wish to die because Mary, my sweet Mother, died. I wish to die when and how it pleases You, O my God, in the manner You wish, under the conditions You have determined, with all the physical and mental sufferings that You have apportioned and prc­pared in Your eternal foreknowledge. I ask only one grace: to die in the act of the most perfect love a creature can possess.

"I offer You my death as my profession, my irrevocable consecration. May this complete abandonment of my being into Your hands repair all my failures.

"If it is not too rash, I beg You to let me have my purgatory before dying. O my God, give me the grace to see You without delay at my departure from this life. Grant that my last act of love on earth may be followed by an act of love in heaven."

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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)