Look to Our Blessed Mother in every event of our lives

The month of August seems to remind us of the transitory nature of our lives. What I mean is that we celebrate two feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary in quick succession, and they present to us what our earthly lives are to be, but also what our eternal lives are to be.

August 15 is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and August 22 is the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What the Church gives to us is an octave, a period of eight days, for us to celebrate the earthly life, death and eternal life with God and Our Blessed Mother. The first is a holy day of obligation and, as such, we have the obligation to attend and participate at Mass just as we do every Sunday.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary celebrates not just the end of her earthly life but her entrance into Heaven in her body and soul. The Church has always believed and taught that since she was conceived without original sin and remained sinless during the course of her life on earth, at the moment of death, the Lord did not let her suffer what the rest of us will suffer. She was assumed body and soul into Heaven, whereas we will die and be buried, and our bodies and souls will be reunited for all eternity at the Final Judgement. In other words, Our Blessed Mother possesses now what we hope and pray to have.

What we celebrate on the feast of the Queenship of Mary is the fact that, as the Mother of God, she reigns with her Son, the eternal King and is our first and best intercessor with Him on our behalf. In the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we pray using her title as Queen and that is because she is the exemplar of every virtue and the model disciple for all of us to imitate in our daily lives.

These two beautiful feasts of the Blessed Mother allow us to let her bring us closer to Jesus in our lives just as she did for others in her earthly life. When we celebrate these feasts with faith and devotion, honoring the Blessed Mother for who she is, we understand better the nature of prayer, the reason for cultivating virtue in our lives and the meaning of that saying, “to Jesus through Mary.”

August is a month of changes, but those changes are much more of a spiritual and eternal nature than they are temporal changes. To look to Our Blessed Mother in order to know, love and serve the Lord better is always good. May we not hesitate to seek her assistance in every event of our lives.