Mary’s Assumption Part 3

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What does the Dogma Say?

APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION OF
POPE PIUS XII  

MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS

DEFINING THE DOGMA OF THE ASSUMPTION

November 1, 1950

https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html

  1. Actually God, who from all eternity regards Mary with a most favorable and unique affection, has “when the fullness of time came”(2) put the plan of his providence into effect in such a way that all the privileges and prerogatives he had granted to her in his sovereign generosity were to shine forth in her in a kind of perfect harmony. And, although the Church has always recognized this supreme generosity and the perfect harmony of graces and has daily studied them more and more throughout the course of the centuries, still it is in our own age that the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly.
  2. Now God 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.
  3. Christ’s faithful, through the teaching and the leadership of their pastors, have learned from the sacred books that the Virgin Mary, throughout the course of her earthly pilgrimage, led a life troubled by cares, hardships, and sorrows, and that, moreover, what the holy old man Simeon had foretold actually came to pass, that is, that a terribly sharp sword pierced her heart as she stood under the cross of her divine Son, our Redeemer. In the same way, it was not difficult for them to admit that the great Mother of God, like her only begotten Son, had actually passed from this life. But this in no way prevented them from believing and from professing openly that her sacred body had never been subject to the corruption of the tomb, and that the august tabernacle of the Divine Word had never been reduced to dust and ashes. Actually, enlightened by divine grace and moved by affection for her, God’s Mother and our own dearest Mother, they have contemplated in an ever clearer light the wonderful harmony and order of those privileges which the most provident God has lavished upon this loving associate of our Redeemer, privileges which reach such an exalted plane that, except for her, nothing created by God other than the human nature of Jesus Christ has ever reached this level.
  1. Among the holy writers who at that time employed statements and various images and analogies of Sacred Scripture to Illustrate and to confirm the doctrine of the Assumption, which was piously believed, the Evangelical Doctor, St. Anthony of Padua, holds a special place. On the feast day of the Assumption, while explaining the prophet’s words: “I will glorify the place of my feet,”(27) he stated it as certain that the divine Redeemer had bedecked with supreme glory his most beloved Mother from whom he had received human flesh. He asserts that “you have here a clear statement that the Blessed Virgin has been assumed in her body, where was the place of the Lord’s feet. Hence it is that the holy Psalmist writes: ‘Arise, O Lord, into your resting place: you and the ark which you have sanctified.”‘ And he asserts that, just as Jesus Christ has risen from the death over which he triumphed and has ascended to the right hand of the Father, so likewise the ark of his sanctification “has risen up, since on this day the Virgin Mother has been taken up to her heavenly dwelling.”(28)

  2. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, 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.

  3. 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.

Mary and the Fathers of the ChurchLuigi Bambero (Ignatius, San Francisco) 1999, 353

Mary our life, sweetest, and hope

Mary shows that there is a place prepared for us: body & soul

Catholic Art work Immaculate Conception & Assumption from the beginning

Assumption Proclamation & All Saints Day

Her reality can be ours

Canonized versus non-canonized saints

Necessary to ponder on mysteries of the Faith & Rosary

Patristic Father from the West

Gregory of Tours bishop during barbarian invasions, ill health, did not want to be bishop but the people of Tours requested him for bishop and he finally agreed.

(d 594) Patristic Father

First writer in the west to hand on apocryphal tradition from a Greek text, now lost.

“Finally, when blessed Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was about to be called from this world, all the apostles, coming from their different regions, gathered together in her house. When they heard that she was about to taken up out of the world, they kept watch together with her.

And behold, the Lord Jesus came with his angles and taking her soul handed it over the archangel Michael and withdrew. At dawn, the apostles lifted up her body on a pallet, laid it in a tomb, and kept watch over it, awaiting the coming of the Lord. And behold, again the Lord presented himself to them and ordered that her holy body be taken and carried up to heaven. There she is now, joined one more to her soul; she exults with the elect, rejoicing in the eternal blessings that will have no end.”

The apostles were always considered the most authoritative and best- qualified eyewitnesses to the mysteries of salvation. They witnessed everything of Jesus’ public life. There is a certain logic, of faith, that they should be eye witnesses to the Assumption of Mary into heaven. The Church has ever held a tight connection between the mystery of Christ and the mystery of the Mother of Christ.

P354 Mary’s bodily glorification in the eternal life of heaven expresses the Church’s faith in the final glorification of man, saved by Jesus Christ in the totality of his person. In the flesh of Christ and in the flesh of Mary, both of whom were taken up into glory of heaven, the eschatological humanity of the redeemed is already present.

Mary is in heaven and man has lively hope that we will too. Christ raised from dead, Mary preserved from sin by the salvific work of Christ.

New Eve & New Adam in New Jerusalem. This is our hope too.