Love Lessons from the Assumption of Mary

In the remarkable Solemnity of the Assumption of our Blessed Mother, there is much we can learn about the love she is sharing with us in the Flame of Love of her Immaculate Heart. She powerfully illustrates the difference between this love and the love with which most of the world, and often many of us, love. This is the great gift the Flame of Love brings to both the Church and the world, i.e., to fill it with the love of the Trinity, the love that heals, the love that makes peace, the love that puts out the fire of hate, and it is vital that we, in the Flame of Love, understand how it is different than they way most people love.

For our leaders, please be sure that this understanding is spread to all our devotees. I can see why many of our devotees do not understand this. Many have not read the Diary; indeed, in some countries, it is still difficult to obtain the Diary. Many have simply heard a YouTube video or a friend who spoke to them about “the prayers that blind Satan” or the prayers that release many souls from Purgatory. As a result, many believe that they just need to say the prayers, maybe attend a cenacle, and that’s it – Satan is gone. If that’s all we do, we have gutted the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of most of its power, blunted its effect, and stunted what our Blessed Mother wants to accomplish in us.

No Shortcuts

Before we examine our Blessed Mother’s Assumption, let’s quickly review the Flame of Love of her heart. Its only purpose is to “blind Satan”: “this priest understood the essential message, which is ‘to blind Satan.’ This is the principal and only purpose of the Flame of Love of the Blessed Virgin. She, herself, promised an outpouring of graces so great as have not happened on earth since the Word became Flesh.” (February 23, 1964). There’s a connection between those three sentences. To understand it, let’s do some algebraic substitution:

Blinding Satan = he loses his ability to lead us into sin. How does he lose his ability to lead us into sin? By the effect of grace. The ultimate effect of grace = complete union with Jesus so that we let Him love in us in every moment. We blind Satan not by poking out his eyes but by shining a light – the light that the darkness cannot overcome, the light that is the very life of mankind – Jesus, the Flame of Love:
“through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5 NABRE)

There are no shortcuts. The only way to live without sin is to live without sin, i.e., to live the love of Jesus in us in every moment, in every situation, with every person. There are no shortcuts. Saying the prayers and attending the cenacles but not changing the way we love is not breaking Satan’s ability to lead us into sin. Saying the prayers and attending the cenacles help us toward that goal but the only way to fulfill this purpose of the Flame of Love is to live it, i.e., to love continuously with the love our Blessed Mother is sharing with us. Yes, although there are no shortcuts, our Blessed Mother is giving us her help to run down this long path with no shortcuts faster. On August 1, 1963, Jesus told Elizabeth, “You are receiving graces that other souls would only receive over a period of several decades. Be very grateful for that. My Mother’s Flame of Love is always compelling.”

So the only way to keep Satan blinded is to live this love. What love? What does it look like and how is it different from how we and most people are loving? For that, let’s look to our Blessed Mother’s Assumption into Heaven.

Loving for no reason

In her Assumption into Heaven, our Blessed Mother has already received her reward – the reward that will be ours, we pray, at the return of Jesus and the Resurrection. She already has all things yet, despite having all things, she continues to seek our salvation and our good. She does this for no other reason than because that’s what love does – just like Jesus (Philippians 2:5-8), the Flame of Love in her Heart.

Let’s ask ourselves why we do what we do. Do we forgive so that we may be forgiven? Well there’s just another layer of self. Once we are in Heaven as our Blessed Mother is, and all our sins have been forgiven, and someone on Earth sins against us or our loved ones (think how many still insult and blaspheme our Blessed Mother), will we no longer forgive them since we no longer need to be forgiven? We forgive, always, because we love the person who has sinned against us and not so that we can be forgiven.
Why do we “love”? Is it so that we can get to Heaven? There’s another layer of thinking about self. Is it because it makes us happy when we do so? There’s another layer of self. Is it because it makes our lives more peaceful? There’s another layer of self. Is it because others, particularly God, have been kind to us? Well, that is still a reaction to what has happened to us. In other words, something that appeals to our selves is causing, motivating our love.

If we only love so that we can be in Heaven, will we still love when we are in Heaven? If we love because it makes us happy or makes our loves peaceful, will we still love when we dwell in eternal happiness and peace? If something is motivating our love, then we are vulnerable to no longer loving when that motivation is removed.
Our Blessed Mother has no selfish motivation to love us; she has already received all things that could motivate her to love. She loves because she loves by nature as the effect of grace – from the first moment of conception in her case. If we are still loving “because”, we are not yet loving with the love of the Flame of Love. We must love even when there is no reason to love and that brings us to the second lesson.

Loving those who hurt us

As we’ve already seen, our Blessed Mother has received everything promised her and then some and yet, while having all things, she continues to intercede for us. For whom is she interceding? For us – the ones responsible for the torture and murder of her Son. Yes, she loves not because of what we have done or how we have made her feel. She loves because she loves by nature; she is filled with the love of the Holy Trinity, of Jesus, the Flame of Love, loving in her. She loves with the love she is asking us to add to our love. Are we?

Let’s again ask ourselves some hard and practical questions. Are we actively loving those who hurt us? Now I’m not talking about foolishly perpetuating abusive and dangerous relationships. That is not love because by enabling those relationships we are aiding the destruction of the abuser’s soul. Even then, it is for love of the abuser and the others who are hurt by their behavior that we must not enable that behavior.

