A devout and attentive reading of the Acts of the Apostles lets us savour and at the same time relive the atmosphere of springtime graces that enveloped, like a protective cloak, the Church that had just been born. She was fragile as a tender child, in everything contingent and fearful, but bearing a promise: “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Even before sending the Consoler Spirit to the fearful disciples, Christ Our Lord – certainly in view of the ineffable maternal affections that caressed, nourished and surrounded Him with care when He became flesh and dwelt among us – entrusted the Church to the protection and instruction of Mary, His Mother. Just as She had so excellently attended to the frail nature of her newborn Son, so also would She sustain His Body which is the Church (cf. Col 1:24), then weak and defenceless like the Infant God in the Grotto of Bethlehem.
Mother and Teacher
The Holy Spirit was very succinct in recording, through the words of the Evangelists, the crucial mission of the Blessed Virgin towards the nascent Church. All we know is that, after Our Lord’s Ascension, She remained in prayer with the Apostles and disciples (cf. Acts 1:14), perhaps guiding them and preparing them for the day when Jesus would send the promised Spirit and fill His Mystical Bride with new vigour. “Even before Pentecost, those weak men and women began to feel transformed by the action of grace and virtually enraptured by Mary’s love.”1
Our Lady completed the course of her earthly pilgrimage in an unceasing increase in charity, inundated by the action of the Holy Spirit
Although Our Lady’s actions among the disciples after these events have not been recorded, we are led to believe that She continued to keep in her Heart all the events that befell the Mystical Body of Christ (cf. Lk 2:19) and certainly accompanied its growth, perhaps secluded in Jerusalem or Ephesus, immersed in the contemplation of the mysteries that enveloped the life of Jesus and those who embodied the future of His Church.
In this sublime atmosphere, Mary completed the course of her earthly pilgrimage, in an unceasing elevation of charity, flooded by the inscrutable action of her Divine Spouse.
Death as gentle as sleep
The Church has not dared to pronounce definitively on the event that preceded Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. Did She in fact pass through death or was She immediately raised to glory, body and soul? For the common opinion of the faithful, as Pius XII says, “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.”2
“Charity will never end” (1 Cor 13:8), says St. Paul, and how rightly does this truth explain, in the opinion of theologians, the reason for Mary’s most blessed transit, in which love was exclusively the cause of her departure from this world. So serene was Mary’s surrender of her soul to God that the term dormition has become enshrined in popular piety to describe it.
“Mary’s death was similar to Christ’s, not only because She accepted it with humble and loving obedience, but also inasmuch as it was a death of love, whether on account of loving desire that consumed her natural strength, or the vehemence of an ecstasy of love that separated her soul from her body, or again because Mary so moved God with her love that He would no longer keep her in this earthly life. In this way, Mary’s death came to be like a holocaust of love, in which the sacrifice, offered on the Cross amid extreme torture, was outwardly fulfilled in the sweet and loving form of a sleep of love.”3
While this sun called Mary set on earth, She was at the same time rising again in glory, effused in incomparable brilliance
Who can describe this august moment, perhaps the most sublime after the mysteries of Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection? What yearnings for definitive union with the Most Holy Trinity would not have filled Our Lady’s most holy soul and won her passage from time to eternity from God? What legions of Angels and blessed ones did not kneel at her bedside to contemplate that consummation of love?
St. John Damascene, in transports of devotion, puts these words of gratitude in the mouths of our first parents, on the occasion of Mary’s final sleep:
“Blessed are you, O daughter, who delivered us from the punishment of our transgression. You, who received a mortal body from us, have clothed us with a garment of immortality. […] We closed the doors of Paradise, you opened the way to the tree of life. It was our doing that brought us from happiness to disgrace; but through you, we pass instead from misfortune to joy. How is it that you shall come to taste death, you who are Immaculate? For you, who are the way to life and the ladder to Heaven, death will be like a ship that will carry you to immortality. Truly, you are blessed and will be proclaimed most happy.”4
Together with Christ, conqueror of death and hell
No imagination on this earth will be able to describe the encounter of Mary’s most holy soul with her Divine Son. We can only meditate, contemplate and relive, together with the witnesses, what happened after Mary’s sweet passing. For her the Blessed Trinity reserved an even greater glory: her early resurrection and her Assumption body and soul into Heaven.
Fr. Scheeben rightly comments: “Christ’s resurrection, the sign of His victory over death, is considered the apotheosis of His triumph over hell. When this thought is applied to Mary, it becomes manifest that, having totally conquered sin by her immunity from all concupiscence and by her virginal conception, she, like Christ, was also to defeat in her body the dominion of death and hell, by her immediate resurrection.”5
Let us imagine two excellent painters, enthusiastic landscape artists, who set out to record the trajectory of the sun on their canvases. One of them, having chosen a pleasant autumn afternoon, captures an extraordinary twilight that will never be repeated in the infinite kaleidoscope of sunsets. The other – at the same moment, but in a far removed geographical location – contemplates instead the rising sun and, inspired by the magnificent entourage of rays and luminosities that precede the king star, composes an even more beautiful scene.
