When I worked in the Diocese of Harrisburg, I got to know a wonderful priest who was stationed at St. Ann Ruthenian Catholic Parish located very close to the diocesan pastoral center. He shared my love for history and devotion to the Blessed Mother. One day shortly before he moved to a new assignment, he gave me a book entitled The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin to Stalin. I devoured the book that told the heroic story of Catholics and other believers who suffered greatly under communism in Central and Eastern Europe during the 20th century.
At the beginning of chapter II of this book, there was a story about an apparition of the Blessed Mother that happened in present day Ukraine. Early in the summer of 1914, twenty-two Greek Catholic peasants were mowing hay in the fields near a Greek Catholic chapel dedicated to the Blessed Trinity outside of the village of Hrushiv. Our Lady appeared to those working there and said that Ukraine would suffer great persecution for 80 years and would live through two world wars but after would become free. She also noted that this could be avoided if Russia would turn to Christ.
Our Lady’s dire prediction came to pass. World War I broke out a few weeks later. Three years later Russia fell to the communists. World War II broke out in 1939. The Catholic Church and especially the Eastern Rite Catholic Church in that part of the world was practically eradicated until 1991 when communism definitely fell.
This message was remarkably similar to the one given to the three shepherd children at Fatima in 1917. Our Lady asked them from May through October of that year to, “Pray the rosary every day to obtain peace for the world...To save souls the Lord asks that devotion to my Immaculate Heart be established in the world…I ask for the consecration of the world to my Immaculate Heart and Communions of reparation on the First Saturday of each month. If my requests are heard, Russia will be converted and there will be peace…In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
I find it amazing that God so loves us that He sends His own Mother to draw us ever closer to Jesus. Every apparition of Our Lady that is approved by the Church always emphasizes what Our Lord teaches us in the Gospel. They are like “snapshots of the Gospel.” The apparitions at Hrushiv in 1914 and at Fatima in 1917 both asked for conversion (a turning back to God), prayer (the rosary), penance (making sacrifices in reparation for sin), and charity (love for God and spiritual acts of love for our brothers and sisters).
Sometimes we hear the argument that we do not need to pay attention to these extraordinary events because they are private revelation. While it is certainly true that they are not part of the Deposit of Faith (the public revelation of God entrusted to the Church through the apostles), we see that they are powerful aids to support the Catholic Faith and the Gospel. Every Pope since Pope Pius XI has approved of the message of Fatima. Pope St. Paul VI visited Fatima in 1967. Pope St. John Paul II visited Fatima three times, most notably a year after the assassination attempt he suffered in 1981, and publically credited his survival to the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima. Pope Benedict visited Fatima. Pope Francis visited Our Lady’s Shrine at Fatima and dedicated his pontificate to her. If these popes and many holy men and women have had devotion to Our Lady and her message for humanity, that is a high recommendation in my estimation. I think it is foolish to ignore them.
But are these visits of Mary at chosen times and to chosen individuals related to her Assumption? I think that in listening to what the Church has taught about the Assumption, a case can be made that her Assumption paves the way for her visiting us again. Perhaps we might say that she who went up to God at the end of her earthly life by her Assumption also returns to us at His bidding so that we can be prepared to go to Him also.
A great doctor of the Church, St. John Damascene, preached the following in a homily on the Assumption, “Today the holy Virgin of Virgins.. .the sacred and living ark of the living God, who conceived her Creator Himself, takes up her abode in the temple of God, not made by hands.” He recognized that the Mother of God returned to God body and soul to give Him glory. An important aspect of Our Lady’s giving glory to God is her caring for her sons and daughters (that means us) who are still on their earthly pilgrimage.
St John Damascene later shares in this same homily, “(Our Lady) grieves over every sin and is glad at all goodness as if it were her own. If we turn away from our former sins with all earnestness and love goodness with all our hearts...she will frequently visit her servants, bringing all blessings with her, Christ her Son, the King and Lord who reigns in our hearts.” That is why she came at Guadalupe, at Lourdes, at Fatima and at Hrushiv. She came to bring us Jesus Christ her Son so that we can experience the Father’s love and mercy
It makes perfect sense that Mary who entered the Kingdom of her Son, full of grace in body and soul, would also come back to us who need her so much in our sorrows and our trials. The Preface of the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary makes that very point. “For today the Virgin Mother of God was assumed into heaven as the beginning and image of the Church’s coming to perfection and as a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people.” We are God’s pilgrim people and we sure do need the hope today that only a Mother can give with all of our many struggles sorrows in this valley of tears. When we most need God’s love, Our Good Mother comes to us. She surely comes to us every time we look up to her in prayer. She comes to us at times in the extraordinary gifts of her apparitions when there seems to be no hope.
Every year on the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption we rejoice that she is in heaven as Mother of God and our Mother and Queen. We also rejoice that she is never far away from us, really just a prayer away.
As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “Clearly from earliest times the Blessed Virgin is honored under the title of Mother of God, under whose protection the faithful took refuge in all of their danger and necessities” (Lumen Gentium, #66) The Council continues, “The entire body of the faithful pours forth urgent supplications to the Mother of God and the Mother of men, that she who aided the beginning of the Church by her prayers, may now, exalted as she is above all the angels and the saints, intercede before her Son in the fellowship of all the saints, until all families of people…may be happily gathered together in peace and harmony.” (Lumen Gentium, #68)
The Woman who went up to her Son, also comes down to her sons and daughters with the comfort of her love and sure guidance to heaven. She came down from heaven to Hrushiv in 1914 and Fatima in 1917 when we needed her so very much. Every time we turn to her in prayer, especially in the rosary, she draws us into the Mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. She teaches us that our life, our suffering, our sorrows really do have meaning and purpose. She shows us that this world is passing and that we are meant to with God forever.
Today when we need her so very much, today when the Church has so many challenges, the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and crowned with twelve stars (Rev 12:1), comes to us.
Her Assumption and her appearances on earth show us the way to the Kingdom.
O Mary, Assumed body and soul into heaven we pray,
To the Kingdom of Jesus show us the way!