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Five Gems of Mary’s Assumption

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Our celebration of the Marian Solemnity of the Assumption may be more joyously observed by rediscovering the gems contained in the apostolic constitution, Defining the Dogma of the Assumption. Pope Pius XII signed the document that defined the Assumption of Mary as dogma on November 1, 1950. The world has changed drastically since that era but the truth articulated in this Marian doctrine is a treasury of grace that is relevant to every age.

For reflection we will consider 5 gems contained within the papal document on Mary’s Assumption.

1. The doctrine of Mary’s Assumption into heaven is closely related to the dogma that declared Mary the Mother of God.

Defining these truths about Christ’s Mother and ours helps us to know that we are beloved of God because Mary’s singular privileges are meant to magnify our human dignity. God created Mary to be unique because He loved us and wanted to give us His Son born of a woman full of grace. God created Mary to be the ineffable living tabernacle for the Incarnate Word. The following papal quote is a beautiful explanation of Mary’s exalted state:

4. That privilege (Mary’s) has shone forth in new radiance since our predecessor…solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God’s Immaculate Conception. These two privileges are most closely bound to one another. Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through Baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul. 5. Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.

2. The Holy Spirit was consulted and He brought about a unity of thought concerning Mary.

The Holy Spirit is always present to the Church by inspiration and teaching so the splendor of truth shines forth in its fullness. The truth about Mary reveals the loving sentiments of the Trinitarian heart of God. Mary’s Divine Spouse, the Holy Spirit helps us to encounter Mary from deep within where we desperately need the healing salve of perfect maternal love. The Pope recorded the movement of the Holy Spirit that led to his dogmatic proclamation. In his May 1,1946 letter to all the bishops of the world he inquired about the proclamation of this Marian doctrine and recorded their response:

12.Those whom “the Holy Spirit has placed as bishops to rule the Church of God” gave an almost unanimous affirmative response to both these questions. Thus… the Blessed Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven…is a truth that has been revealed by God and consequently something that must be firmly and faithfully believed by all children of the Church.

3. Mary, throughout the course of her earthy pilgrimage, led a life troubled by cares, hardships and sorrows as well as joys.

The prophecy of Simeon was fulfilled in Mary. No other creature ever achieved such unity of mind and heart with the Triune God. Her yes to God’s initiatives blessed Him and bore fruit for us: the gift of the Incarnate Son of God. At the foot of the Cross Mary experienced mystically the piercing of her Immaculate Heart as her Son expired. She witnessed His pierced Heart pouring forth the blood and water of Redemption. The Pope explains Mary’s earthly pilgrimage:

14. Christ’s faithful, through the teaching and the leadership of their pastors, have learned from the sacred books that the Virgin Mary, throughout the course of her earthly pilgrimage, led a life troubled by cares, hardships, and sorrows, and that, moreover, what the holy old man Simeon had foretold actually came to pass, that is, that a terribly sharp sword pierced her heart as she stood under the cross of her divine Son, our Redeemer. In the same way, it was not difficult for them to admit that the great Mother of God, like her only begotten Son, had actually passed from this life. But this in no way prevented them from believing and from professing openly that her sacred body had never been subject to the corruption of the tomb, and that the august tabernacle of the Divine Word had never been reduced to dust and ashes.

4. Since Mary is the New Eve, God did not will for Mary to experience the curse of Eve.

In the book of Genesis God told the woman (Eve) of the consequence of her sin, one of which is bodily corruption: “until you return to the ground—for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:1-24). God exquisitely distinguishes Mary (The New Eve) by exempting her from bodily corruption as defined by the Pope:

30. When, during the Middle Ages, scholastic theology was especially flourishing, St. Albert the Great who, to establish this teaching, had gathered together many proofs from Sacred Scripture, from the statements of older writers, and finally from the liturgy and from what is known as theological reasoning, concluded in this way: “From these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.”(29) And, in a sermon which he delivered, …explained the words “Hail, full of grace”-words used by the angel who addressed her…comparing the Blessed Virgin with Eve, stated clearly and incisively that she was exempted from the fourfold curse that had been laid upon Eve.

5. The Church gathers and listens to the testimony of her saints regarding Mary.

The witness of the saints confirms our faith, fills us with hope and builds up our love. In hearing the witness of others our heart burns with zeal for God’s wonderful prerogatives. Pius XII included the testimony of the holy ones in his defining document:

34. Gathering together the testimonies of the Christians of earlier days, St. Robert Bellarmine exclaimed: “And who, I ask, could believe that the ark of holiness, the dwelling place of the Word of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, could be reduced to ruin? My soul is filled with horror at the thought that this virginal flesh which had begotten God, had brought him into the world, had nourished and carried him, could have been turned into ashes or given over to be food for worms.” (38) And St. Alphonsus writes that “Jesus did not wish to have the body of Mary corrupted after death, since it would have redounded to his own dishonor to have her virginal flesh, from which he himself had assumed flesh, reduced to dust.”(39)

The papal document defining the Assumption is composed of 48 paragraphs containing many Marian gems to be mined for prayerful consideration. The Marian gems that we considered for this reflection shine the light of love and beauty of truth into our heart. We have been given the Immaculate Mother of God to be our mother too. Her assumption into heaven is a sign of God’s mercy. He exalted the woman who humbled herself in service to Christ and Church. Upon death, we will be subject to the corruption of our bodies but Mary’s Assumption foreshadows our future glory in God.

