The Assumption of Our Lady

Another very rich theological argument was the Trinitarian perspective furnished by Theoteknos: "For, she, the holy one, pleased God the Father. She, the Virgin, pleased the subsistent Word born of the Father from all eternity. She, the Virgin, pleased the life-giving Spirit, the enlightener of all, who fashions all the citizens of heaven" (60).

The chief patristic witnesses to the doctrine of the Assumption are to be found in the seventh and eight centuries, when theological reflection on this theme became ripe. However, it is clear that before then there was much written by figures like Gregory of Tours, whom we have cited above. The aspect of the incorruptibility of Mary’s body was stressed by St. Modestus of Jerusalem (+634): "As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and our God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him" (61).

St. Germanus of Constantinople (+733) argued, from the great dignity of the divine maternity and the holiness of her virginal body, to the fact of the Assumption of Mary: "You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all-holy, all-chaste, entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from all dissolution into dust. Though still human, it is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged and sharing in perfect life" (62). St. Andrew of Crete (+740) dedicated three beautiful homilies to the Dormition of Our Lady, which are rich in doctrine and devotion. For him the Dormition is a consequence of the redemptive Incarnation, in which the physical nature of the mystery is highlighted:

St. John Damascene linked and compared the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin with her other prerogatives and privileges:

During the Middle Ages, many saints and doctors further developed the doctrine concerning Mary’s glorious assumption. St. Anthony of Padua reflected, like early writers, on the Ark of the Covenant as the prefiguration of the mystery of Mary, mentioned in Psalm 132: "Go up, Lord, to the place of your rest, you and the ark of your strength." He illustrated that just as Jesus Christ has risen from the death over which he triumphed, and has ascended to the right hand of the Father, so likewise the ark of his sanctification "has risen up, since on this day the Virgin Mother has been taken up to her heavenly dwelling" (65). St. Albert the Great confirmed a long-standing tradition of belief in the mystery of Mary’s Assumption: "From these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most Blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true" (66). St. Thomas Aquinas never developed the theology of the Assumption in detail, but always held that Mary's body had been assumed into heaven along with her soul (67). St. Bonaventure is part of the same chorus of belief. He considered it as entirely certain that, as God had preserved the most holy Virgin Mary from the violation of her virginal purity and integrity in conceiving and in childbirth, he would never have permitted her body to have dissolved into dust and ashes (68). Further he argued, in a modern key, that Mary’s blessedness would not have been complete unless she had been assumed as a person: "The soul is not a person, but the soul, joined to the body, is a person. It is manifest that she is there in soul and in body. Otherwise she would not possess her complete beatitude" (69).

By the end of the Middle Ages, belief in Mary’s Assumption into heaven was well-established theologically, and expressed in the devotional life and culture of Christendom. Even among figures of the Reformation, the Assumption remained in some cases an object of devotion. For Martin Luther, Mary’s Assumption was an understood fact, as his homily of 1522 indicates, in spite of the fact that Mary’s Assumption is not expressly reported in Sacred Scripture: "There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith. … It is enough to know that she lives in Christ" (70). For the Protestant reformer, M. Butzer (1545), there was no reason to doubt about the Assumption of the Virgin into heavenly glory. "Indeed, no Christian doubts that the most worthy Mother of the Lord lives with her beloved Son in heavenly joy" (71). H. Bullinger (1590), also a Protestant reformer, sought a theological foundation for the Assumption in Scripture. He showed that the Old Testament tells of Elijah, taken to heaven bodily, to teach us about our immortality, and—because of our immortal soul—to respectfully honor the bodies of the saints. Against this backdrop he stated, "Because of this, we believe that the pure immaculate chamber of the God-bearer, the Virgin Mary, is a temple of the Holy Spirit, that is her holy body, borne by angels into heaven" (72).

Later, in the Catholic Reformation period, St. Robert Bellarmine once again adopted the Ark imagery and stated: "Who, I ask, could believe that the ark of holiness, the dwelling place of the Word of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, could be reduced to ruin? My soul is filled with horror at the thought that this virginal flesh which had begotten God, had brought him into the world, had nourished and carried him, could have been turned into ashes or given over to be food for worms" (73). Some later authors proposed an argument from appropriateness for the Assumption. Since a basic commandment of both Old and New Testaments is for children to honor their parents, Jesus Christ must himself have observed this, in the most perfect way possible. St. Francis of Sales therefore asks: "What son would not bring his mother back to life and would not bring her into paradise after her death if he could?" (74) St. Alphonsus Liguori set the same idea in a more Christological light by affirming that Jesus did not wish to have the body of Mary corrupted after death, since it would have redounded to his own dishonor to have her virginal flesh, from which he himself had assumed flesh, reduced to dust (75).

