The Assumption Of The Most Blessed Virgin

First Point

The Most Blessed Virgin, filled with the love of God throughout her life, remained on earth only with reluctance and solely through submission to God’s will. For this reason, death appeared to her pleasant and desirable, and because her soul held on to her body solightly, as it were, she died without pain. The extreme joy she felt at that moment, caused by the desire to see God, who possessed her, filled her soul with such consolation that she easily went from earth to heaven without any struggle. What blessed detachment from the bonds of her body in the soul of Mary, already detached from whatever could have attached her to earth! Because we have left the world, nothing ought to be able to at tach us to it. We must always be ready to die. This is the consequenceof detachment from all things. We find it hard to die because we find it hard to leave what we love and what holds on to us. Strive, then, to imitate the Most Blessed Virgin in her total detachment, and ask God through her intercession for the grace of a happy death.

Second Point

The Most Blessed Virgin did not remain in the tomb for long; a few days after her death, she rose. It was quite proper that God granted her such a favor, for without doubt it would not have been fitting that the flesh from which the flesh of Jesus Christ came would suffer corruption. It was, moreover, worthy of God’s goodness that the very special purity of the Most Blessed Virgin would be rewarded by so great a favor. How, O my God, could you have allowed that the body of the Most Blessed Virgin, which had been the tabernacle of your Incarnate Word, the Temple of the Holy Spirit,¹ and the sacred ark of a soul filled with your grace, would be for a long time separated from that soul and not be honored even after death with all the favors it could possibly receive? The special grace we ought to ask of the Most Blessed Virgin on this day is to be removed and to be freed from the corruption of the world² and especially to have great purity, which is the true incorruptibility that we ought to procure for our body. Because the Most Blessed Virgin possessed this virtue in all its perfection, she can help us very much to preserve it.

Third Point

The greatest favor that the Most Blessed Virgin received after her death and that the Church honors especially on this day is that she was taken, body and soul, to heaven by the angels. It was quite right that her sacred body, which, as Saint John Damascene says, was a living heaven, be placed in heaven as soon as she left this world and that she who was the Mother of the Incarnate Word would be immediately raised up by him to be placed near him and to receive the honor deserved by this admirable privilege. For this reason she was elevated far above all the blessed spirits, who honor her as their sovereign. It was also right that because the Most Blessed Virgin had received an abundance of graces and had always been faithful to them, she would be filled with glory and that her body, having been spiritualized by her renunciation of the pleasures of the senses, would die only to fulfill the common law and would follow her soul to heaven.If we detach ourselves entirely from our body, we will lead a heavenly life on this earth, and when we die, our body, having already acquired a sort of incorruptibility, will live forever before God by the transformation that will have been wrought in it by grace. Pray to the Most Blessed Virgin to obtain this favor for you today, that your body, sharing in the life of your soul by mortification of your senses, may no longer take pleasure in anything on this earth but may live in some way as though it were in heaven.

Historical Context

In 1950 Pope Pius XII defined the doctrine of our Lady’s Assumption, saying that the Immaculate Mother of God was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory. This statement embodies the two bases for the doctrine: her Immaculate Conception and her dignity as Mother of God. From earliest Christian times, even before the Council of Ephesus in 431, at which the doctrine of her being the Mother of God was defined, the Dormitio Sanctae Mariae was celebrated with the greatest solemnity by the Church. The term dormitio suggests a belief that Mary did not die (separation of body and soul) but only slept Meditations for the Principal Feasts of the Year ✦ 289 while body and soul were taken to heaven. De La Salle, however, accepts the fact of her death. Some theologians agree with him. The feast’s stational church is the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. At different times over the centuries, the Feast has been celebrated with a vigil and with a procession from the Forum.

Scripture Citation

1. 1 Cor 6:19
2. 2 Pt 1:4