The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is observed by the Church on 15 August each year. It is a Holy Day of Obligation, a day observed like a Sunday, the Ascension, All Saints and Christmas.
In the Traditional Latin Mass, the INTROIT begins with “A Great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” The introductory Rites in the new form begin with the same words quoted above, taken from Revelation 12:1.
Mary’s Assumption is rooted primarily in the following:
- Her freedom from sin, that is, her Immaculate Conception.
- Her Divine Maternity, that is, as the Mother of God, ipso facto the mother of humanity.
- Her perpetual virginity, which is adumbrated by the Prophet Ezekiel: “This gate will be kept shut. No one will open or go through it, since Yahweh the God of Israel has been through it. And so it must be kept shut.” (Ez 44:2)
- And most intrinsically by her sharing in each detail in the sorrows and agony of her Son.
Those privileges granted to Mary by God fittingly qualify her Assumption. The grave had no power over one who was immaculate. Her flesh could not see corruption. Her body had been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. It had been the sacred temple in which God incarnate had dwelt, and so it had a claim to ascend where the Body of her Son had already gone before.
In 1950, His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, in an exercise of papal infallibility, defined that Mary, “after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.” Furthermore, Pius XII says that the Assumption is really a consequence of the Immaculate Conception… For the greatest possible glorification of her virgin body is the complement, at once appropriate and marvellous, of the absolute innocence of her soul, which was free from all stain…She shared in Christ’s glorious triumph over sin and its sad consequences.”
The fundamentalists and Protestants ask: “If Mary was immaculately conceived, and if death was a consequence of original sin, why did she die?”
Answer: Mary died in order to be in union with her Son. We should note that Christ did not have to die to effect our redemption.
He could have simply willed it, and that would have been sufficient. But He chose to die (emphasis added). Mary identified herself and participated in the salvific work of Christ, her Son; her whole life was a cooperation with God’s plan of salvation, which was attested to by her saying: “Let it be done to me according to Thy word” (Luke 1:38).
She accepted death as Jesus accepted death. She suffered: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35), in union with Christ’s suffering. Just as she shared in His work, so also she shared in His glorification. She shared in His Resurrection by having her glorified body taken into heaven. And by the same token, the glorified bodies of all the saved will be taken into heaven on the Last Day.
It is true there is no explicit scriptural proofs for the doctrine of Assumption, but the possibility of a bodily assumption before the Second Coming or Parousia is not excluded by “Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their order: Christ as the first fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to Him” (1 Cor 15:23-24).
And St. Matthew says: “The tombs opened, and the bodies of many holy men rose from the dead, and these, after His resurrection, came out of the tombs, entered the Holy City and appeared to a number of people” (Matt 27:52-54).
The Catholic Church was commissioned by Christ to teach all nations and to teach them infallibly. Therefore, the fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is sufficient guarantee that it is true.
It is sad to note that our breakaway brethren reject the doctrine of the Assumption, Mary’s perpetual virginity, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and so forth. They are rather concerned with a privilege that is not found in the Bible. They quickly and liberally quote from Genesis, Hebrews and Second Kings to challenge the doctrine of the Assumption: Enoch “walked with God.
Then he vanished because God took him” (Gen 5:24); “It was because of his faith that Enoch was taken up and did not have to experience death” (Heb 11:15). Then there was Elijah, who “went up to heaven in the whirlwind” (2Kings 2:12). They emphasise that the Bible says nothing about what happened to Mary. Their argument seems plausible. However, they fail to understand that Mary did die and that it was after her death that she was assumed into heaven.
Discussion about this post