"There's no substitute for local knowledge," Archbishop Richard Smith told thousands of pilgrims gathered recently at Fraser River Heritage Park in Mission, the same kind of "local knowledge incarnate" that Jesus Christ offers to believers seeking the surest path to eternal life.

Drawing from his recent travels across the Archdiocese of Vancouver, Smith compared his reliance on GPS to trusting a local driver who knows a better way — and in matters of faith, he said, that local knowledge is found incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Few Lower Mainland Catholic events embody this “local knowledge” more than the annual Our Lady of Lourdes pilgrimage in Mission. For decades, Fraser Valley Catholics have gathered there to honour the Blessed Virgin Mary, their procession a living testament to wisdom passed down through generations — local knowledge of the surest path to eternal life.

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“There’s no substitute for local knowledge,” Smith told the crowd. “As we recall the solemnity of the Assumption, Mary’s assumption body and soul into Heaven reminds us of the destination that awaits believers in Jesus Christ. And the one to get us there — and there’s only one — is Jesus Christ. Because Jesus, if I dare put it this way, is local knowledge Incarnate.”

Smith said Jesus brings perfect knowledge of both God and humanity, and that clinging to Him in faith is the surest way to eternal life. He pointed to Mary as the first and best example of such faith — the one who believed God’s promise and followed her Son faithfully.

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“In our world today we are surrounded by a multiplicity of messages, a flood of voices telling us how to live and what will make us happy,” Smith said. “But for us who are Christians, there is only one voice worthy of our trust. Jesus alone reigns, and He is the way, the truth and the life.”

Looking out at the enormous crowd, Smith reflected on the witness the pilgrimage offers to the broader community. 

“At a time when the world has lost its direction — with wars raging, moral confusion and an overdependence on the self — this pilgrimage stands as a sign,” he said. “It proclaims that there is a direction, there is a destiny, and the way to get there is through faith in Jesus Christ, relying on the intercession of the Blessed Mother.”

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The Mission grotto, once the largest Marian shrine in British Columbia, traces its roots back to Bishop Louis Joseph d’Herbomez, OMI, who led the Vicariate Apostolic of B.C. from 1863 to 1890. He often prayed at a spot on the Fraser River that reminded him of Lourdes, France, and asked that a grotto be built there after his death.

Completed in 1892, it gave the town of Mission its name. Though the original grotto was demolished in 1965, local Catholics and the Knights of Columbus rebuilt it in the 1990s, and pilgrimages resumed in 1987.