What We Might Become

Solemnity of the Assumption. Fr Gregory Murphy places today’s celebration in its vital historical context.

The belief that Our Lady was taken up body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life has been celebrated in both Eastern and Western Christianity (with some minor differences) since the 4^th century, as, respectively, the feast of the Dormition (falling asleep) or the Assumption. This was defined as a dogma of the Church, that is a religious truth established by Divine Revelation and defined by the Church, by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

As my confrere Fergus Kerr OP has noted, concepts do not just appear from a vacuum. There is some, if tenuous, biblical warrant for the idea that exceptionally distinguished servants of God might be taken directly into his presence at the end of their earthly lives, most spectacularly in Elijah being taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot in the presence of his successor Elisha (2 Kings); also the mysterious figure of Enoch listed as the father of Methuselah (Gen 5). Similarly, no tomb was ever ascribed to Moses and in Jewish piety he too was understood to be taken directly into God’s presence at the close of his life.

In the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, Pius XII presents the definition as the natural  consequence of Mary’s Immaculate Conception (defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854), saying in effect that it was fitting by this unique grace that she was not subject to the corruption of the grave, affirming and extending the long-held tradition of the Church.

The importance of Marian devotion in the Church is that it helps us to better appreciate the mystery of Christ, the nature of the Church and our place in it, and the great potential residing in humanity: that we ourselves, albeit in a more limited way than the Blessed Virgin, have also held out to us by God’s gift the possibility of becoming holy, becoming temples of his Holy Spirit indwelling in us and so enabled to make manifest in our lives something of the new creation.

One reason, perhaps, for Pius XII deciding that 1950 was a particularly apt time for this definition, was the huge affront to human lives and dignity that had taken place over the first half of the 20th century: the two hugely destructive world wars, the gulags and the death camps, and finally the total abandonment of any conception of just and proportionate waging of war in the use of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons. These events and their consequences still overshadow us to this day.

Against all this then, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin provides a striking counter-example of the innate dignity and worth of every human person as a child of God and, potentially, a saint. In honouring Mary in this feast we are also honouring ourselves to an extent, as Mary as our exemplar and archetype shows us what we might, perhaps, become.

Fittingly, the readings chosen for this feast from the Book of Revelation and Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians emphasise the victory of Christ over the forces of death and destruction; and the Blessed Virgin, saluted from ancient times in the Church as the new Eve, helps open up for us the new creation, the coming of the kingdom. In her Magnificat, her great song of praise to God for what he has worked through her, what he is still working through the poor and vulnerable, we are reminded of our calling to be agents of God’s mercy in the world, surrounded and supported by the loving prayers of Mary, Mother of the Church and our Mother.

Readings: Apocalypse 11:19,12:1-6,10 | 1 Corinthians 15:20-26 | Luke 1:39-56

Image: detail from Assumption of the Virgin by Annibale Carracci, photographed by and © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons