In this term there is no opposition, but rather an embrace with earth: indeed, who can say, looking within and around himself or gazing at the distant horizon where earth finishes and heaven begins? Is earth only the broken-up clod and the impervious rock, or is it not also the crust that hardens our heart? And heaven: is it only the starry vault and not the living breath that abides there? Thus Mary, assumed to God, remains infinitely human, forever Mother, turned towards the earth, heedful of the sufferings of men and women of all times and places, present to their often uncertain wandering. Yes, for the Christian East as for the Christian West, in spite of different formulations, Mary’s Dormition-Assumption is a sign of the “last realities”, of what is to occur in a future not so much chronological as of “sense”, a sign of the fullness towards which our limits aspire: in her we have an intuition of the glorification that awaits the entire cosmos at the end of time, when “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 12:28) and in everything. She is the part of humanity already redeemed, figure of that “promised land” to which we are called, a piece of earth transplanted in heaven.