Solemnity of the Assumption
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Manila
August 15, 2024
A Step Ahead
Years ago, my family moved to a new town because my father was transferred. As you know, it isn’t easy to move to someplace new, but my mother made it much easier. While I was at school and dad was at work, mom traveled to our new house to get things ready. She made sure that when we moved, that house would quickly become a home, a place of security and love.
The Blessed Mother Goes Ahead of Us
The Blessed Mother loves us like that, but more so. She is always ahead of us, always preparing the way for us. She shows us the way to know and follow her Son, Jesus. She shows us how to share in the life of the Church, all the while, with her glorified Son, preparing the way for us to take our place with the saints in our true and ultimate home, heaven.
As our spiritual mother, Mary has always gone ahead of us. Even before her birth, God decreed that Mary would be kept free from Original Sin because he had chosen her to be the Mother of his Son. Mary, we might say, went ahead of us, in the order of grace. Before the world knew the Messiah, Mary knew him, for she carried the Child she conceived by the Holy Spirit near her heart. When Mary and Joseph presented the Child Jesus in the Temple, Simeon foretold that her heart would be pieced by a sword of sorrow – Already in that moment, Mary anticipated the passion and death of her Son.
Before Jesus worked any miracles, Mary persuaded her divine Son to assist the newly married couple at Cana, and in response to Mary’s prompting, Jesus worked his first miracle. Poor in spirit and pure of heart, Mary was already living the Beatitudes long before Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.
And Mary went ahead of us to Calvary. With no sin to impede her, she shared fully in the Cross of Christ, his suffering and death by which we are saved. And from the Cross, Jesus gave Mary to us as our Mother: “Behold your Mother,” he said to the beloved disciple and to us. Yes, the Blessed Virgin Mary is always with us but also ahead of us, the way a loving mother anticipates the needs of her children.
The Assumption
The same is true of today’s feast, the Assumption. In the Creed we proclaim our faith in the resurrection of the body; we believe that our mortal bodies will be raised at the end of time. But Mary has already made the voyage from earth to heaven, for she was assumed, body and soul, into heaven. She who shared so fully in her Son’s death, now fully shares His risen life in the glory of heaven. She is already there, with Jesus, preparing the way for us.
Application
As all of us know, it is easy to lose our way. In times of illness or financial difficulty, or just in the course of the daily grind, we may feel confused about where we are going, where our lives are headed. We may wonder who is looking out for us, and what our life is all about, and what is our destiny will be after our lives on earth are over. When we feel this way, let us turn to Mary and ask her to help us find the way.
Perhaps this insight into Mary – the one who goes ahead of us – is at the heart of the beautiful devotion of Our Lady of Good Voyage. In our travels, whether it’s a long and dangerous trip, or a missionary journey, or simply our routine comings and goings – we call upon Mary to go ahead of us, to keep us safe along the way.
As with the Supreme Knight, we begin this maiden voyage to the Philippines, an event so important for the Supreme Knight and his family, and for me as Chaplain, we rejoice that our journey begins on the feast of Mary, assumed into heaven. As pilgrims to this beautiful land permeated by the Catholic faith, a country where the Knights of Columbus are growing so rapidly and living so robustly the principles of charity, unity, and fraternity, we call upon Mary, assumed into heaven, Our Lady of Good Voyage, to bless this land, its people, and the Knights of Columbus throughout the Philippines, and, yes, to bless our visit, our voyage, in the days the lie ahead.
Today the Church calls upon Mary as “a sign of hope and comfort for God’s people on their pilgrim way.” Mary, assumed body and soul into heaven, has gone ahead of us, helping to prepare a place for us in the Kingdom of Heaven where her Risen and Exalted Son sits at the Father’s right hand. In our lives on earth, may we join with Mary in proclaiming the greatness of the Lord, so that one day in the halls of heaven we may rejoice in God our Savior. Vivat Jesus!