Mary, assumed into heaven body and soul, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

image: Michal Maňas [CC BY 4.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons

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One response to “Five Gems of Mary’s Assumption”

  1. Dr. Philip Cheung Avatar
    Dr. Philip Cheung

    Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, Happy Feast of the Assumption.
    Kindly allow me to share an article on the Assumption written by the eminent Marian Theologian Dr. Sarah Boss. God bless! Here it is:

    For many centuries, the Feast of the Assumption was celebrated in the Catholic Church without any formal definition of the doctrine. In most places, it was the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and it is the patronal festival of many of Europe’s great Marian cathedrals, such as Notre Dame de Paris. But that Mary ‘was assumed, body and soul, into heavenly glory’, was made an official teaching of the Catholic Church in 1950, when Pope Pius XII promulgated the Bull Munificentissimus Deus. Many people believe that he was motivated to do this by the horrors of the Second World War, in which so many human bodies were tortured and desecrated. The doctrine proclaims the precious nature of the human body, which, in a way we cannot yet understand, is destined for heavenly glory and deserves to be treated with the highest respect.

    To the urban world of the early twenty-first century, the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption may seem strange. It is a feast that honours the whole human person, body and soul; but, even though our society is obsessed with material objects, we often fail to notice the God-given dignity of our material bodies. The Assumption is also an invitation to celebrate the goodness and the joy that God promises us at the end of time, and in many parts of Europe the feast remains a major event. So let us look at some of the history of what should be a glorious celebration.

    The earliest textual evidence for the Feast of the Assumption comes from the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries, although scholars think that these texts contain material from at least as far back as the third century. The early texts are known as Transitus narratives (that is, they relate the Virgin’s passing), and they contain quite wide variations in their detail, probably reflecting the fact that they arose out of different local customs. However, certain elements are constant. For example, the Virgin is told in advance – usually by an angel – that she is about to die, and the apostles are miraculously transported from around the world to be present at her bedside. Christ comes to receive her soul, which takes the form of a small child, and he takes the soul to heaven. Some time after the funeral and burial (most texts say three days after the death), the apostles see the body of the Mother of God being miraculously taken heavenwards. In the tradition that was spread in the Western Church, Mary’s body and soul are re-united in heaven. All these events are depicted frequently in the art of the medieval and renaissance periods, and can be readily recognised.

    One of the most interesting aspects of the early texts is that Mary is presented very strongly as a teacher of the apostles. We are sometimes told that she had received teachings from Christ which she passed on to St John before she died. In other texts, from the Coptic and Ethiopic traditions, the apostles call her their teacher or mistress. It seems as though she has received teachings from Christ which will enable a smooth transition to heaven, and that those who follow her and receive these teachings will enjoy an initiation into heavenly matters, and will then pass to heaven at death.

    At the same time, some of the early Transitus texts – notably, the Coptic ones (from Egypt) – make it clear that the liturgy of the Assumption is for an August harvest festival; indeed, the feast continued to be a harvest celebration in many places for many centuries. From earliest times, then, the celebration of the Assumption was concerned with both spiritual enlightenment and bodily sustenance. That Mary was assumed into heaven in her body and her soul reminds us that we are bound both to the earth, with the cycle of the seasons, and also to the realm of that which is spiritual and timeless. As we have become so detached from the land that sustains us, we have forgotten about our dependence upon the harvest and have largely lost the sense of the Assumption as a harvest festival, but the feast is still the day on which many communities bless their herbs, or bless the sea and its harvest.

    For all its joy, however, the Assumption is a feast that arises out of human awareness of death. We are all made of the dust of the earth, and will rot in the ground or in ashes. At the same time, we all have the possibility of attaining eternal life. In the end, these are the truths that matter, and these are the truths that undergird the stories of Mary’s passing from this world to the next. It is often when people come to a deep realisation of their own mortality – when they see that death is an end which they cannot escape – that they turn to seek spiritual enlightenment. And in discovering the mystery of the cross and resurrection, they find that there is something truer and deeper even than death. What Christ accomplished as God and man is shared with all those who participate in his life; and Mary, as a woman who is solely human, reveals to us what this means. The traditional iconography of Mary’s Dormition – her ‘falling asleep’ – shows Christ taking her soul as a baby, and it thus mirrors images of the Virgin herself holding Christ as an infant. As he descended to Earth by her actions, so he now takes her to be with him in heaven. It was she who gave us the Word of God in his human birth, and it is she whose heavenly rebirth teaches the truth of what Christ’s divine humanity offers to each one of us.

    Many people will be familiar with Caravaggio’s painting, ‘The Death of the Virgin’. When it was first painted for a private chapel in a Carmelite church in Rome, the Carmelites rejected the painting as unsuitable. It shows the Virgin not in the dignified death-bed posture associated with traditional representations of the Dormition, but lying dead on her back, with bare feet and swollen ankles. The apostles look on, and Mary Magdalene sits weeping between the viewer and the corpse. Some of the apostles are also weeping; but there is one who holds his hand up in a gesture that seems to show sudden recognition or realisation of something. For he has seen that, in this sorry state – in the death that comes to all of us – there is hope. This hope is not shown by an image of angels and Christ in human form, but only by a light that crosses the canvas and shines upon the belly of the Mother of God – on the body that bore God incarnate. This body, which is the body of a very ordinary woman, was chosen by God for his dwelling, and this body will not be left to the decay which, from the look of it, has already set in. We cannot properly articulate what the hope is that has been revealed to the apostles, but the viewer is invited to share the revelation. For because he became human from this woman, Christ promises all human beings, and all creation, a share in his glory.

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