Aug 19, 2013
The Solemnity of the Assumption (Aug. 15) celebrates the Immaculate Mother of God being taken up body and soul to heaven. The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Aug. 22) memorializes Mary as our royal and heavenly queen due to her entire life lived in perfect union with God.
August also features the memorials of St. Dominic (Aug. 8), who preached widely about the Rosary; St. Maximilian Kolbe (Aug. 14), who founded the Immaculata Movement in Poland, and St. Stephen (Aug. 16), who placed Hungary under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the early 11th century.
Why does the Church offer such a feast of Marian devotion? According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Mary personifies “obedience” and the “purest realization” of faith in God, most notably at the Annunciation (CCC, 148-149). But it seems to me that a Catholic man can also explain the answer by affirming how particular women said “yes” to him at some key moments in his life.
First, consider mothers, who stand alone in their ability to make men, literally, by saying “yes” to life. They show how our bodies – at their tiniest, most helpless stages – bear unspeakable beauty within the womb and afterward thanks to her hard labor. In molding us over the years, moms teach us to act in charity and discover dignity in others. It is no wonder that our mothers, even many years after they’re gone, set standards by which Catholic men measure all other women.