Hearth & Altar

Mary went to Elizabeth in haste. She did not take her time about it. She had just received the most astonishing news of her life, and her first move was to go to someone else who needed her.

When she arrived and greeted her cousin, the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaped. Mary had not yet said anything about what happened to her. Her presence alone was enough to prompt the Spirit.

Elizabeth said the thing the feast is about: blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.

The blessedness is the believing. Not the womb alone, though that is real. The believing that received the impossible word and held it - and held it and held it, through thirty years in Nazareth, through the sword Simeon promised, through Calvary. The woman who believed all the way through is the woman taken up today.

This is the oldest and greatest feast of Our Lady. Today begins what the medieval Church called Our Lady's Thirty Days - August 15 to September 15, a season of closeness to Mary. Your family has a whole month ahead.

• For our family, that we would believe what has been spoken to us by the Lord - not just hear it but hold it, the way Mary held it through everything, we pray to the Lord.
• For the children in our family, that they would grow up knowing Mary as someone who went in haste to where she was needed, we pray to the Lord.
• On this feast and the beginning of Our Lady's Thirty Days, for Mary's intercession for our household across this whole season, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in our family who are struggling to believe something God has said - for the believing that Elizabeth named as the blessedness, we pray to the Lord.

Today: bring flowers, herbs, or fresh fruit to Mary's image. Say the prayer: Mary, you have been taken where we are going. Pray for us who are still on the way.

At dinner, serve something seasonal and festive - fruit especially. Pray the fourth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary together: the Assumption. For small children, let them hold a flower. For older children, ask: what do you think it means that Mary was taken body and soul to heaven? What does that say about what happens to us?

Then introduce the thirty days: from today until September 15, we stay close to Our Lady. Pick one small practice for the month - a Hail Mary before bed, a decade of the Rosary together, something simple that holds.

Mary went in haste to Elizabeth. The believing did not make her sit still. It sent her out toward the person who needed her. The practice you choose for the thirty days should be something that goes out from your family, not just something that turns inward.