Celebrated every year on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary commemorates the death of Mary and her bodily assumption into Heaven, before her body could begin to decay-a foretaste of our own bodily resurrection at the end of time. Because it signifies the Blessed Virgin’s passing into eternal life, it is the most important of all Marian feasts and a Holy day of Obligation.
History of the Assumption:
The Feast of the Assumption is a very old feast of the Church, celebrated universally by the sixth century. The feast was originally celebrated in the East, where it is known as the Feast of the Dormition, a word which means “the falling asleep.” The earliest printed reference to the belief that Mary’s body was assumed into Heaven dates from the fourth century, in a document entitled “The Falling Asleep of the Holy Mother of God.” The document is written in the voice of the Apostle John, to whom Christ on the Cross had entrusted the care of His mother, and recounts the death, laying in the tomb, and assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Tradition variously places Mary’s death at Jerusalem or at Ephesus, where John was living.
A Required Belief:
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life is a defined dogma of the Catholic Church. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, exercising papal infallibility, declared in Munificentissimus Deus that it is a dogma of the Church “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” As a dogma, the Assumption is a required belief of all Catholics; anyone who publicly dissents from the dogma, Pope Pius declared, “has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.”
There is no woman in the history of the world who has generated more attention, enthusiasm, and devotion than the Virgin Mary. She has been the subject of thousands of paintings, poems, and prayers. She has captured the hearts of monks, sailors, kings, and knights, and millions of people have claimed that their devotion to her has made them better, wiser, and more pure than they might otherwise have been. Still, there is astonishingly little known about her life, and only a few words attributed to her.
Early Days
According to church tradition, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, had to wrestle through a period of infertility before giving birth to her. Their story is preserved in an ancient extra biblical text, the Protoevangelium of James. According to the Protoevangelium, Joachim and Anne were a wealthy couple who prayed fervently for a child, but month after month were unable to conceive.
One day Joachim went to the temple to pray and was told that he had no children because of his sins. Distraught, he went into the wilderness to pray for forty days. He neglected to tell Anne where he was going, and this omission intensified her grief. Not only was she barren, she thought, but she was also a widow. She went out to her garden and saw a mother bird feeding her babies in a nest. She could only lament with the cry of so many couples who struggle with infertility. “Everyone has children but me!”
While she was praying, an angel came to her and told her that she would bear a child. At the same time, an angel came to Joachim with the same message. The two then rushed to the city gates to embrace. Their little Mary was born exactly nine months (less one day) after she was conceived.
Mary, Mother of Jesus
When Mary was a teenager, she was visited by the archangel Gabriel, who, according to the Gospel of Luke, said to her, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” After calming her fears, he went on to tell her that she would conceive and bear a son named Jesus, who would be called “the Son of the Most High.”
Gabriel explained that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit. After struggling with the question of how she could have a child when she had not yet known a man, Mary responded, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”
When she visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, Mary told Elizabeth her news and offered the exultant prayer of praise known as “The Magnificat,” which retains an important place in the liturgies of both the Eastern and Western Churches.
The Assumption – The Fourth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary
The Fourth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when, at the end of her earthly life, the Mother of God was received, body and soul, into Heaven. The fruit most commonly associated with the mystery of the Assumption is the grace of a happy death.
Meditation on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet . . . ” (Revelation 12:1). This holy vessel, this Ark of the Covenant, she whom all generations will call blessed because of the great things God has done for her, has completed her life on earth. Mary wants nothing more than to be once again with her Son, and she expects nothing more than to leave this life behind. How could God honor her more than He already has by choosing her to be the Mother of God?
And yet He has one final gift in this life for His most humble of servants. Mary’s body shall not suffer the corruption of death, but shall become the first fruits of Christ’s Resurrection. Her body, as well as her soul, will be assumed into Heaven and be a symbol for us of the resurrection of the body.
Every Sunday at Mass, we recite those words in the Nicene Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” And in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we get a glimpse of what they mean. Though we know that, at our death, our body will suffer decay, we can still look forward with hope because we know that Mary’s life in the world to come will one day be ours as well, so long as we unite ourselves to her Son.
“Where there is great love, there are always miracles.” Willa Cather.
MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Parish Church of Castel Gandolfo Monday, 15 August 2005
The Feast of the Assumption is a day of joy. God has won. Love has won. It has won life. Love has shown that it is stronger than death, that God possesses the true strength and that his strength is goodness and love.
Mary was taken up body and soul into Heaven: there is even room in God for the body. Heaven is no longer a very remote sphere unknown to us.
We have a mother in Heaven. And the Mother of God, the Mother of the Son of God, is our Mother. He himself has said so. He made her our Mother when he said to the disciple and to all of us: “Behold, your Mother!”. We have a Mother in Heaven. Heaven is open, Heaven has a heart.
In the Gospel we heard the Magnificat, that great poem inspired by the Holy Spirit that came from Mary’s lips, indeed, from Mary’s heart. This marvellous canticle mirrors the entire soul, the entire personality of Mary. We can say that this hymn of hers is a portrait of Mary, a true icon in which we can see her exactly as she is. I would like to highlight only two points in this great canticle.
It begins with the word “Magnificat”: my soul “magnifies” the Lord, that is, “proclaims the greatness” of the Lord. Mary wanted God to be great in the world, great in her life and present among us all. She was not afraid that God might be a “rival” in our life, that with his greatness he might encroach on our freedom, our vital space. She knew that if God is great, we too are great. Our life is not oppressed but raised and expanded: it is precisely then that it becomes great in the splendour of God.
The fact that our first parents thought the contrary was the core of original sin. They feared that if God were too great, he would take something away from their life. They thought that they could set God aside to make room for themselves.
This was also the great temptation of the modern age, of the past three or four centuries. More and more people have thought and said: “But this God does not give us our freedom; with all his commandments, he restricts the space in our lives. So God has to disappear; we want to be autonomous and independent. Without this God we ourselves would be gods and do as we pleased”.
This was also the view of the Prodigal Son, who did not realize that he was “free” precisely because he was in his father’s house. He left for distant lands and squandered his estate. In the end, he realized that precisely because he had gone so far away from his father, instead of being free he had become a slave; he understood that only by returning home to his father’s house would he be truly free, in the full beauty of life.
This is how it is in our modern epoch. Previously, it was thought and believed that by setting God aside and being autonomous, following only our own ideas and inclinations, we would truly be free to do whatever we liked without anyone being able to give us orders. But when God disappears, men and women do not become greater; indeed, they lose the divine dignity, their faces lose God’s splendour. In the end, they turn out to be merely products of a blind evolution and, as such, can be used and abused. This is precisely what the experience of our epoch has confirmed for us.
Only if God is great is humankind also great. With Mary, we must begin to understand that this is so. We must not drift away from God but make God present; we must ensure that he is great in our lives. Thus, we too will become divine; all the splendour of the divine dignity will then be ours. Let us apply this to our own lives.
It is important that God be great among us, in public and in private life.
In public life, it is important that God be present, for example, through the cross on public buildings, and that he be present in our community life, for only if God is present do we have an orientation, a common direction; otherwise, disputes become impossible to settle, for our common dignity is no longer recognized.
Let us make God great in public and in private life. This means making room for God in our lives every day, starting in the morning with prayers, and then dedicating time to God, giving Sundays to God. We do not waste our free time if we offer it to God. If God enters into our time, all time becomes greater, roomier, richer.
A second observation: Mary’s poem – the Magnificat – is quite original; yet at the same time, it is a “fabric” woven throughout of “threads” from the Old Testament, of words of God.
Thus, we see that Mary was, so to speak, “at home” with God’s word, she lived on God’s word, she was penetrated by God’s word. To the extent that she spoke with God’s words, she thought with God’s words, her thoughts were God’s thoughts, her words, God’s words. She was penetrated by divine light and this is why she was so resplendent, so good, so radiant with love and goodness.
Mary lived on the Word of God, she was imbued with the Word of God. And the fact that she was immersed in the Word of God and was totally familiar with the Word also endowed her later with the inner enlightenment of wisdom.
Whoever thinks with God thinks well, and whoever speaks to God speaks well. They have valid criteria to judge all the things of the world. They become prudent, wise, and at the same time good; they also become strong and courageous with the strength of God, who resists evil and fosters good in the world.
Thus, Mary speaks with us, speaks to us, invites us to know the Word of God, to love the Word of God, to live with the Word of God, to think with the Word of God. And we can do so in many different ways: by reading Sacred Scripture, by participating especially in the Liturgy, in which Holy Church throughout the year opens the entire book of Sacred Scripture to us. She opens it to our lives and makes it present in our lives.
But I am also thinking of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that we recently published, in which the Word of God is applied to our lives and the reality of our lives interpreted; it helps us enter into the great “temple” of God’s Word, to learn to love it and, like Mary, to be penetrated by this Word.
Thus, life becomes luminous and we have the basic criterion with which to judge; at the same time, we receive goodness and strength.
Mary is taken up body and soul into the glory of Heaven, and with God and in God she is Queen of Heaven and earth. And is she really so remote from us?
The contrary is true. Precisely because she is with God and in God, she is very close to each one of us.
While she lived on this earth she could only be close to a few people. Being in God, who is close to us, actually, “within” all of us, Mary shares in this closeness of God. Being in God and with God, she is close to each one of us, knows our hearts, can hear our prayers, can help us with her motherly kindness and has been given to us, as the Lord said, precisely as a “mother” to whom we can turn at every moment.
She always listens to us, she is always close to us, and being Mother of the Son, participates in the power of the Son and in his goodness. We can always entrust the whole of our lives to this Mother, who is not far from any one of us.
On this feast day, let us thank the Lord for the gift of the Mother, and let us pray to Mary to help us find the right path every day.
Amen.
John McKinlay
Oblate of Pluscarden Abbey
