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.

Even when the same woman is the mother of numerous children, her personal relationship with

each one of them is of the very essence of motherhood.

These powerful words suggest to us that as Our Lady is looking down upon each one of us,

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