August 15, 2021 - "Feast of the Assumption"

Every now and then a solemnity like that of the Assumption falls on a Sunday.  When this happens in Ordinary Time, the solemnity takes precedence.  At the end of her earthly life, God assumed Mary into heaven where she reigns as queen until the end of time.  From the beginning of her life on earth, when she was immaculately conceived, until the end the Blessed Virgin Mary conformed her life to God’s will.  We can look upon her as we endeavor to discern God’s will in our own lives.
 
In response to repeated demands to the Popes to define the Assumption as a dogma of the Church from 1870 onwards, Pope Pius XII defined the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin on November 1, 1950 in an apostolic constitution entitled Munificentissimus Deus.
 
In that document Pius XII points out that fathers and doctors of the church brought out clearly that what is commemorated in this feast is not just the total absence of corruption from the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary but also her triumph over death and her glorification after the pattern established by her only Son, Jesus Christ.
 
To support his argument he quotes at length two of the Greek Fathers of the Church.  Let’s read excerpts of what they wrote concerning the Dormition, or Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
 
Saint Germanus of Constantinople (c. 640-733) was a Patriarch of Constantinople who was a very ardent promoter of the incomparable purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Saint Germanus thought that it was in keeping not only with her divine motherhood but also with the holiness of her virginal body that it was incorrupt and carried up to heaven:  “In the words of Scripture, you appear in beauty.  Your virginal body is entirely holy, entirely chaste, entirely in the house of God, so that for this reason also it is henceforth a stranger to decay:  a body changed, because a human body, to a preeminent life of incorruptibility, but still a living body, excelling in splendor, a body inviolate and sharing in the perfection of life.”
 
Saint John Damascene (c. 655-750), a Greek theologian who was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1890, is preeminent as the great preacher of this tradition according to Pius XII.  John Damascene relates the bodily assumption of the loving Mother of God to her other gifts and privileges.  “It was necessary that she who had preserved her virginity inviolate in childbirth should also have her body kept free from all corruption after death.  It was necessary that she who had carried the Creator as a child on her breast should dwell in the tabernacles of God.  It was necessary that the bride espoused by the Father should make her home in the bridal chambers of heaven.  It was necessary that she, who had gazed on her crucified Son and had been pierced in the heart by the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in giving him birth, should contemplate him seated with the Father.  It was necessary that the Mother of God should share the possessions of her Son, and be venerated by every creature as the Mother and handmaid of God.”

Pius XII goes on to note that the reasonings and considerations of the holy Fathers rest on Scripture as their ultimate foundation.  Scripture portrays the loving Mother of God, almost before our very eyes, as most intimately united with her divine Son and always sharing in His destiny.  He also notes that from the second century the holy Fathers present the Virgin Mary as the new Eve, most closely associated with the new Adam, though subject to him in the struggle against the enemy from the nether world.  This struggle, as the first promise of the redeemer implies, was to end in perfect victory over sin and death, always linked together in the writings of the Apostle to the Gentiles [Saint Paul]. Therefore, just as the glorious resurrection of Christ was an essential part of this victory and its final trophy, so the struggle shared by the Blessed Virgin and her Son was to end in the glorification of her virginal body.  As the same Apostle says:  When this mortal body has clothed itself in immortality, then will be fulfilled the word of Scripture:  Death is swallowed up in victory.”
 
Let me conclude this reflection today with the Collect (Opening Prayer) for today’s Solemnity:
 
Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory.  Through our Lord Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.  Amen.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John