What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception of purity as a quality that is desirable.  This attitude has become possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it.  To sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal standard.  So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of the vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage relation.  It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul.  Is it not largely because the young are taught (when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a matter of the will, that they so often fail?  If they were taught the nature of the virtue and were led to rely more on the indwelling might of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success?  And if there were held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased sense of the value of purity?

The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that value.  To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever.  The spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of God.  The words in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that association, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her office.  She passed from this world silently, and to the world unknown; but to the Church of God she ever remains of all human beings the greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of God.

Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;
The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,
The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;
By Mary’s death mankind an orphan is. 
Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,
Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.

It was no death to her, but to her woe,
By which her joys began, her griefs did end;
Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,
Life of whose lives did on her life depend: 
Not prey of death, but praise to death she was. 
Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.