August 15: The Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary

 

THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY: A BELIEF SINCE APOSTOLIC TIMES

Father Clifford Stevens

The Assumption is the oldest feast day of Our Lady, but we don't know how it first came to be celebrated.

Its origin is lost in those days when Jerusalem was restored as a sacred city, at the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337). By then it had been a pagan city for two centuries, ever since Emperor Hadrian (76-138) had leveled it around the year 135 and rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina in honor of Jupiter.

For 200 years, every memory of Jesus was obliterated from the city, and the sites made holy by His life, death and Resurrection became pagan temples.

After the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 336, the sacred sites began to be restored and memories of the life of Our Lord began to be celebrated by the people of Jerusalem. One of the memories about his mother centered around the "Tomb of Mary," close to Mount Zion, where the early Christian community had lived.

On the hill itself was the "Place of Dormition," the spot of Mary's "falling asleep," where she had died. The "Tomb of Mary" was where she was buried.

At this time, the "Memory of Mary" was being celebrated. Later it was to become our feast of the Assumption.

For a time, the "Memory of Mary" was marked only in Palestine, but then it was extended by the emperor to all the churches of the East. In the seventh century, it began to be celebrated in Rome under the title of the "Falling Asleep" ("Dormitio") of the Mother of God.

Soon the name was changed to the "Assumption of Mary," since there was more to the feast than her dying. It also proclaimed that she had been taken up, body and soul, into heaven.

That belief was ancient, dating back to the apostles themselves. What was clear from the beginning was that there were no relics of Mary to be venerated, and that an empty tomb stood on the edge of Jerusalem near the site of her death. That location also soon became a place of pilgrimage. (Today, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition of Mary stands on the spot.)

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when bishops from throughout the Mediterranean world gathered in Constantinople, Emperor Marcian asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem to bring the relics of Mary to Constantinople to be enshrined in the capitol. The patriarch explained to the emperor that there were no relics of Mary in Jerusalem, that "Mary had died in the presence of the apostles; but her tomb, when opened later . . . was found empty and so the apostles concluded that the body was taken up into heaven."

In the eighth century, St. John Damascene was known for giving sermons at the holy places in Jerusalem. At the Tomb of Mary, he expressed the belief of the Church on the meaning of the feast: "Although the body was duly buried, it did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay. . . . You were transferred to your heavenly home, O Lady, Queen and Mother of God in truth."

All the feast days of Mary mark the great mysteries of her life and her part in the work of redemption. The central mystery of her life and person is her divine motherhood, celebrated both at Christmas and a week later (Jan. 1) on the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8) marks the preparation for that motherhood, so that she had the fullness of grace from the first moment of her existence, completely untouched by sin. Her whole being throbbed with divine life from the very beginning, readying her for the exalted role of mother of the Savior.

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.

The feast days of the Church are not just the commemoration of historical events; they do not look only to the past. They look to the present and to the future and give us an insight into our own relationship with God. The Assumption looks to eternity and gives us hope that we, too, will follow Our Lady when our life is ended.

The prayer for the feast reads: "All-powerful and ever-living God: You raised the sinless Virgin Mary, mother of your Son, body and soul, to the glory of heaven. May we see heaven as our final goal and come to share her glory."

In 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Assumption of Mary a dogma of the Catholic Church in these words: "The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven."

With that, an ancient belief became Catholic doctrine and the Assumption was declared a truth revealed by God.

Father Clifford Stevens writes from Tintern Monastery in Oakdale, Neb.

Provided Courtesy of Eternal Word Television Network

This article was taken from the July-August 1996 issue of "Catholic Heritage". To subscribe write Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750-9957 or call 1-800-348-2440. Published bimonthly.

The Divine Motherhood by Dom Anscar Vonier, OSB - Chapter V

THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB

Chapter V

THE TERMS OF THE DIVINE MATERNITY

When Zacharias had heard the message that his wife Elizabeth would bear him a son of such supreme greatness and sanctity, instead of accepting loyally and gratefully the angelic message, his mind was overpowered by a great doubt, a grave difficulty arising out of the natural and physical order of things. "Whereby shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years" (Luke i. 1 8). In Gabriel’s interview with Mary there is at the same point of the interview a similar interruption on the part of the person addressed by the heavenly speaker. "And Mary said to the Angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man?" (Luke i. 34.) But here the parallelism between Zacharias and Mary ceases. The two interrogations, though similar in nature, though forth coming, as it were, at the same point of the heavenly act, are vastly dissimilar in spirit and provoke answers infinitely different in purport. Mary’s query is followed by the highest exposition of the mystery of the Incarnation ever uttered here on earth. What Gabriel said in reply to Mary’s question is a speech of eternal beauty and incomparable profundity. Zacharias, on the contrary, is rebuked, sharply rebuked as it were in a human way, the Angel showing indignation at the old man’s hesitation, because he failed to recognize the character of the messenger that had come to him. "And the Angel answering, said to him: I am Gabriel, who stand before God, and am sent to speak to thee and to bring thee these good tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb . . . because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their time" (Luke i. 19 20). From this diversity of the Angel’s conduct with regard to the two questioners we see at a glance what depth of wisdom and humility there must be in this sentence of Mary, by which she interrupts the Angel in the act of delivering his great message. We have here the terms that shape divine maternity into something so unexpected, so unforeseen, absolute virginity.

