The Assumption of Our Lady

There are two basic reasons in favor of the position that our Blessed Mother actually died. First, that of conformity to Christ. The condition of the Mother should not be better than that of her divine Son. As the Mother of the passible and mortal Redeemer from whom he took his mortal flesh, Mary, too, had to be passible and mortal. This argument seems post factum, proposing to explain the fact of Mary’s death once that death had been taken for granted. The Second Council of Orange is quite explicit in its teaching that those who hold that the penalty of death is transmitted to the body without the transmission of sin, or the death of the soul, to all the children of Adam, do an injustice to God (34). Hence, where there is no sin there can be no mandatory death of the body in a child of Adam. A second reason favoring Mary’s death would involve voluntary acceptance on her part. Some theologians locate this within the framework of Mary’s role of Co-redemptrix of the human race. They would maintain that Mary died, though she had a right to immortality. She, like her Son, freely accepted death in order that she might coredeem the human race together with him. Yet, the objection can then be put that Mary should then have died on Calvary with Christ.

Contrary to the proposition that Mary died, one could say that it seems strange that she should have enjoyed any lesser privilege than Elijah or Enoch from the Old Testament, who seemingly did not die. Moreover, it could be argued that she enjoyed the first fruits of Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension, in such a way that she did not die. Furthermore, one may apply to her the words of Jesus to his disciples: "For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he himself does, and he will show him even greater things than these, works that will astonish you. Thus, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses" (Jn 5:20-21).

Since all theologians are agreed, at least after the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary cannot have died as a penalty for sin, the issue remains as to what was the cause of death. It is clear that she cannot have simply died of illness, a consequence of old age. Neither would she have died of old age, as this is also connected with original sin. Also, a minority thesis that she suffered martyrdom, based on a misinterpretation of the prophecy of Simeon (Lk 2:35), has long since been rejected, among others by St. Ambrose: "Neither the letter (of Scripture) nor history, teach us that Mary departed this life after having been assassinated; whereby not the soul but the body was pierced by a material sword" (35). That leaves various other opinions. One is that she voluntarily gave up her privilege of immortality, in order to be more like her Son. Another position is that she died of sorrow in the aftermath of having seen her Son crucified (36). Perhaps the soundest approach would be to say, along with St. Francis de Sales, that Mary’s death was due to a transport of love (37). He pointed out that as Christ’s Mother lived her Son’s life, she also died her Son’s death:

The saint also explained that this death was not violent, but rather her "death was more sweet than could be imagined, her Son sweetly drawing her after the odor of his perfumes, and she most lovingly flowing out after their sacred sweetness even into the bosom of her Son’s goodness" (39).

Finally, it should be remarked that however one conceives of the end of Mary’s life, namely whether Mary died or not, she was not subject to the law of death, which is the corruption of the body in the grave. If she died, then she was assumed into heaven before her sacred body saw corruption. For, so long as the bodies of the just remain in the dust of the earth, they are under the dominion of death, and they sigh for the ultimate redemption of their bodies.

Pope Pius XII, in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus that dogmatically defined the Assumption, refers to the Protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15, as a prophecy of Mary’s victory over sin and death. The New Vulgate (1979) offers this translation: "I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel" (Gen 3:15). This rendering, based on the Vulgate, appears to differ in two respects from the original Hebrew text. First, the Hebrew text employs the same verb for the two renderings, "it will bruise or crush" and "you will strike," while the Greek Septuagint renders the verb both times by the expression "to strike." Some translators, like St. Jerome, interpret the Hebrew verb by expressions which mean to crush or to bruise, rather than to strike or to lie in wait (40). Nevertheless, in his Latin Vulgate translation, he employed the verb "to crush" (conterere) in the first place, and "to lie in wait" (insidiari) in the second. Hence the punishment inflicted on the serpent and the serpent’s retaliation are expressed by the same Hebrew verb: but in the Vulgate the wound of the serpent is mortal, since it affects his head, while the wound inflicted by the serpent is not mortal, being inflicted on the heel.

