In the wind here, if we sense right, in the Spirit, is a movement toward the House of Ephesus.

That's "Mary's House" in Turkey -- the home where tradition has it that the Blessed Mother lived out her final years, or at least while she was in that part of the world.

Was this the place from which she was assumed into Heaven?

We ask this because it is the week of the Assumption and because there is a sudden surge in pilgrimages to Ephesus -- where those returning say they were touched in a rare fashion. They feel a powerful grace -- comparable to any other Marian spot, if not more. They hear inspiration. A woman we know was inspired to run for mayor of a famous city in Upstate New York after hearing a voice at the house (against all odds, she won). The Pope celebrated Mass at the House of Ephesus earlier in the year -- sparking yet more interest, and indicating that he too felt the draw. There is also a replica of the house in Jamaica, Vermont.

There are special blessings this week of the Assumption -- as we think of Mary's death, of her final years -- and we'll get to that in a moment. But first a quick and fascinating history of Ephesus:

It has long been said that during the persecution of early Christians, in the years following the stoning to death of St. Stephen in 37 A.D., John took Mary with him to Ephesus on the Aegean coast along with Mary Magdalene and several other faithful in what had to have been an arduous journey -- especially for a woman who at the time would have been in her sixties.

At first Mary is thought to have stayed in a house north of the harbor street near a large sports arena while John was building her a house on a nearby hill. We can only wonder at how she felt. We can only wonder at what she saw. In the sixth century, St. Gregory of Tours referred to the house "at the summit of a mountain near Ephesus with four walls and no roof," the remains, it appeared, of the place in which John and implicitly the Blessed Mother had resided.

"When in 381 A.D. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire," writes one author, Donald Carroll. "Ephesus was well on its way to becoming recognized as the birthplace of Christianity as well as the death of Christ's Mother." In fact the first church dedicated to the Virgin was in Ephesus, and as that writer points out, back then a church could be dedicated to a saint only if that person had lived or been martyred there.

In the 18th century Pope Benedict XIV announced flatly that "the Blessed Mary left this life in Ephesus and ascended into Heaven." Now another Pope Benedict visits! Is it a place of special refuge in spiritual warfare?

It was stigmatic Anne Catherine Emmerich who provided mystical revelations that led to the discovery of a house fitting the description of where Mary lived -- from her bed in Germany [see archived story].

Emmerich, whose visions on the lives of Jesus and Mary fill several volumes, had said in the early 1800s she envisioned that "Mary did not live in Ephesus itself, but on a hill to the left of the road from Jerusalem. Narrow paths from Ephesus lead southwards to it. It is a very lonely place, but has many fertile slopes as well as rock caves where several Christian families and friends of Mary already lived. John had a house built for her here.

These descriptions were received by the nun while meditating in a sickbed where she was to spend 12 years -- often in a coma-like state as she prayed and meditated. During her ecstasies -- many recorded by poet Clemens von Brentano -- Emmerich added that Mary had a built a Way of the Cross behind the house. "It had 12 Stations," said the seer. "At each Station she set up memorial stones -- eight smooth stones with many sides, each resting on a base of the same stone. The stones and their bases were all inscribed with Hebrew letters."

"It is on an uneven plateau near the top of the hill, overgrown with trees and wild bushes. There were Jewish as well as Christian settlers here. Mary's house was the only one built of stone. A little way behind it was the summit of the hill, from which one could see Ephesus and also the sea with its many islands. Near here is a castle inhabited by a king who seems to have been deposed."

"It was built of regular stones, rounded at the back," Emmerich had added about the house, "and had a spring running under it. The windows were high up near the flat roof. The main part of the house was divided into two by the fireplace in the middle of it, sunk in the ground, facing the door. Behind the fireplace, the apse of the room was curtained off and formed Mary's oratory. In a niche in the center of the wall there was a receptacle like a tabernacle and in it stood a cross about the length of a man's arm."

That description of a place no longer known to the Church was to materialize in startling fashion when several priests -- first a French abbot named Julien Gouyet, then a team led by Father Eugene Poulin, a Lazarist priest, and Father M. H. Jung, a distinguished Hebrew scholar and determined enemy of mystics -- closely investigated the nun's claims decades after Emmerich died and found a spot near Ephesus that matched the visions in stunning fashion, according to a book called Mary's House, by Carroll and also a video.

The time of the Virgin Mary's death is placed at between 43 and 63 A.D.

And the blessing? Is there a special blessing left by Mary?

Try this potent one: "I bless you with the blessing of the Blessed Mother, and may the Holy Spirit come upon you."

It is miraculous. It is especially powerful this week, one may presume.

[resources: video, Mary's House]