Assumption

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The mystery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary has no explicit biblical witness. In tradition there are two distinct types of testimony. First the Assumption Apocrypha, first in time, not intrinsic importance: these are the different versions of a basic legend coming down from ancient times on Mary's death and assumption into heaven. Until recently these stories were not accorded very much status in early Christian literature. They are more highly valued now for two reasons: there have been more documentary discoveries and the dating has been pushed back to very near the actual event, possibly as early as the second century.
Secondly, there is the testimony of the Church Fathers. Some believed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed while still alive, others that she was assumed after she had died. St. John of Damascus (d. AD 755) relates a tradition where, during the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), the emperor Marcian and his wife wished to find the body of Mary. He tells how all the apostles had seen her death, but her tomb was empty upon inspection. This is not viewed as a resurrection like her Son's, but as the first fruits of our own bodily resurrection. Theodosius understood Mary to have died before being assumed, and according to the feast dates in Egypt at the time, she was assumed 206 days after her death.
In AD 600, the emperor Mauricius decreed that the Assumption (Latin: assūmptiō, "taken up") was to be celebrated on August 15. Soon, the Church in Ireland adopted this date, and it was later introduced in Rome. By the eighth century the doctrine was firmly and fully accepted in the East. Development was slower in the West. Eastern Greek homilies defending the Assumption were available as was a patchwork piece of oratory made up from all of them. The result of this and of liturgical practice was that from the thirteenth century every important western writer held the doctrine. As the cult of Mary grew in the West, there was more pressure for the Catholic Church to define the exact nature of the Assumption.
Although various popes since Pius IX have mentioned Mary in their official pronouncements, no pope did more to emphasise the importance of Marian devotion than Pius XII, who was particularly devoted to Our Lady of Fatima. He consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, and on the occasion spoke in Portuguese as if to underline the connection between this act of consecration and the events at Fatima. Though conscious of a very widespread demand for a definition of the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, he consulted the entire hierarchy of the Church and got a very favourable response. He set up a drafting committee to secure a good text: two of the members were eminent for scholarly works on the Assumption, the French Augustinian, Fr Martin Jugie, and the Croatian Franciscan, Fr Karl Balic.
In the course of the deliberations of this group two things emerged. One committee member, Fr Lennerz of the Gregorian University did not think that the doctrine could be defined as a dogma, as he thought it necessary to show a clear historical tradition going back to the event of the Assumption and, at the time, he knew that this was impossible. This historical link does not seem beyond the bounds of research now. An archaeological expert in the Holy Land, Fr Bellarmino Bagatti, OFM, for a while thought that he might show a connection between the legend and the results of his research into Our Lady's grave which he has located in Gethsemane.
The second point brought to the Pope's notice by Fr Jugie was the impossibility of declaring infallibly that Our Lady died. Pius XII accepted this advice and used a non-committal formula in regard to the end of Mary's life "when the course of her earthly life was completed". The same phrase is used in the brief reference to the Assumption by Vatican II (LG 59). There was no agreement in the committee on the scriptural, i.e. implicit scriptural, warrant for the dogma. The Pope appealed to the close union between Mary and Christ and to their identity in the victory over sin and death. Though he spoke of Sacred Scripture as the ultimate basis, he really based his definition on the faith of the Church.


Pius XII published the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus on the 1st of November, 1950. The central part of the text states: “From all eternity and by one and the same decree of predestination the august Mother of God is united in a sublime way with Jesus Christ; immaculate in her conception, a spotless virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble companion of the divine Redeemer who won a complete triumph over sin and Its consequences, she finally obtained as the crowning glory of her privileges to be preserved from the corruption of the tomb and like her Son before her, to conquer death and to be raised body and soul to the glory of heaven, to shine refulgent as Queen at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of ages (cf. 1 Tim 1:17).
The universal Church, in which the Spirit of truth actively dwells, and which is infallibly guided by him to an ever more perfect knowledge of revealed truths, has down the centuries manifested her belief in many ways; the bishops from all over the world ask almost unanimously that the truth of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven be defined as a dogma of divine and catholic faith; this truth is based on Sacred Scripture and deeply embedded in the minds of the faithful; it has received the approval of liturgical worship from the earliest times; it is perfectly in keeping with the rest of revealed truth, and has been lucidly developed and explained by the studies, the knowledge and wisdom of theologians. Considering all these reasons we deem that the moment pre-ordained in the plan of divine providence has now arrived for us to proclaim solemnly this extraordinary privilege of the Virgin Mary.[ ... ]
Therefore, having directed humble and repeated prayers to God, and having invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth; to the glory of almighty God who has bestowed his special bounty on the Virgin Mary, for the honour of his Son the immortal King of ages and victor over sin and death, for the greater glory of his august mother, and for the joy and exultation of the whole Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we proclaim, declare and define as a dogma revealed by God: the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was ended, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”
Pius XII did not mention the Apocrypha in the historical review which precedes the dogmatic formula. He quotes some of the Fathers of the Church: St John of Damascus (d.c. 749-753), an early sermon, attributed to Modestus of Jerusalem, a seventh century writer, others notably St Germanus of Constantinople. Since the definition a very important testimony, a hitherto unknown homily on the Assumption by Theoteknos of Livias, dating from the sixth century, was discovered by a great Byzantine scholar, Fr Antoine Wenger, AA.
There were, however, many in the Catholic Church who questioned the opportuneness of such a definition. It seemed to them unnecessarily provocative at a time when ecumenical relations among the churches were just gaining strength because Protestants have generally rejected the Assumption of Mary theologically and devotionally, probably because it is not explicitly biblical. Still, it was argued that the human race had just witnessed two world wars and the horrors of concentration camps, and that this was an appropriate moment to reaffirm the dignity of the human body and to rekindle faith in the resurrection of the body. Many, therefore, welcomed the definition. Moreover, the terms of the definition are open to legitimate difference of interpretation. It is not clear whether the pope intended to teach that Mary died at all, and nothing is said about the manner or time of her assumption. Among Orthodox Christians the Assumption is not a dogma, but it is a commonly accepted belief. In this pronouncement, Pope Pius was simply stating dogmatically what the Church, East and West, had believed for many years.
The Catholic Catechism further explains: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians (966). As such, the dogma of Mary's Assumption is firmly rooted in the actions and person of Christ, and in the virtue of Christian hope. The dogma of the Assumption asserts something about human existence in asserting something about Mary: that human existence is bodily existence, and that we are destined for glory not only in the realm of the spiritual but in the realm of the material as well. The Church looks on high and greets in Mary her own type and model, her own future in the resurrection of the body.