The whole month of August, I hope you allow us to dwell on the theme of Mary owing to her most recent Feast of the Assumption, hence the title!  So we start with our very own personal search by recounting seemingly random events leading up to the day, & in fact, how & WHERE we eventually ended up spending Our Lady’s Feast Day!

Guido Reni's Assumption of Mary,1642

RELATED LINKS:  (1. On the Feast of the Assumption: Mary For all Nations...

2. In search of Mary of the Assumption, Part II: a comprehensive examination of Mary's feastday looking at the background, theology & its essential implications to a well-imagined Catholic life;

3. Mary's Rosary Month: How the Destruction of Christendom was Averted)

A couple of weeks ago, my prayer group friends in La Crescenta & Tujunga, were caught up— perhaps even swept up—giddy over local news reports & subsequent buzz on the web by Catholic blogger Greg Kandra of  “(A)nother curious case of a reported weeping statue of Mary, this time in suburban Los Angeles.”  Especially since this time suburban LA meant our Glendale, sometimes also La Crescenta & neighboring Tujunga, La Canada, Eagle Rock, Pasadena, Altadena, Hollywood, etc., or our neck of the woods, our Valley!

"Her Virgin Mary statuette has allegedly moved its fingers and cried, drawing thousands of visitors."  The Glendale News Press (LA Times group of publications) on Monday, August 2, trumpeted the events allegedly happening on top of the fireplace of local Armenian housewife, Anahid Sallakian's single-family home, attracting neighbors and visitors from Boston, New Jersey & elsewhere. 

"She gave us the oil for nine days," Sallakian said. "I don't know if it's finished."

On Thursday, after the Divine Mercy Prayer Group of Our Lady of Lourdes (OLL), Tujunga met for prayer & heard the news, a tight group of members (mostly housewives, working mothers & some senior ladies) stayed, hotly discussing & devising ways & means to flush out the address of the property omitted in the reports for a possible “pilgrimage” to the address.

It was in this same spirit that my friend Aurea, an OLL parishioner, & I decided on our own fact-finding & devotional tour that very Sunday of the Assumption, to be joined by two of our other close allies & prayer group regulars from the Holy Family Catholic Community, a local Glendale parish, Ground Zero as it were!      

Despite our most ardent efforts, however, no one had come up w/ a reliable address all the following week & by the time Assumption Day rolled by, Aurea & I were even late for our appointed time due to varying family commitments & when we finally joined our two other friends at the Holy Family parking lot, we had decided on another tack.  And so it was that we all found ourselves at dusk at the Assumption Mass celebration of still another local “visionary” (a Filipina) of St. Anthony de Padua, in the very packed, crowded, backyard Chapel of this other local housewife w/ holy icons & statues, this time of St. Anthony & Mary, reportedly issuing fragrant oil.

I must confess one of the highest points for me had to be the “fiesta” fellowship atmosphere & free food & drinks—a veritable feast of delicious, Filipino “comfort food” dishes & delicacies!  Even then, I couldn’t help thinking later that night of what my Assistant Pastor at St. James told me earlier when informed of our plans to track down our “visionaries:” “The greatest miracle & the most perfect prayer is the mass!”  ParishWorld.net Publisher & Editor in chief, Wally Arida, whose Editorial on the Assumption we are reprinting in full in the next Blog to continue our Mary-themed month of August, couldn’t agree more. In a separate comment, he points to the Real Presence & its inestimable value during the transubstantiation at Holy Mass & in the Communion Host as well as in Eucharistic Adoration!  Back to the basics, folks…

(See In search of Mary of the Assumption, Part II) )