My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My immaculate mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord,

my guardian angel, intercede for me.

This great feast of the assumption is a day for us to melt,

to be especially tender. After all, Mary is our mother, she who is

irresistible. There are dozens of magnificent depictions of her assumption in which Mary

appears so majestic.

She is the woman clothed with the sun,

the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

Yet even though we admire those masterpieces of art,

we are drawn to our lady irresistibly

simply because she is our mother, and we love her tenderly.

We see her so very close to us.

This feast is important to her as well.

She is delighted to see us making a big fuss about this feast day.

We should never consider Mary as some distant figure whose life has nothing to do with ours.

St. John Paul II, back in 1987, wrote a powerful document entitled,

The Mother of the Redeemer.

At one point, he says, motherhood always establishes a unique and unrepeatable relationship between two people,

between mother and child and between child and mother.

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