The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Lives of the Saints
by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition
[1894]
August 15.—THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
IN this festival the Church commemorates the happy departure from life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her translation into the kingdom of her Son, in which she received from Him a crown of immortal glory, and a throne above all the other Saints and heavenly spirits.
After Christ, as the triumphant Conqueror of death and hell, ascended into heaven, His blessed Mother remained at Jerusalem, persevering in prayer with the disciples, till, with them, she had received the Holy Ghost.
She lived to a very advanced age, but finally paid the common debt of nature, none among the children of Adam being exempt from that rigorous law. But the death of the Saints is rather to be called a sweet sleep than death; much more that of the Queen of Saints, who had been exempt from all sin.
It is a traditionary pious belief, that the body of the Blessed Virgin was raised by God soon after her death, and taken up to glory, by a singular privilege, before the general resurrection of the dead.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the greatest of all the festivals which the Church celebrates in her honor. It is the consummation of all the other great mysteries by which her life was rendered most wonderful; it is the birthday of her true greatness and glory, and the crowning of all the virtues of her whole life, which we admire single in her other festivals.
Reflection.—Whilst we contemplate, in profound sentiments of veneration, astonishment, and praise, the glory to which Mary is raised by her triumph on this day, we ought, for our own advantage, to consider by what means she arrived at this sublime degree of honor and happiness, that we may walk in her steps. No other way is open to us. The same path which conducted her to glory will also lead us thither; we shall be partners in her reward if we copy her virtues.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
August 15, 2023
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Solemnity [Holyday of Obligation] Vigil: 1 Chr 15:3-4, 15-16; 16:1-2/1 Cor 15:54b-57/Lk 11:27-28 (621) Day: Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab/1 Cor 15:20-27/Lk 1:39-56 (622) Pss Prop.
*Assumption of the Virgin, detail – Titian.
A close-up image of the Virgin Mary from Titian’s larger work of the Assumption
The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it in 1950 in his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus as follows:
“We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by God that the immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”
The declaration was built upon the 1854 dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which declared that Mary was conceived free from original sin, and both have their foundation in the concept of Mary as the Mother of God. It leaves open the question of whether Mary died or whether she was raised to eternal life without bodily death.
The equivalent belief (but not held as dogma) in the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Dormition of the Mother of God or the “Falling Asleep of the Mother of God.”
The word ‘assumption’ derives from the Latin word assūmptiō meaning “taking up.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_Mary
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people – the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world – just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.
Col 1:3–6