António dos Santos
The Catholic Church celebrates the dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady on August 15th, this coming Sunday. St Germanus of Constantinople (733) puts on the lips of Jesus, who is preparing to take his Mother to Heaven, these words: “You must also be where I am, Mother inseparable of your Son.”
On November 1, 1950 (Feast of All Saints), Pope Pius XII, through the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven in body and soul.
Pius XII underlines that “in our own age the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly. That privilege has shone forth in new radiance since our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God’s Immaculate Conception. These two privileges are most closely bound to one another.”
In Munificentissimus Deus, Pius XII tells us that Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through Baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. The Holy Father adds “Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul.”
But “God,” the Pope emphasized, “has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule; she, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”
The Apostolic Constitution states that, “when it was solemnly proclaimed that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, was from the very beginning free from the taint of original sin, the minds of the faithful were filled with a stronger hope that the day might soon come when the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven would also be defined by the Church’s supreme teaching authority.”
Pius XII noted that, in fact, it was seen that not only individual Catholics, but also those who could speak for nations or ecclesiastical provinces, and even a considerable number of the Fathers of the Vatican Council, urgently petitioned the Apostolic See to this effect.
“Various testimonies, indications and signs of this common belief of the Church are evident from remote times down through the course of the centuries; and this same belief becomes more clearly manifest from day to day. The feast was already celebrated under the name of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of God, in the time of St Leo IV (9th century),” recalled the Pope.
The Sistine Chapel – an incalculable artistic treasure – World Heritage Site, was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary during the first Mass celebrated there by Pope Sixtus IV, on August 15, 1483 (the Solemnity of the Assumption).
We also note that the Feast of Our Lady “Queen of Heaven and Earth” is celebrated on the 22nd of August. (Image: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1637), Peter Paul Rubens, high altar of the Carthusian Church in Brussels.)
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