Today is the feast of the Assumption. Nearly everything about this feast does a hagiographer's heart good: the antiquity of the feast (prior to the year 500 AD), the universality of it (celebrated both East and West), and historical probability -- no city ever claimed to have her body, although a greater human relic could hardly be thought.
The theology of the feast is ample, if subtle. There's emphasis on her great faithfulness, because of which the Lord will not let her suffer corruption; her bodily purity, making her assumption fitting if not absolutely necessary; and her humility, which Fr. Vincent McNabb focuses on in his homily for this great feast. He focuses on this virtue in her life and takes an example from an incident in her earlier life. "None learns so easily as he who is humble. Here we have an example of Our Lady willing to learn through the shepherds." She was not so high as to disdain illumination from even so low a source. Wise men know they can learn even from their lessers -- which is good news for those of us who are quite small in this world. If we stay faithful and pure, if we strive after truth, we too can be messengers of God.
There is some difference between East and West in regard to this feast. The Orthodox and Eastern Catholics say she never actually died; the Westerners say she did . . . The holy Father Pius XII deftly avoids the controversy: "when her earthly life was over" (true in both scenarios: life is over when we die, but "when earthly life is over" doesn't stipulate death) "the Immaculate Virgin was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory." Amen.
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