The Assumption of Mary

The Assumption of the Virgin by Peter Paul Rubens — The Assumption of the Virgin, Peter Paul Rubens (c.1611-1612) — image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Mary assumed body and soul into Heaven — defined by Pope Pius XII, November 1, 1950

At the close of her earthly life, Mary was taken up into heaven, body and soul. This is the dogma of the Assumption. The Catholic Church teaches it of no other human being, only of her. It is the most recently defined of the four Marian dogmas, but it is among the oldest in the Christian liturgical tradition: the feast of Mary’s “falling asleep” — the Dormition — was celebrated in the East before A.D. 500, and in the West not long after.

It is the only dogma to date defined under the formal exercise of papal infallibility set out at the First Vatican Council. And it is, the Church teaches, a foretaste of what is promised to all who belong to her Son: the resurrection of the body.

What the dogma says

On November 1, 1950, the feast of All Saints, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined the dogma in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus:

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.
— Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus, November 1, 1950

The Church does not officially declare whether Mary died and was then assumed, or whether she was assumed without dying. The Eastern tradition speaks of her Dormition — her “falling asleep” — suggesting a peaceful death followed by the assumption of her body. Most Western theologians have followed this view. The dogma itself leaves the question open.

In Scripture

The Old Testament contains a striking pattern of holy persons taken up to heaven without seeing corruption. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The prophet Elijah was carried up in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11). The Assumption of Mary fits a Jewish hope already attested in the Old Testament: God can preserve those whom He loves from the corruption of the grave.

The Book of Revelation, in its twelfth chapter, gives the great vision: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Revelation 12:1). The Christian tradition has read this woman as Israel, as the Church, and — preeminently — as Mary herself, who in her body now reigns in heaven.

The Jewish roots: the Ark brought into the Temple

In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred object in the people of Israel. When David finally brought the Ark into Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), it was a moment of profound rejoicing — he danced before it; the Levites sang; trumpets blew; sacrifices were offered. When Solomon later brought the Ark into the newly-built Temple (1 Kings 8), the glory of the Lord filled the holy place so that the priests could not stand to minister.

The Christian tradition sees Mary as the New Ark, having borne the true presence of God. If the Old Ark was at last brought up into the Temple of God, where would the New Ark be brought up? Into the heavenly Temple itself, the dwelling place of God forever.

Saint John, exiled on the island of Patmos near the close of the first century, sees in his vision (Revelation 11:19) “the temple of God in heaven” opened, and within it “the ark of his covenant”. The next sentence in the vision — the very next sentence — introduces the woman clothed with the sun. The Ark and the woman are the same vision, the same revelation. Mary, the New Ark, is in the heavenly Temple.

There is one further sign that the early Church understood this. Through nineteen centuries, no city in the Christian world has ever claimed to possess Mary’s body or her relics. Tombs of every other saint were sought out, opened, and venerated. There are first-class relics of all the apostles, of countless martyrs, of the Mother’s own mother Saint Anne. But of Mary, only her empty tomb in Jerusalem — the church of the Tomb of the Virgin in the Kidron Valley — was ever venerated. The Christian people from the earliest times knew where her body was. It was with her Son.

The witness of the Church Fathers and the early liturgy

The feast of the Dormition (in the East) and the Assumption (in the West) was celebrated on August 15 from at least the late fifth century. By the early seventh century, when Emperor Maurice extended the feast to the whole Byzantine Empire, it was already ancient.

Saint John Damascene, in the eighth century, gave the most famous Patristic statement of the doctrine:

It was fitting that she who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth should keep her body without corruption after death. It was fitting that she who had carried the Creator as a child at her bosom should dwell in the divine tabernacles.
— Saint John Damascene, c. A.D. 740

How the dogma was defined

In the Catholic Church, the people of God had believed and celebrated the Assumption for fifteen centuries before its formal definition. As the question of bodily resurrection became more urgent in the modern age — in a world that often denied the soul, the body, and the meaning of either — the bishops of the world asked the Holy See to define what had always been believed.

Pope Pius XII, in 1946, sent a letter to every bishop in the world asking whether the Assumption could be defined as dogma and whether the people of their dioceses believed it. The response was overwhelming. Of more than 1,200 bishops who responded, only six expressed any reservation, and those concerned only the wisdom of defining at that moment, not the truth of the doctrine itself. Pius XII proceeded with the definition four years later.

A spiritual reflection

The Assumption is the first of the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, and the fourth of the great mysteries of Mary. It is also a promise. What was done for the Mother — bodily glory, full and final — will one day be done for every child of hers, every member of the Body of Christ. We shall rise in our bodies. We shall be glorified.

When you look up at the moon and the stars on a clear night, the Christian tradition asks you to remember that Mary is there — not in the sky, exactly, but in the heaven of which the sky is a sign. She is body and soul with her Son. She is alive. She is interceding. And she is waiting for us.