If we were to call the first painting Dormition, the second would undoubtedly be labelled Assumption, because they symbolize Our Lady’s death, resurrection and ascent to Heaven. While this sun called Mary set to this earth, She was at the same time reborn in glory with incomparable brilliance. It is with good reason that “the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos.”6
A centuries-old piety
Belief in the Assumption of Mary dates back to the earliest centuries. Although there is no mention of this Marian privilege in the earliest documents of Tradition, as early as the last decades of the 5th century, the feast of the Kathisma – the repose of the Virgin – was celebrated in Jerusalem on August 15.
This fact, as well as the spread of Christian literature on the Assumption of Mary, is a sign that this truth certainly goes back to the teaching of the Apostles and that it was harboured in popular belief while the verve of the pastors of the nascent Church was more focused on combating Christological heresies.
Belief in the Assumption goes back to the first centuries, and its celebration in the Church took on a gradually increasing splendour
Little by little, the Assumption, also known in the time of Pope Sergius I as the Feast of the Dormition, came to be celebrated throughout most of the Church, with increasing liturgical splendour, eventually being considered the main commemoration in honour of the Virgin Mary.7 And to invest it with even greater solemnity, Pope St. Leo IV added a vigil and an octave to the feast.8
From then on, the festivities that began to adorn the celebration of the Assumption filled the historical gap left by the absence of documents recording the event. With the multiplication of the formulary for the proper Mass, the law of prayer established the norm of the Faith, and no one dared to question the truth that was being celebrated, because “in the official approval of the liturgical books is pledged the authority of the Church which, governed and ruled by the Holy Spirit, cannot propose false or erroneous formulae to the prayer of the faithful.”9
Building upon the rock
With the succession of centuries, the belief in the Assumption of Mary remained perennial, and the appeals of Christian piety began to reach the Apostolic See in the form of supplications and vows for this millenary feast of the Mother of God to be included in the ranks of revealed truths by means of a dogmatic definition. In addition, not a few Fathers of the First Vatican Council, as well as representatives of nations or ecclesiastical provinces, Cardinals of the Sacred College, numerous Bishops and countless parish priests presented their petitions to the same effect.
As the requests grew, so did theological studies on the subject, both in private and in ecclesiastical universities. “These studies and investigations have brought out into even clearer light the fact that the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption into Heaven is contained in the deposit of Christian Faith entrusted to the Church.”10
With their eyes fixed on the Blessed Virgin, her children need not fear the enemy, for her Assumption into Heaven is both her victory and ours
Already in the Old Testament, the prophecy contained in the Protoevangelium refers to the perfect communion between Our Lady and her Divine Son in their victorious struggle against hell (cf. Gen 3:15). This enmity requires Mary to fully overcome and eliminate all the evils that have fallen upon humanity because of the first fault, since the continuation of these misfortunes would manifest the dominion of sin over her.
“They [theologians] have given special attention to these words of the New Testament: ‘Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with You, blessed are You among women,’ since they saw, in the mystery of the Assumption, the fulfilment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve.”11
Finally, in 1950, in his Encyclical Munificentissimus Deus, His Holiness Pius XII solemnly answered the pleas of the Christian people. It reads:
“After we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished His special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honour of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, 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.”12
An irrevocable victory!
With this solemn definition, the sign of Mary’s triumph over sin and death with Christ was enshrined in the deposit of our Faith.
Once again, the image of the Woman clothed in the sun, mentioned in the Book of Revelation, stands out as a symbol of the Mother of God now glorified in body and soul, immune to the wiles of the great Dragon who, crushed and humiliated, “was angry with the Woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the Commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rv 12:17).
However, this remnant of her descendants should not fear the onslaughts of the enemy, as long as they keep their eyes fixed on Mary, whose Assumption into Heaven is both her victory and ours. ◊
Notes
1 CLÁ DIAS, EP, João Scognamiglio. Mary Most Holy: The Paradise of God Revealed to Men. São Paulo: Heralds of the Gospel, 2022, v.II, p.521.
2 PIUS XII. Munificentissimus Deus, n.14.
3 SCHEEBEN, Matias Jose; FECKES, Carlos. Madre y Esposa del Verbo. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer, 1955, p.191.
4 ST. JOHN DAMASCENE. Homilías cristológicas y marianas. Madrid: Ciudad Nueva, 1996, p.181.
5 SCHEEBEN; FECKES, op. cit., p.195.
6 PIUS XII, op. cit., n.27.
7 Cf. FERNÁNDEZ, Aurelio. Teología Dogmática. Curso fundamental de la Fe Católica. Madrid: BAC, 2009, p.439.
8 Cf. PIUS XII, op. cit., n.19.
9 ROYO MARÍN, OP, Antonio. La Virgen María. Teología y espiritualidad marianas. 2.ed. Madrid: BAC, 1997, p.206.
10 PIUS XII, op. cit., n.8.
11 Idem, n.27.
12 Idem, n.44.
