Today we celebrate the feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, body and soul. Mary completed her work on earth. The Assumption completes God’s work in her. It was fitting that the flesh that had given life to God himself should never undergo corruption. The Assumption is the crowning of God’s 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 not only look to the past, but 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.
Pope Pius XII hoped that meditating on Mary’s life and her miraculous return to God would make us “more and more convinced of the value of a human life, entirely devoted to carrying out the heavenly Father’s will and to bringing good to others,” he wrote in the Pray to Mary for she is our Perpetual Help, and gateway to heaven.
Brother Andy Patin, C.Ss.R.