The second point of difference between the Hebrew text and the Greek and Latin versions concerns the agent who is to inflict the mortal wound on the serpent. The Hebrew text reads hu’ (autos, ipse) which refers to the seed of the woman. "It" refers to the offspring, which is masculine in Hebrew, and Christian tradition has referred this to Christ (41). The human race is thus opposed to the Devil and his "seed," and a hint is given of humanity’s ultimate victory, in a first glimpse of salvation; hence the passage is referred to as the Protoevangelium. The Greek version has a masculine pronoun, which ascribes the victory to one of the woman’s descendants in particular, rather than just the offspring in general. This allusion to Christ is consonant with the Messianic interpretation of many Fathers of the Church. The Vulgate reads "she" (ipsa), which refers to a woman. Thus, according to the Vulgate reading, the woman herself will win the victory; according to the Hebrew text, she will be victorious through her offspring, rendered by "it." In the author’s opinion, the reading "she" (ipsa) is neither an intentional corruption of the original text, nor is it an accidental error; it is rather an explanatory version expressing explicitly the fact of Our Lady’s part in the victory over the serpent, which is contained implicitly in the Hebrew original (42).

As is quite commonly admitted, the divine judgment is directed not only against the serpent as the originator of sin, but also against the seed of the serpent, denoting its followers, the "brood of vipers," the "generation of vipers," those whose father is the Devil, the children of evil (43). One may understand the offspring or seed of the woman in a similar collective sense, as embracing all who are born of God. However, seed often denotes a particular person in biblical theology, if the context allows it. St. Paul gives this explanation of the word offspring or "progeny" as it occurs in the patriarchal promises: "Now the promises were addressed to Abraham and to his progeny. The words were not ‘and to his progenies’ in the plural, but in the singular, ‘and to your progeny,’ which means Christ" (Gal 3:16). Finally the expression "the woman" in the clause "I will put enmity between you and the woman" is a literal version of the Hebrew text. Peculiar to the Hebrew language is the use of the article in a sentence to indicate a person or thing which is not yet known, but may possibly be described more clearly later, either as present or as to be taken into account within the context (44). Since our indefinite article serves this purpose, we may translate: "I will put enmity between you and a woman." Hence the prophecy promises a woman, Our Blessed Lady, who will be the enemy of the serpent to a marked degree; besides, the same woman will be victorious over the Devil, at least through her offspring. The completeness of the victory is emphasized by the contextual phrase "on dust you will feed as long as you live" (Gen 3:14), which is a common old Near-Eastern expression denoting the deepest humiliation (45).

That nothing is found explicitly in the New Testament about Our Lady’s Assumption is not surprising, since it is possible that much of it may have been composed before the event. This is clearly a matter of conjecture, especially if many of the apostles were present at her Dormition, as several Fathers propose. No isolated text of the New Testament explicitly affirms the doctrine of the Assumption. However, the Church does not read the Word of God as segmented texts of Scripture alone, but in its fullness in relation to the whole deposit of Revelation as it is also expressed in Tradition (46). The Church’s Tradition shows that Mary’s Assumption was at least implicitly revealed. It is false to maintain, along with the rationalists, that the later tradition of the Church expressing belief in the Assumption is an outgrowth of the apocrypha (47). A concrete indication of belief in the Assumption of Mary is found in the fact that the Church has never looked for the bodily relics of the Blessed Virgin, nor proposed them for veneration (48). It is probable that the revelation made to the apostles, or to one of them, was even explicit, since otherwise it is difficult to explain the universal tradition of Mary’s Assumption in the East and the West from the seventh century at the latest, which is also expressed in the liturgical celebration of the Feast (49). Nevertheless, "the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a way that the practices of the sacred worship proceed from the faith as the fruit comes from the tree" (50).

The feast of the Assumption began its life in the East, as did many of the older Marian feasts. At first, Mary was implicitly honored in her Assumption by a celebration known as The Memory of Mary, the celebration of which began in the East around the fourth century. Honor was given to Mary’s Assumption here because the Church intended to celebrate the "birthday" of Mary, or her entrance into heaven. Later, The Memory of Mary liturgy was changed and became the feast of the Dormitio, or the "Falling to Sleep" of the Blessed Mother. The feast of the Dormitio, or Koimesis, celebrated as its object the death, resurrection, and Assumption of the Blessed Mother, and was widely established in the East by the end of the fourth century.

