The Assumption Gives us Hope

Eastern Churches and some Anglicans are one with the Catholic Church in the belief that Mary was assumed body and soul to heaven, while for many other Christians this is a point of divorce. The ghost from age-old polemics is yet to be put to rest. However, the choice is ours to really want to break free.

It is not too much to say that with just a little broadening up, one may be surprised to appreciate that the Assumption of Mary, in its deeper sense, isn’t just a Catholic devotion, but fundamentally a part of Christian faith and hope.

Grieving apostles surround Mary before her Assumption, in the Benedictine Hagia Maria Sion (Dormition) Abbey on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion. (Photo: Gunther Simmermacher)

The celebration and teaching of the Assumption goes back to the traditions of between the 4th and 5th centuries, first in Palestine, then to Alexandria in Egypt from where it spread to the monks in Gaul, in today’s France. We hear of the Assumption in Rome only between the 7th and 8th centuries. Yet, it was more than a millennium later that it became an official teaching of the Church. In 1946 Pope Pius XII consulted bishops, priests and the lay faithful if they desired that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary be defined as dogma. Nearly all bishops desired it. And so, on November 1, 1950, in his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pius XII declared: 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.

Did Mary die before being taken to heaven or was she taken up without tasting death? The teaching offers no definition. The Orthodox Church takes the position that Our Lady died before being taken up, and thus, from early centuries, celebrated the Dormitio, the falling asleep of Mary.

Questions have been raised regarding this dogma. For example, Scripture mentions nothing about Mary’s Assumption, and the first three centuries of the Church’s tradition seem to be silent about it. And some object that the exalted place of Mary in heaven attracts more devotion, somehow placing Christ in the shadow. Well, Catholics nourish their faith from both Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Besides, if a teaching is not stated in the Bible, it does not necessarily mean it’s unbiblical. Granted, the first three centuries are silent about the Assumption (hence providing a point for research). However, it’s equally significant to note that the Assumption had been celebrated for more than a thousand years before being officially defined. This living tradition, the celebrated and lived faith of the people, is also an important source of the Catholic teaching. Understanding the distinction between the Ascension and the Assumption can clarify Mary’s place before God, as well as give a depth to what we celebrate in the Assumption.

Ascension refers to Christ’s going back to the Father. Christ ascended to heaven by his own power as incarnate son of God, which is not the case with the Assumption. Mary was assumed, that is, she was taken up or received into heaven. It was not by her own power, but God’s own doing. She remains a creature and a beneficiary of God’s grace for which she availed herself to receive in plenitude by her total assent to her vocation as mother of the incarnate son of God. Just a little reflection is enough to be able to detect, from the declaration of the dogma, what has been the point of God’s action in the history of salvation. He has been beckoning humanity to communion with him, and so Christ became man in order to assume human beings into God’s life. That’s why most of the Eastern Church Fathers would thus speak of salvation as divinisation.

The Byzantine rite brings this out remarkably through the Good Friday liturgy the burial of Christ. Christ descends into hell in order to redeem humanity from death to life in God. This is loud and visible in the icon of Adam and Eve in hell, fettered. Christ breaks the chains and extends his hands to draw them out from the shackles of death. This goes well in line with John Paul II’s perspective of the Assumption. He linked the Assumption to Jesus’ promise to his disciples: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (Jn 14:3).

Hence, the solemnity of the Assumption is not just a celebration of a superficial admiration of what God has done for Mary. More than that, it’s a celebration of faith and hope that what God began and accomplished in her, he will also accomplish in the rest of humanity.

And this isn’t just Catholic but a Christian faith and hope.