August 15
Saints of the Day

Solemnity of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary... Mary Queen

    The Assumption of Mary, taken up by God with her body and soul into Heaven, is the forth Dogma on Virgin Mary proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in his Munificentissimus Deus in 1950:

    "We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: 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. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith" (44-45)...

     ... "it is our hope that belief in Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven will make our belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective" (42)...

     ... "as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages" (40).

    Another translation of the Munificentissimus Deus

    "Assumption" means here "to be taken up" body and soul to Heaven. It is not Ascension, like Jesus, done by his own power, but Assumption done by the power of God. It is something God did for her, not something she did herself. It is a gift of God as a result of Christ's redemptive power applied to Virgin Mary. The Dogma says,  "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection".

    The Assumption was God's way of finishing the job he started at Mary's Immaculate Conception, redeeming her body from the effects of sin as well.

    Why to Mary?: She was the Mother of Jesus, and Jesus did what you and I would have done with our mothers if we would have the power: Jesus did not allow the hands that cared for him to be corrupted, nor the heart that love him so much... if he did it to Enoch and Elijah, why not to his Mother?.

    The Blessed Mother died, like Jesus, but her body was never corrupted, was taken up to heaven, and for this reason there are not relics of the body of Mary. The Dogma doesn't say she never died.

    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

A most relevant Dogma:

    This Dogma was proclaimed in our days, in the 20th century, and it is most relevant for our life and hopes...however, for many Catholics it is the forgotten Dogma, it is there but good for nothing...

    The Assumption of Mary reminds us that our bodies too will be redeemed... we will be in Heaven with the same body and soul we have now, recognized by all our friends!... and in Hell we will have the same body and soul we have now, recognized also by all our relatives and friends!... The Christian hope is not so much the immortality of the soul, which many pagans affirm, but the Resurrection of the Body.

    The dogma states that "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians."

    When the fullness of redemption comes, then, it will include our bodies, not simply our souls...

     ... St. Paul puts it this way: "... in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality..." (1Cor.15:52-54).    

    The Body and Blood of Mary in the Eucharist:

    Right now there are only two persons in Heaven with their human body and soul: Jesus and Mary... the body of all the other Saints is in the cemetery or in relics... and at the Second Coming of Jesus, at the sound of the trumpet, they will raise imperishable, with their bodies transformed with immortality... but right now, only Jesus an Mary are in body and soul in Heaven.

    Now, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive Jesus, his body and blood and soul and divinity, ... and where Jesus is, all the Heaven is, the Father, and the Spirit, and all the Angels and Saints... there is no way that Jesus is in some place and the rest of Heaven in another!... so, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive the whole Heaven with Jesus, including the Father and the Holy Spirit, and yes, we receive Mary just as she is in Heaven right now, with her body and blood and soul, praise the lord!... what a beautiful Communion we must have daily at the Holy Mass!.

The Assumption of Mary and the Church:

    The Dogma states, "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians."

     The Preface of the Assumption reads: "She was taken up to heaven as "the beginning and the pattern of the Church in its perfection, and a sign of hope and comfort for your people on their pilgrim way."

    All the prophecies in the Bible about Mary can be applied to the Church, and all the prophecies about the Church can be applied to Mary. The same applies to her life: We should understand Mary in light of the mystery of the Church. Vatican II's Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, tells us that Mary is a symbol or icon of the Church, of all Christians. She is a model of the Church, and The Assumption of Mary points to a profound gift to all believers, the resurrection of the body!.

     The Assumption is an anticipation of the hope of all men, the Resurrection of the Body!, of the full body and soul. It is a symbol of the general resurrection of all believers, of what the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and Bride of Christ will experience at the end of history.

    Christ is our model, of course. But Mary was not God, she was a human person, like you and I, redeemed by Christ, who lived on earth humbly the live of Christ in us, like you and I!... and as the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, the "human person" consists of body and soul, of matter and spirit (nos.3632-368)...

    ... A fully redeemed human person, then, would be redeemed in body as well as soul, as was the Blessed Virgin Mary. The dogma of the Assumption means that the Virgin Mary now experiences in heaven that union of glorified body and soul which her Son enjoys. She is no disembodied spirit, but a complete human person, body and soul, matter and spirit, reigning with Christ.

