Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy;
Hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope!
To thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve.
To thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious Advocate,
thine eyes of mercy towards us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
Today we commemorate the Dormition/Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin. We wrote more about the history and meaning of it last year. During the next few days we will try to post some further reflections regarding Theotokos, but today we would like to focus on the special meaning of this feast in the Mariavite tradition. On this day in 1918 Mother Maria Franciszka received the last revelation about the Work of Divine Mercy she herself wrote down, in which, among other things, was revealed the significance of the Temple built by the Mariavites in Plock. In the revelations we read among other things:
Lord Jesus himself consecrated it by his word, saying: “This is the Temple of Charity and Love.”
(Dz. W. M., p. 80)
Like every year, thousands of Mariavites come today to Plock in order to celebrate the chief festival of the Old Catholic Church of the Marivites. Yet perhaps it would be worthwhile to remind in this context the words of the “Exhortation” which Br. Archbishop Jan Maria Michał Kowalski wrote already after the schism in the Mariavite Church in December 1935:
When in 1914 I finished the construction of the Temple in Plock, which four years later, on August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin, Lord Jesus himself consecrated by his
Divine Word and called it the Temple of Charity and Love, … I pondered on how this small, as if provisionally (for of wood and fragile bricks) built little Temple could be the eternal Temple … I was thinking in the human manner, like St. Francis, who, repairing the little church of St. Damian in Assisi, which was about to collapse, didn’t understand yet that he was told to repair the spiritual Church, built of living stones and not made of dead rocks or bricks.
“Ku Królestwu Bożemu”, Felicjanów 2009, p. 364-365.
We do not plan to go to Plock, above all for practical reasons. However, on the other hand, we remember also a fragment of a sermon by an Anglican theologian, one of the Caroline Divines, Mark Frank (1612-1665), which we posted on Candlemas: “Let the ceremony pass, reserve the substance; …” That is why, even though we stay at home, it will be a special day for us as well – a day of prayer and reflection on the substance of this feast. Perhaps the collect from the Eucharistic Breviary of the Mariavite Congregation will help us find it:
O God, who allowed the Most Holy Theotokos to depart this world blameless in soul and body, please grant, we beseech Thee, that our hearts may become, like the Temple of Your Charity and Love, the leaven of Thine Kingdom on earth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Thy Son, who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
