Mac Olsen
Express Staff
The Notre Dame de Lourdes Catholic parish in Girouxville will host their annual pilgrimage on Aug. 15.
Known as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the event will take place outside by the grotto, weather permitting.
“We always celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15,” says Nicole Blanchette, one of the organizers.
The event opens at 9:30 a.m. with confession and Deacon Reg Bouchard leading the rosary.
Later, Archbishop Gerard Pettipas will lead the mass, and lunch (by donation) will be served at 12:15 p.m.
Father Jeyapaul will offer two talks, one at 10:30 a.m. and the other at 2:15 p.m.
As found at Wikipedia.org:
“The Assumption of Mary into Heaven (often shortened to the Assumption) is, according to the beliefs of the Catholic Church, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, as well as parts of Anglicanism, the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life.
“In the churches that observe it, the Assumption is a major feast day, commonly celebrated on 15 August. In many countries, the feast is also marked as a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic Church.”
“The Assumption (Latin: assumptio, “a taking”) was defined as dogma by the Catholic Church in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined it ex cathedra in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus.
“The Catholic Church itself interprets chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation as referring to it.
“The earliest known narrative is the so-called Liber Requiei Mariae (The Book of Mary’s Repose), which survives intact only in an Ethiopic translation. Probably composed by the 4th century, this Christian apocryphal narrative may be as early as the 3rd century. Also quite early are the very different traditions of the “Six Books” Dormition narratives. The earliest versions of this apocryphon are preserved in several Syriac manuscripts of the 5th and 6th centuries, although the text itself probably belongs to the 4th century.