    Lumen Gentium tells us, "the Mother of Jesus in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth ... a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God" (no. 68).

Feast of the Assumption:

    The Assumption is the first feast celebrated to honor Virgin Mary, and her most important one... and it is the main feast of my village, Pinilla de Toro, Zamora, Spain.

    After the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher 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", where she was buried, close to Mount Zion, near Gethsemane. On the hill itself was the "Place of Dormition", or "falling sleep",  where she had died, located today in the Benedictine Abbey Church of the Dormition, near the Cenacle in Jerusalem.

    At this time, 336, the "Memory of Mary" was being celebrated. In the 5th century Christians celebrated a feast on August 15 called the "Memorial of Mary," that in the next century came to be called "Mary's Dormition" or "falling asleep." This eastern feast was adopted by Rome in the 7th century and its title changed to the "Assumption."

    To this day Greek Orthodox celebrate the death of Mary with a procession from the Benedictine Abbey Church of the Dormition, located near the Cenacle in Jerusalem, to the place of burial in Gethsemane, the Tomb of Mary. Muslims, who honor the Mother of Jesus, also take part in this procession.

    I went down into an underground cave in the Tomb of Mary, near Gethsemane, that had a glassed-off section where you could reach in to touch the spot believed to be where Mary's body "slept" until assumed into Heaven.

    The Byzantine Emperor Mauritius (582-602) established the celebration of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Aug. 15 for the Eastern Church, and some historians speculate that the celebration was already widespread before the Council of Ephesus in 431. By the seventh century, the West likewise celebrated the Feast of the Assumption. While the Church first emphasized the death of Mary, gradual shifts in both title and content occurred, so that by the end of the eighth century, the Gregorian Sacramentary had prayers for Assumption Day.

    The Assumption looks to eternity and gives us hope that we, too, will follow Our Lady when our life is ended.

Mary Queen:

   The Queenship of Mary is corollary of the Dogma, "exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things".

   Mary is three times Queen:

    The Queen of the world, the Queen of Heaven, and the Queen of our hearts... for being the Mother of the King, the Daughter of the King, and the Spouse of the King... the lovely riddle of the Psalm 45, the Psalm of the King and Queen, where the Queen is the Mother, Spouse and Daughter of the King... and for it, the Psalm ends up with the prophetic words applied by Mary to herself in her Magnificat: "I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever" (Ps.45:17), "From now on all generations will call me blessed, will praise me" (Lk.1:48).

    "The Queen over all things"!, states the Dogma.

    1- The Mother of a King is the Queen-Mother in all kingdoms... Jesus is the King of Kings, so his Mother is the Queen of Queens... the Queen of the world.

    2- The Spouse of the King is the Queen!, in all kingdoms... The Holy Spirit is the King of our hearts, so his Spouse, Mary, is the Queen of our hearts.

    3- Mary, for being the most favored one of the Father, of Lk.1:28, she is the Princess of Heaven, the Queen of Heaven!, for being the Mother of the King of Heaven and the Spouse of the King of Heaven, praise the Lord!.

     She is Queen and Mother of mercy... she has power and lots of love to you and me!... the love of a sweet and caring Mother...

    "Mercy" is different than "Justice":

    "Justice" is to give to the child what he deserves... "Mercy" is to give to the child something good when he deserves a chastisement or a reprimand...

    ... All the mothers on earth are specialists in Mercy: If the child comes home all right, they almost don't care about him... but if he comes home bleeding and with the suit dirt and torn after a fight, the mother forgets about everything, she is all for her child, to care for him, to clean him, to kiss him all over... it looks like the child has to do something wrong to get the full attention of his mother!...

    ... Well, Mary, your Mother, is the super-specialist of Mercy: Do you have any serious difficulty in your life?, a very important but apparently insoluble problem?... Try Mary!... you will see wonders in your life, as I have seen in mine, praise the Lord!... If you are not a Christian, Try Her!, she is your Mother, even if you don't know it!... Try Her! 

Gallery of Art
The Five Dogmas on Mary... and 3 more coming
 

Saints of August 15: