THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Solemnity

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Since the fifth century the Church has held implicitly the belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Mother, body and soul, into heaven. It can be deduced from the Liturgy, from pious documents and the writings of the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church. The dogma was promulgated by Pius XII on November 1, 1950.

Mary is taken into heaven body and soul. Consideration of the Fourth Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. Thus appears the Virgin Mary associated with Christ the Redeemer in the fight against and triumph over Satan. This is the massage of the first book of Sacred Scripture, the divine plan Providence prepared from all eternity to save us. In the last book we find the admirable scene: A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. The Virgin Mary enters, body and soul, into heaven after finishing her life among us. The Mother of God arrives to be crowned Queen of the Universe. So will the king desire your beauty, we proclaim in the Responsorial Psalm of the Mass today.

The Apostle John was surely a witness of Mary’s passage to heaven, since the Lord had entrusted her to him, and he would not have been absent at that time. In his Gospel, however, he says nothing concerning Our Lady’s last moments on earth. He who spoke of Jesus’ death on Golgotha with so much clarity and force, is silent when it is a matter concerning the one he cared for as his own mother, the Mother of Jesus and of all men. Witnessed firsthand, it must have been like a sweet dream: Thou art she who, as it is written, appearest in beauty, and thy virginal body is all holy, all chaste entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissolution into dust. Though still human, it’s life is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged, and sharing in perfect life, she is taken up into heavenly glory, body and soul. There, her glorious son Jesus awaits her, just as she contemplated him after the Resurrection. With divine power, God saw to the preservation of the integrity of Mary’s body. He preserves her perfect unity and complete harmony, without permitting the least alteration. Our Lady wins the supreme crown of her privileges, to be exempt from the corruption of the tomb. Overcoming death as her Son conquered it previously, she is raised body and soul to heavenly glory. The integral harmony of the Marian privileges points to it.

We often contemplate the Assumption of Our Lady in the Fourth Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary: The mother of God has fallen asleep … But Jesus to have his Mother, body and soul, in heaven. And the heavenly court, arrayed in all its splendour, greets our Lady. You and I – children after all – take the train of Mary’s magnificent blue cloak, and so we can watch the marvelous scene. The most blessed Trinity receives and showers honours on the Daughter, Mother and Spouse of God … And so great is the Lady’s majesty that the Angels exclaim: Who is she? We too, full of admiration, rejoice with the angels, and we congratulate her on her feast day. And we feel proud to be sons and daughters of so great a lady.

Popular piety in Marian art frequently represents the Virgin in the midst of clouds borne aloft by the angels. St Thomas Aquinas sees, in these angelic interventions on behalf of those who have left the earth and are already on the way to heaven, a manifestation of the reverence the angels and all creatures render glorified bodies. In the case of Our Lady, all that we can imagine is little, nothing, even, compared with the way it must have been in reality. St Teresa tells how she once had a vision of the glorified hand of Our Lord. Afterwards, the saint said, five hundred thousand suns reflecting in the clearest crystal were as a sad and dark night in comparison. How would the gaze of Christ be? One day, if we are faithful, we will contemplate Jesus and Mary, whom we have invoked so many times in this life.

Excerpts from IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD by Francis Fernandez.
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