But let’s talk about that difficult family member, that unpleasant neighbor, that unreasonable boss. How are we doing with loving them? Are we treating them just like everybody else does or are we treating them with the love that shines a light into the darkness, a light that blinds Satan in the lives of those who see us interact with that difficult person, the light of the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the light of her love that she invites us to add to our love? Are others seeing the love that Jesus showed us on His cross by the way they see us loving when we are on our crosses, the crosses on which those difficult people are placing us? Are others having Satan blinded in their lives because they see in us a love that doesn’t care if the person has anointed our head with oil or crowned it with thorns? Let’s be honest with ourselves; is this how we are treating the difficult people in our lives? I pray so.

How often, even in the Church, even in the Flame of Love, I see us falling into an Old Testament way of thinking – a way of thinking for those who did not have the Holy Spirit. I remember over 40 years ago now, when I was dating my wife, that she had moved several hundred miles so we could be closer. She took a low paying job as a live-in governess to educate and care for two young children of a divorced working woman. All started well but soon it was not just looking after the children but light housework, then impositions upon her time off, then heavy housecleaning to the point of scrubbing the grout lines in the floor with a toothbrush. And she was withholding income tax from my fiance’s pay but not paying it to the government. When my fiance finally strenuously objected, the woman threw her possessions into the street and locked her out of the house. She called me, crying, because she had no place to go. As I picked her up and loaded her belongings into my car, I prayed that God would remember this injustice and bring it upon the head of this woman who had caused such pain to someone so innocent, someone I loved. I was wrong. I sinned.

How are we doing at loving those who are difficult to love? How are we doing at loving those who hurt our feelings? We need to love them, actively love them just like our Blessed Mother, now in Heaven, loves us who more than hurt her Son. When someone strikes us on our emotional cheek, are we more concerned about them than about us? (Matthew 5:39) We may say, “but what about my feelings?” Well, what about your feelings? When it comes to love, they don’t matter. This is precisely Jesus’ point in this section of the Sermon on the Mount. That may sound harsh but, if our love for others depends on how they make us feel, those who kiss our cheeks rather than strike them, that is not the love of Heaven; that is not the love our Blessed Mother is sharing with us; that is not the Flame of Love no matter how many prayers we say or cenacles we attend. If we only love those who make us feel good, what good is that? Even the Gentiles do that. It is not being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48).
This is the love our Assumed Blessed Mother has for we who tortured her Son; this is the love she asks us to add to our love. How are we doing?

Not even seeking Heaven

Let’s notice one last thing about our Blessed Mother’s Assumption into Heaven – the timing. Why did it take so long? I would imagine that Jesus was earnestly looking forward to the day He could reward His mother by taking her body and soul to Heaven. I would also imagine that our Blessed Mother had no fear of death but longed for the day when she could depart this Earth and be with her Son. Why did they wait?

For love. When the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples in the upper room, it was all new except for one person. There was one person who had by far and away the most experience in living according to the lead of the Holy Spirit, in living a life filled with Grace – our Blessed Mother. For love of the disciples and the fledgling Church, there was a need for this most experienced person in living a life of grace, love, and the Holy Spirit to remain and stabilize the Church. So, as much as she would have liked to be brought to Heaven sooner, and as much as Jesus may have wanted to bring her to Heaven as part of His Ascension as He brought the souls of the just, for love, they did not.

This leads us to one more deep examination of how much selfishness remains in our spirituality. Why do you want to be in Heaven? Does the honest answer to that question reveal yet another layer of spiritual selfishness in our lives – of a facade of holiness hiding a remaining self-orientation? The only true reason to want to be in Heaven is because God wants us there and, because we love Him miraculously as the effect of grace, we want to give this to Him.
If that seems extreme, strange, crazy, let’s read from one of the great Saints of the past, Saint Teresa of Avila. Let’s read how she describes the soul that has arrived at the Seventh Interior Castle, that deepest place in the soul where God dwells:

For not only do they not desire to die but they desire to live very many years suffering the greatest trials if through these they can help that the Lord be praised, even though in something very small. If they knew for certain that in leaving the body the soul would enjoy God, they wouldn’t pay attention to that; nor do they think of the glory of the saints. They do not desire at that time to be in glory. Their glory lies in being able some way to help the Crucified, especially when they see He is so offended and that few there are who, detached from everything else, really look after His honor.

So our Blessed Mother did not seek the glory of her Assumption in Heaven. She stayed here as long as our Lord had love for her to do here. And when it was time, she gladly joined Him in Heaven to continue to love from there – to love we who murdered her Son.

There is nothing but love in our Blessed Mother’s life. Now having looked at what we can learn about love from the Assumption of our Blessed Mother into Heaven, do we see ways in which we still have the vestiges of selfishness hiding within our spirituality? We are called to be holy. “as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I [am] holy.’” (I Peter 1:15-16 NABRE). There are no shortcuts. The only way to keep Satan blinded is to be holy. The only way to be holy is, well, to be holy! That is, to love in every moment, in every situation, with every person no matter what they do or how they make us feel just like our Heavenly Mother does. That is how she loves. That is the love she asks us to add to our love. That is the Flame of Love! How are we doing?