The Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary
The Assumption of our Lady has been a belief in the Catholic Church since the Apostolic Times. It is a belief that the Most Virgin Mary, chosen to be the Mother of our Savior Lord Jesus, had been taken to heaven, soul and body. Mary had ‘slept in the Lord’ in the presence of the apostles; and the Apostles buried her body with due respect. But her tomb, when opened later , was found empty ; and so the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven.
In the words of St.John Damascene of 8th Century, “Although She was duly buried, the body did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay. She was transferred to her heavenly home“.
Mother Mary had the fulness of grace from her first moment of her life, through her Immaculate Conception (Feast- Dec.8th). All through her life, she lived a life completely undefiled by sin and as the Archangel Gabriel addressed her at Annunciation, she was ‘full of Grace’.
God did not create humans to die. “God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through devil‘s envy death entered the world” (Wis. 2.23,24). So death is the consequence of sin. Mother Mary who was preserved from the original sin at conception and who did not commit any sin in her life, was freed from the consequence of sin.
“The Assumption completes God’s work in her since it was not fitting that the flesh that had given life to God himself should ever undergo corruption. The Assumption is God’s crowning of His work as Mary ends her earthly life and enters eternity. The feast turns our eyes in that direction, where we will follow when our earthly life is over.“ (EWTN.COM)
On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, exercising papal infallibility, declared in Munificientissimus Deus that it is a dogma of the Church “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.” As a dogma, the Assumption is a required belief of all Catholics; anyone who publicly dissents from the dogma, Pope Pius XII declared, “has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.”
Prayer: Mary, our Mother assumed into heaven, help us to live a sinless and holy life so that we may follow you into heaven.