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Assumption of Mary |
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On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined as a dogma of faith Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven. The precise words of the definition, found in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, teach just what we are called to believe as a matter of divine Catholic faith: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: 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.” The subject of this definition expresses the dogmas of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, her Motherhood of God, and her perpetual virginity. Pope Pius judiciously left open to further theological investigation and discussion whether or not Mary actually experienced death before being taken up into heaven, with the phrase “having completed the course of her earthly life.” The use of the passive voice, “was assumed,” indicates that the mystery of the Assumption is quite distinct from Christ’s Ascension. Mary was “taken up” into glory by the power of God, whereas Christ ascended by that power as it belonged to him in virtue of the hypostatic unity. The words of the solemn definition, “body and soul,” teach that Mary has been glorified in her complete human personhood, and do not make a dualistic anthropology as such a necessary condition to give intelligent assent to the dogma. The concluding words, “into heavenly glory,” refer to the mysterious mode of existence beyond space and time in which Mary has been reunited with her Son, our risen Lord, with whom she lives eternally in the intimate presence of the triune God, in the company of all the angels and saints. Details about the mystery of heavenly glory may be found in related doctrines of the Church concerning general eschatology, particularly the beatific vision and the bodily resurrection of all the just. Although the dogma of the Assumption did not settle a number of questions regarding Mary’s departure from this life, the testimony of Tradition does seem to favor the theological opinions that she died and was most likely buried near the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, and that, in the likeness of her Son’s Resurrection, her body did not decompose after her death and burial but instead Mary was gloriously assumed intact. As in the case of Christ’s Resurrection, so with Mary’s Assumption, what the dogma actually defines is seen to be a reality and truth only by those with the gift of faith, who freely accept and respond to what is contained in Divine Revelation. Now let us examine how it is included in the word of God. Dogmatic Development • When Pius XII taught that the sacred writings are the “ultimate foundation” for any considerations of the dogma on the part of the Fathers of the Church and of theologians, he referred to what is implicitly contained in them or, as it were, divinely insinuated and suggested in the biblical Revelation. He appeals to the intimate association between the new Eve and the new Adam in that struggle foretold in the proto-evangelium (cf. Gn 3:15), which led to the total victory over sin and death through Christ’s redemptive mission. In Munificentissimus Deus he quotes from St. Paul’s teaching: “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immorality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ ” (1 Cor 15:54). Just as Christ’s glorious Resurrection was the essential agent of this victory, so also Mary, the new Eve who had so great and indispensable a role in the struggle, should most fittingly share in the victory of her Son over sin and death through her glorification. In appealing to the authority of the great Scholastic theologians of the thirteenth century, Sts. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure, Pope Pius pointed out that these doctors of the Church considered the Assumption to be “the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve.” In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman concluded that both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary were implicit in the new Eve image. We should bear this in mind, as the Scriptures seem to have gradually yielded a fuller meaning about Mary in the post-Apostolic Tradition, particularly in the celebration of the Liturgy. A feast called the Memorial of Mary was already being celebrated by Christians during the fifth century. In the Eastern Church, it occurred on August 15, and eventually came to be known as the koimesis (Greek) or dormitio (Latin), that is, the “falling asleep” of the Virgin Mary. According to the beliefs of the early Christians, the body “fell asleep” at death and rested until awakened in the glory of the next life. Emperor Mauricius Flavius (582-602) decreed that the liturgical feast of Mary’s dormition be celebrated throughout the Byzantine Empire on August 15. Thus the feast had evolved from the early fifth-century Memorial of Mary, which celebrated all her privileges as Mother of God, to the early sixth century, with the emphasis now placed upon her dormition or death, marked by a basilica in Gethsemane, Jerusalem, where popular belief held that her tomb was located. When Mary’s dormition was celebrated each year on August 15 throughout the Byzantine Empire, preachers began to proclaim more clearly her Assumption as well as her death. In the Eastern Liturgies of today, the feast is more commonly called the Assumption, or “Journey of the Blessed Mother of God Into Heaven,” which truly celebrates belief in the glorification of her body in eternal life. Rome adopted the feast in the seventh century, and, under Pope St. Adrian I (772-795), its title became Assumption. The feast focused on Mary’s bodily Assumption from the very beginning of its celebration in the Western Church. Among the great Fathers of the Eastern Church, Theotknos, sixth- or seventh-century bishop of Livias (on the left bank of the Jordan), referred to the feast as the Assumption (analepsis in Greek). By the eighth century the doctrine of the bodily Assumption of Mary was entirely accepted in the East and was taught there by St. Germanus of Constantinople and St. John Damascene, the great Doctor of the Assumption, who preached his three famous homilies on the feast. Clear patristic testimony is given to the dogma in the West by St. Gregory of Tours (died 593). Mention has already been made of the teaching of the outstanding Scholastics of the thirteenth century. During the sixteenth century, the feast became the greatest of the Marian liturgical celebrations, and one of the most prominent of the Church year. Doctors of the Church named by Pius XII who promoted the doctrine are: St. Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444), St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), St. Peter Canisius (1521-1597), and St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). As Pope Pius XII also pointed out, Francisco Suárez held in the sixteenth century that the Immaculate Conception and Assumption could be defined as dogmas of faith. But the Holy Father found the strongest reason for his decision solemnly to define the Assumption of Mary as a dogma in the “outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful.” The entire Church’s faith manifested itself between 1849 and 1950, when an amazing number of petitions for a solemn definition were sent to Rome from every cell of the Mystical Body of Christ. These included 113 cardinals, 18 patriarchs, 2,505 archbishops and bishops, 32,000 priests and men religious, 50,000 religious women, and 8 million laypersons. As Pope Pius IX had done a century before in reference to the Immaculate Conception, Pius XII issued an encyclical, Deiperae Virginis, addressed to his brother bishops of the world and inquiring whether or not Mary’s bodily Assumption was definable, and also whether their priests and people wished it to be defined at the time. The response was overwhelmingly favorable. Among the many hopes expressed for salutary results of a solemn definition of Mary’s glorious bodily Assumption into heaven was the strengthening of faith in our own bodily resurrection. This was echoed by Vatican Council II’s teaching that our heavenly Mother shines forth on earth “a sign of certain hope and comfort” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 68) to us who yearn to be united with her one day in the perfect Church of glory.
See: Immaculate Conception; Marian Devotion; Mary, Mother of God; Mary, Mother of the Church; Mary, Perpetual Virginity of; Resurrection of Christ; Resurrection of the Dead.
Suggested Readings: CCC 966, 972, 974. F. Jelly, O.P., Madonna: Mary in the Catholic Tradition; “Assumption of Mary,” in J. Komonchak, M. Collins, D. Lane, eds., The New Dictionary of Theology. K. Healy, The Assumption of Mary. M. O’Carroll, C.S.Sp., “The Assumption of Our Lady,” Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary. F.M. Jelly, O.P. |
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