Mary’s virginity is twofold : there is her own virginity as a vessel of election, as one chosen for the highest form of spiritual life; it is a great grace, but not a miraculous grace; the other is her virginity as Mother, a miraculous grace, not found elsewhere in the whole vast realm of God’s creation. The first kind of virginity is a grace that is being shared by many, since Mary’s Son died on the Cross. But of the second kind of virginity there never could be another instance.

What we might call our Lady’s personal virginity is in itself a most sublime thing, because it was a thing without a precedent. The idea of virginity has become one of the most popular Christian ideas. Our Lady is the beginning of it all. It was to be virginity in wedlock, for no other kind of virginity could explain the Gospel. She was, in the words of the Evangelist, "a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David" (Luke i. 27). On the other hand, her reply to the Angel’s message is absolute and emphatic: "How shall this be done, because I know not man?" (Luke i. 34.) Virginity was Mary’s irrevocable resolve. Such resolve had come to her not from her people’s tradition, but from heaven.

But on this first, this personal virginity, there is grafted another virginity, the virginity of the divine motherhood. It might be said in a general way that the early Christian generations were more captivated by the virginity of motherhood in Mary, whilst in our own times we think more of Mary’s personal virginity. Our Liturgy, which, of course, speaks the earlier Christian mind, is full of the virginity of the divine motherhood; it never tires of the great antithesis that Mary is at the same time Virgin and Mother: Salve, sancta par ens enixa puerpera regem. Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore sumens illud Ave. Rubum, quern viderai Moyses incombustum, conservatam agnovimus tuam laudabilem virginitatem, Dei Genitrix. These are a few of the ways in which the older Christian generations expressed their faith in Mary’s virginity. It is nearly always the virginity of the Mother that fills them with holy admiration.

Mary’s virginity as the Mother of God is more than a mere preservation of her personal virginity.

It is a virginity of a higher kind, a virginity that is truly a divine mystery. It is a supereminent virginity, a supernatural gift abiding in Mary’s bodily frame, of such quality as is not found in the purest maiden here on earth. Mary’s motherhood is Mary’s virginity, and Mary is the Virgin of virgins, virgo virginum, in virtue of her divine motherhood, as such motherhood implies an action of the Holy Ghost in the very springs of Mary’s life that raised Mary’s blood to the plane of divine incorruptibility. To say that Mary remained virgin in spite of her being Mother would not be an adequate rendering of her unique privilege. If we say merely that Mary’s virginity was safeguarded in the higher grace of her motherhood, we admit, indeed, a marvellous thing, a miraculous operation on the part of God ; but we seem to imply that the divine motherhood might have been a danger to the virginity, which danger was averted by a miraculous interposition. In that case the virginity of Mary, though miraculously preserved, would yet be the natural virginity of the human maiden. A glorious thing indeed it would be, and many a passage of the liturgical prayers of the Church speaks of the preservation of the virginity in this more elementary way. But surely there is more in Mary’s virginity. She is the virgin she is, not in spite of her mother hood but because of her motherhood. The divine quality that has made Mary’s flesh into the Mother she is, also made her into the Virgin she is, a virgin of no mere earthly integrity but of heavenly life. Her virginity is a positive, divine quality, not simply a preservation of the natural maiden state. When Mary challenged for one moment Gabriel’s astonishing message with the query that went to the very root of the matter: "How shall this be done, because I know not man", she asked for a solution of the double difficulty of the motherhood and the preservation of virginity. How can one who knows not man become a mother, and how can one who has resolved upon virginity possess the honour of maternity? The Archangel’s answer unfolds the mystery of the new divine paternity, and in that act of God’s paternity there is contained for Mary not only a motherhood such as there never was, but also a virginity not known human and truly incomprehensible to man.

The active principle in that begetting of a new life is the Holy Ghost: "The Holy Ghost shall come down upon thee ". The divine action, "the power of the Most High which will be as the paternal origin of the One to be born, is a far-reaching, all-transforming action. The sanctity and the power of the active principle in Christ’s temporal generation are the twofold solution of Mary’s twofold difficulty. The Archangel assures Mary that she will find not only her motherhood but also her virginity, a virginity far superior to the one she knew of.

The supereminent virginity of the Mother thus becomes with the sanctity of the active principle

the contributory cause of the sanctity of the Off spring. "And therefore also the Holy which shall

be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

"Holy and spotless virginity, with what praise shall I extol thee I know not, for thou didst enclose in thy womb Him Whom the heavens cannot contain." These words of the Roman Breviary describe well any writer’s embarrassment when he tries to expatiate on Mary’s virginity. Divine maternity is incompatible with the loss of virginity, and the mode in which the Son of God took blood from Mary’s veins brought physical nature, brought created human life, brought human blood into a relationship with the God of all sanctity such as no created intellect can understand. Mary’s life and God’s life were fused in one sublime spiritual result, the conception of the God Incarnate: Qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine. This article of the Creed must have been sweet music to the older generations of Christians, as to them the virginity of Mary’s maternity was evidently a source of endless spiritual joy. Let us hasten back to that majestic conceit of the Virgin; let us see in the great virginity one of God’s masterpieces in the supernatural order of things. There ought to be in us an instinctive sympathy for that spiritual marvel, since we are the children of God of whom it is said that they "are born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 13).