HAPPY ASSUMPTION FEAST TO YOU!<\/p>\n
On this Mary\u2019s Feast<\/strong> we have been given the Gospel passage that describes the Visitation. Mary has just been told that she is to be the Mother of God. And rather than keeping this news to herself or wondering how she will cope, she sets out on a journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth.<\/p>\n Not only does Mary take this journey to the town of Judah, but with this event, the great journey of her LIFE begins an adventure that will not end until her final journey to heaven, on the feast we celebrate today, the Assumption.<\/p>\n We tend to think of the Blessed Mother as a quiet, serene figure a woman of few words, but blessed with tremendous faith and boundless trust. This is true. But this feast presents us Mary as a woman of action<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Mary is a woman on a continual journey. She is constantly, by necessity, on the move. She is restless, rarely sitting still or staying in one place. After this journey to see Elizabeth, we find Mary embarking on an difficult trip, while pregnant, to Bethlehem. After giving birth, she and her small family are on the move again fleeing to Egypt to escape death.<\/p>\n We meet her again traveling to Jerusalem, where her son goes missing and we follow her as she goes in search of him. Finding him, she continues her travels, bringing him home to Nazareth.<\/p>\n Mary, as the first disciple, in many ways prefigures all the disciples who will follow those who traveled, mostly on foot, throughout the world to spread the gospel and proclaim the good news. Like those apostles, Mary was a missionary the first missionary, a woman who traveled and carried Christ to the world.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s gospel, we see her literally bringing Jesus to another as she carries him in her womb and goes to her cousin and speaks the words any missionary or believer might pronounce words which are the very essence of The Good News, and the beginning of all belief: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.<\/p>\n We can only imagine what other travels she took in the course of her life, but we can\u2019t forget one in particular, the most difficult of all, as she followed her son on HIS journey to Calvary. She was there, she was suffering with her Son!<\/p>\n But today, on this feast, we celebrate her ultimate journey her assumption into heaven, body and soul. The woman who spent so much of her life in motion –\u00a0setting out, traveling, searching and fleeing finally is given a place of rest, a place prepared by God, as Revelation puts it. This day, we honor that, and honor how God has looked with favor on his lowly servant.<\/p>\n But though she left this world, Mary is not removed from us. Her life is closely entwined with ours. All of us, like Mary, are on a journey. All of us are traveling to places we may not understand, to destinations we cannot see. This is life. But we ask Mary to help guide us on our way.<\/p>\n The road is long. The journey isn\u2019t easy. We pray to have the trust in God that we need to travel whatever road we must take just as Mary did. Because the destination of our journey is worth it! Our destination is Great, our destination is Wonderful because our destination is heaven.<\/p>\n Let us pray today that we never forget where we are going and what our destination is. So, one day our journeying will lead us to meet the Blessed Mother face to face in that place prepared for her and for us, that destination that became her home and is going to be our home, where she waits for us with a mother\u2019s love and a mother\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n Mary, Queen assumed into heaven pray for us.<\/strong><\/p>\n May your week be blessed and holy.<\/p>\n ~Fr. Tom<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HAPPY ASSUMPTION FEAST TO YOU! On this Mary\u2019s Feast we have been given the Gospel passage that describes the Visitation. Mary has just been told that she is to be the Mother of God. And rather than keeping this news to herself or wondering how she will cope, she sets out on a journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Not only does…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fr-tom","ctfw-no-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8430,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8421\/revisions\/8430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}