The fact that the feast was even kept by the churches separated from the Catholic Church is an indication of how early the tradition flourished. The Nestorian Churches separated very early from the Catholic Church (after the Council of Ephesus, in 439) and introduced the feast later, under the title of the death or transitus of Mary. As regards the transitus, normally it was held that Mary remained incorrupt after her death, and that her body awaited the resurrection. The Monophysite Churches marked the 15th of August with a special celebration dating from the patristic period. These churches rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and include the Coptic Church in Egypt today, with a related church in Ethiopia, and the so-called Jacobite Church of Syria, with most of its adherents in South India. However, their theology is far from uniform. While some taught the death and resurrection of Mary, others held that her body remained incorrupt somewhere, awaiting her resurrection from the dead. The Coptic Church normally followed the doctrine of Theodosius, the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria (+567), and celebrated a double feast, the death of Mary on January 16th, and her glorious resurrection on the 9th of August, 216 days later. Now, since the monks of Gaul adopted many customs from the Egyptian monks this feast is found celebrated in January in sixth-century Gaul. The Gallican Liturgy has it on the 18th of January, under the title: Depositio, Assumptio, or Festivitas S. Mariae (51). This custom was kept up in the Gallican Church to the time of the introduction of the Roman rite.

In the Greek Church, it seems, some kept this feast in January, with the monks of Egypt; others in August, with those of Palestine. Uniformity was brought about by the Emperor Maurice (582-602), who ordered that the feast be set for the whole Byzantine Empire on August 15 (52). It is important to note that the emperor did not establish the feast but merely fixed the date of an already well-established event. The earliest witness to the existence of the feast in the West seems to be the Gospel Lectionary of Wurzburg (c. 650) in which the feast for August 15 is found to be Natale Sanctae Mariae (53). Then Pope Sergius I (687-701) decreed that on the feast of the Dormition (as well as on the Annunciation and the Nativity of our Blessed Mother) there should be a procession from the church of St. Adrian to the church of St. Mary Major. Most likely it was this same pope who introduced the feast of the Dormition into the Roman calendar. Pope Sergius was a Syrian by birth, and so was well acquainted with the feast from his homeland. After Pope Sergius introduced the feast into Rome, thereafter it spread rapidly throughout Western Europe. The name of the feast was changed from the Dormition to the Assumption of St. Mary in the eighth century, probably at the behest of Pope Hadrian I.

There are early glimpses within patristic tradition that Mary’s body is incorruptible. St. Hippolytus (172-235) associated the Ark of the Covenant of the book of Revelation (Rev 11:19) with Mary’s incorruptible flesh from which Christ’s flesh was taken: "Now the Lord was without sin, being in his human nature from incorruptible wood, that is, from the Virgin, and being sheathed inwardly as it were with the pure gold of the Word and by the Spirit outwardly" (54). The earliest clear mention of the doctrine of the Assumption dates from the second half of the sixth century, in a homily preached by Bishop Theoteknos of Livias, in Palestine (55). Theoteknos spoke as though the doctrine were commonplace, and he affirmed several times that Mary’s body was raised to the heavens with her soul (56). The homily describes how Christ, having ascended into heaven, gathered all the saints round the immaculate and pure Virgin. Mary, because of her exalted position, was to receive more than all the other saints: "She found what Eve lost. She found what Adam had forfeited through his disobedience" (57). Theoteknos recalled the special privileges traditionally accorded to Enoch and Elijah of escaping the normal deathly end of human life, and declared that Mary’s end must be more privileged than theirs: "How much more then, will he glorify in body and soul the one who has been his Mother according to the flesh! In truth he has glorified her, and he will glorify her still" (58). Theoteknos propounded the sound principle that the Son cannot forsake his Mother, and the Mother in her mystery cannot be separated from her Son. Significantly, Theoteknos makes much of the link between Mary’s being Theotókos (God-bearer) and her bodily Assumption: