Shrines around the World: Abbey of Our Lady’s Dormition
Photos: Wikipedia & Günther Simmermacher
Where’s that: On Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
Our Lady’s connection: The abbey marks the place where Mary lived and died.
Only a few metres from the spot where Our Lord instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, his blessed mother lived out the final moments of her earthly life. In Dormition Abbey, a life-size ivory and cherry wood effigy of Mary on a bier marks the reputed spot where Our Lady closed her eyes for the very last time.
The first church on the site was built in the early 5th century, and destroyed in 613. The pilgrim Arnulf reported a church there in the year 700, and in the 12th century, an abbey dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Zion was established. After its destruction in the 13th century, the site remained empty, until in 1898 Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm bought the land and financed the construction of today’s mighty abbey, which was dedicated in 1910.
Inside the abbey, run by German Benedictines, murals from all over the world depict the Assumption of Our Lady. The one above depicts Jesus holding Mary, shown as an infant in swaddling clothes — a reversal of the Nativity narrative in Bethlehem. Catholics tend to suggest that Dormition Abbey is the site of the Assumption. If so, Mary was assumed into heaven immediately after her death. But a 5th-century document, on which the dogma of the Assumption is based, notes that the Apostles found her tomb empty, implying that she was first buried. A 12th-century Crusader church near the Garden of Gethsemane holds her reputed tomb. The idea that Mary died in Ephesus is modern, going back only 200 years.
Published in the August 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine
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