The Message of Mary

A blessed and joyful solemnity of the Assumption, the greatest of the feasts of Our Lady, commemorating her entrance into heaven, body and soul, ‘at the end of her earthly life’, as the 1950 Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus of Pius XII put it. Besides her many other attributes, and the signs that the life of the Immaculata offers, the Assumption signifies our future resurrection, when we too, if we live a life of grace, will be reunited with our own bodies, spiritualized, as Saint Paul put it, and ‘redounding with the glory of our souls’, as Saint Thomas would later describe it.

Of course, one cannot ‘describe’ heaven (as Saint Paul again confessed), and Our Lady lives in a realm beyond space and time, her body not localized like ours. That said, she can still have a personal, maternal relationship with each one of us (in fact, like Christ, that is the very reason she can do so). As she said to Saint Juan Diego, ‘am I not your mother?’

We have to get past the idea that Our Lady (and Christ, as Father Tim McCauley points out today) are distant, shadowy, ethereal and, yes, powerless figures, distant and far away. Not at all. They are more real than we are, right here before us, and the only reason we cannot see them is the veil before our own eyes (lifted as a grace for some saints, like Saint Jean Vianney, who was once seen speaking with Our Lady one on one, a story I heard told once of Pope John Paul II).

Good mothers look after their children (as I saw in many a train station and airport). But they also at times ask difficult things of them, so they can develop their full potential. Hence, follow Mary, wherever she asks you to go. As she said to Saint Bernadette, ‘I do not promise to make you happy in this life’ (although there may be some such happiness, I might add), ‘but the next’.

And it is on that next life, on the ‘things that are above’, that we should set most of our focus and energies.

As the motto of Pope Saint John Paul II put it (whose tomb I just left yesterday, hard to believe), which he adopted from Saint Louis de Montfort’s own devotional writings:

Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. 

Maria Immaculata et Assumpta, ora pro nobis!

Carney’s Amoral Majority

After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→

Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress

This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→

Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk

(Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., a faithful, courageous and indefatigable Basilian priest, pro-life-and-family apostle, and the founder of Catholic Insight magazine. Here is what we wrote those on his entering into eternity five years ago, as we continue to remember him in our prayers and thoughts)[…]Continue reading→

A Tale of Two Benedicts

A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→

My Name is Bernadette

April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→

Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully

Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→

The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus

As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→

Divine Mercy Sunday – An Echo of Every Mass

Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’…  ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn. 20:18)). Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and as we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave, we contemplate the wounded side of our Saviour, the Church’s source of life. On Good Friday in the[…]Continue reading→

Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów

We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→

Saint Gemma Galgani

On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→