It is a fitting time for the Feast of the Assumption which comes right in the middle of the month and lifts our hearts to Heaven and the world to come.

Our Lady, one of ourselves, has 'made it'!  In the words of Pius X11's definition, she 'was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory'.  The year was 1950.  Two world wars and the horrors of the concentration camps had outraged the respect due not only to the soul but also to the body of one's neighbours.  By solemnly defining the glory of the body of a purely human being, Pius X11 wished to 'make our faith in our own resurrection both stronger and more active'.  The need for such respect and such faith has most certainly not lessened in the intervening years.

When Jesus was ascending into Heaven we read in the Acts of the Apostles, 'They were still staring into the sky as he went when suddenly two men in white were standing beside them and they said, 'Why are you Galileans standing here looking into the sky?'.  No wonder, the eleven had just received instructions and a commission which certainly would not leave much time for star-gazing!  All the same, it's good to look up to Heaven sometimes, to remember that we won't always be here, that the best is yet to be.  And the Feast of the Assumption is just the time for that. 

Our Lady is there, waiting for us, and all our loved ones who have gone before us.  And not only will she be waiting for us in Heaven, she will be beside us, here: before we go at all, at the hour of our death.  The Latin antiphon which we used to sing long ago on the Feast said "Sui mémorum ímmemor nequáquam exístat".  In a free translation, "She simply cannot forget those who remember her".  And, surely, that includes all of us who have reminded her at least fifty times a day - and usually oftener - to 'pray for us now and at the hour of our death'.  She will not forget, she will be there, the Virgin most faithful, Mary, our Mother.