I remember an occasion about sixteen years ago, when I was playing golf with a layman on the afternoon of the Feast of the Assumption and he said to me, "I wonder why the Church makes the Feast of the Assumption such a great day, a Holy Day of Obligation. We know so little about it and it is so hard to explain to non-Catholics."

That is a question that very probably has come into your mind. We accept this truth as we do so many others, on faith, faith in the infallible teaching Church. If you can explain Tradition to your non-Catholic friend, it will be easy to explain our celebrating the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There are several truths that Christians believe that are not found in the Bible. There is no sure proof for keeping Sunday instead of Saturday except for Tradition. The belief that the body of Our Blessed Mother no longer remains in this world is another.

We should rejoice on this great event in the life of the Blessed Virgin. It is wonderful to think that of all of the millions, and billions of human bodies that have lived in this world, and have died, and decayed and molded into dust, only one body has experienced the joy of the resurrection. That is what is meant by the Assumption; the body of the Blessed Virgin has been assumed, or taken up into heaven.

We know a great deal about the Assumption. The Tradition is extremely ancient and continuous. The Feast was celebrated in Palestine before the year 500, and Catholics in Eastern Europe kept the Feast in the fourth century.

Furthermore, it was becoming that Our Divine Lord should have worked this wonderful favor for His mother. He is the King and she is the Queen, His mother. It was within His power to do so and He did. If you were able to work this favor for your mother, would any of you hesitate to do so?

Whenever we think of the Blessed Virgin, we always think of mother. In very truth she is our spiritual mother. Yet, it seems so difficult for us poor mortals to believe that she loves us more and is really closer to us than our earthly mothers.

I think here of a prominent layman in the east, a non-Catholic, who was converted while visiting the Church of the Assumption in Milan, Italy. It was on the Feast of the Assumption and he was walking around the church late in the evening, gazing at the beauty of this great edifice erected in the honor of the Mother of God. He stopped at something that caught his attention. A very aged man, a beggar in rags, had come up before a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin carefully carrying something wrapped up in an old dirty cloth. The object was deftly unwrapped and while the pale shadows of the evening softly pierced the colors of the stained-glass windows, the old man played quietly, a melodious hymn in honor of his heavenly Queen. The beggar in rags most likely did not know where his next meal would come from, he probably didn't know where he would sleep that night, but on the great feast of his Lady's Assumption, he had to do his bit to show his personal devotion and affection.

Let us, her children, rejoice with her this day and let us remember the stirring and comforting words of St. Bernard: