A wonderful feast day

Before I became a Catholic I looked on the dogma of the Assumption with great scepticism. It seemed like just another novelty produced in 1950 by the great dogma-manufacturing machine in Rome. I preferred what I could find written clearly and expressly in the words of Holy Scripture. So the words of Pope Pius XII on the subject which we find in today's Office of Readings are particularly meaningful for me. He tells us that the fathers and doctors of the Church, in speaking about this feast, 'were speaking of something that the faithful already knew and accepted: all they did was to bring it out into the open, to explain its meaning and substance in other terms.' This was a complete revelation to me when I first realised it. As to Holy Scripture, the first great mystery regarding Our Lady is the silence of Scripture about her (even more so the silence about St Joseph). These silences are themselves stimuli to reflection. Her role is to point to her Son.