The development of the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary involved various elements, which can be summarized in this way. A common patristic theme is that the doctrine of the Second Eve implies assumption as the final and complete victory of the woman. Next, Mary in her predestination is always associated with her Son. Further, Mary’s Immaculate Conception and sinlessness imply exemption from corruption in the grave, and so lead to her immediate resurrection and glory. Another theme is that the perpetual virginity of Our Lady, as fleshly incorruption, involved exemption from physical corruption after death. A further argument is that the filial piety of the divine Son implied that he would grant her the favor of the Assumption, if it were otherwise possible and fitting. Mary at her death was more exalted in dignity than other creatures will ever be. If, then, other Christians are destined to be bodily with Christ in heaven, this must have applied to Mary straightway after her death. Finally, the woman of the Apocalypse is already seen in her glory, after being taken by eagle’s wings (76).

One of the aspects of Divine Revelation which impressed itself on Newman’s mind was its consistency, the fact that all of its truths hang together. By means of the principle of the analogy of faith, what is taught now fits into what has already been received, a principle which, he affirms, is exemplified in many different ways in the structure and the history of doctrine. This principle he applies particularly to Marian doctrines, especially to the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven (77). This doctrine is in harmony with the substance of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and without it, Newman points out, Catholic doctrine would be incomplete. It is a truth which he says is received on the belief of ages, but even from a rational point of view the very fittingness of it recommends it strongly. Mary’s Assumption into heaven is, for Newman, in perfect harmony with the other truths of Revelation. His starting point is the doctrine of the divine maternity:

The definition of the dogma of the Assumption was prepared for and preceded by a period of discussion which included a consideration of how the dogma was founded in the Scriptures and in Tradition. In May 1946, with the Encyclical Deiparae Virginis Mariae, Pius XII called for a broad consultation, inquiring among the bishops and, through them, among the clergy and the People of God, as to the possibility and opportuneness of defining the bodily Assumption of Mary as a dogma of faith. The result was extremely positive: only six answers out of 1,181 showed any reservations about the revealed character of this truth. The Church propounded that this truth was based in Scripture, and was visibly expressed in Tradition (79). After many requests, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined the dogma in 1950:

Pope Pius XII defined a dogma which had been believed by the Church for well over a thousand years. The definition took place in 1950, and this was of great historical significance. In took place in the middle of a century when the sacredness of the human body was denied theoretically and practically at many levels. In the first half of the twentieth century it was denied politically in the totalitarian systems of Marxism and Nazism, which denied the sacredness of the body in theory and in the slaughter of millions in the gulags and concentration camps. In the second half of the twentieth century, the assault on the sacredness of the human body was taken a step further through the massacre of untold millions through abortion and euthanasia, and also through sacrilegious experiments carried out on embryos, to say nothing of genetic engineering and attempts to clone the human being. All of this is counterbalanced by the Church’s affirmation that Our Lady was assumed body and soul to the glory of heaven. The Church, which believes in the resurrection of the body, believes that this same body has been created in the image and likeness of God, and is called to a supernatural destiny in Christ.

The Assumption can also be understood in light of the mystery of the Church, as the Second Vatican Council elucidated. In the most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle (cf. Ep 5:27), however, the faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in holiness. "In the meantime the Mother of Jesus in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come (cf. 2 Pet. 3:10), a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God" (81). For Our Blessed Lady, there is no "intermediate eschatology," namely there is no "period" of waiting between death and the general judgment for the body and soul to be reunited, and this sets her apart from us: "In teaching her doctrine about man’s destiny after death, the Church excludes any explanation that would deprive the assumption of the Virgin Mary of its unique meaning, namely the fact that the bodily glorification of the Virgin is an anticipation of the glorification that is the destiny of all the other elect" (82).

Recent theology has outlined further consequences of the Assumption. One line of enquiry stresses that Adam and Eve lay at the natural origin of humanity, and at the origins of sin and its transmission. On the other hand, Christ and his Mother Mary stand at the origin of the regeneration of humanity. Therefore the eschatological destiny of humanity is revealed in the association of Christ and his Mother Mary. Thus, the Assumption of Mary shows that God’s plan is now realized not only in Christ the bridegroom, but also in the bride, signified by the Church, recapitulated in Mary (83). Thus the Assumption is an exaltation of woman, in contrast to all ancient and modern paganism. If the power of sin has served to oppress women, the Assumption shows how God has empowered a woman for the spread of holiness. The Assumption is a triumph for the nobility of maternity and also of virginity. The Assumption is also an indication of the glory which awaits the body of the Christian, who in this life has been the home of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. Finally, the Assumption indicates the glorification of the poor and their liberation from oppression, in the fulfillment of the words of the Magnificat: "The Almighty has done great things for me: Holy is his Name." The Assumption of Mary is "the glorious culmination of the mystery of God’s preference for what is poor, small, and unprotected in this world, so as to make God’s presence and glory shine there." It offers "hope and promise for the poor of all times and for those who stand in solidarity with them; it is hope and promise that they will share in the final victory of the incarnate God" (84). Mary assumed into heaven is also connected with the unity of the Church. Far from being an ecumenical problem, the definition of Mary’s Assumption marked a great period of growth for efforts favoring Christian unity. Mary assumed into heaven indicates that only by lifting up one’s gaze and one’s heart heavenward can one retrieve the lost brotherhood in Christ (85).