Mary's Assumption

[RyanBlack]

I am not going to even go there, not for you or anyone else. I ONLY believe what the Dogma of the Assumption DID say, not speculate on what it DIDN"T say and try to impose that on others!!! There IS NO “absolute” certainty of her “death”. NO ONE was there, only her and God. And the Holy Spirit only shared with us the Dogma of the Assumption. God Bless, Memaw

Again, you are wrong to assert that no one was there. You do not know that, and in fact, there is more support in the the traditions of the Church for the position that she did die and that there were witnesses than there is for your position, which add things to the actual dogmatic statement, in spite of your claims not to do so.

 

[RyanBlack]

Since when are only dogmatically defined positions trustworthy? Since when is the Magisterium only guided by the Holy Spirit when they issue infallible teaching? It is abundantly clear that Pope Pius XII affirmed the traditional teaching that the Theotokos died. It is also abundantly clear that Pope St. John Paul II did.

 

[RyanBlack]

I ONLY believe what the Dogma of the Assumption DID say, not speculate on what it DIDN"T say and try to impose that on others!!!

Oh, but you do. When you insist “no one was there,” you do exactly that.

 

[Eric_Hilbert]

Charity please

 

[Memaw]

Oh, but you do. When you insist “no one was there,” you do exactly that.

OK, you tell me who was there, besides God and the Blessed Mother. And you prove it with “facts” not just speculation! No matter how pious it may be. God Bless, Memaw

 

[Peregrinans]

This entire thread just solidifies in my position that the Catholic faith has gotten way too complicated. I thought the whole point of doctrines/dogmas was to clarify teachings and that they always teach us something about Christ. The OP wanted to know where the idea of the Assumption is found biblically and what other nonCatholic faiths have the belief… And it is obvious that we Catholics have anything but “clarity” on this teaching. So what did making it dogma accomplish, except that now we are obliged to believe in a teaching about which we have little core information and that seems to breed confusion and doesnt teach us anything about Christ we didn’t already know.

I give up. I will just believe that Mary was taken up into heaven, and try not to think about the how’s, why’s and ifs and just hope there isn’t a “need” for a 5th Marian dogma.

 

[Memaw]

I suggest you talk to a priest or ask an apologist. I have supported my point. The Dogma of the Assumption!! God Bless, Memaw

 

[Memaw]

This entire thread just solidifies in my position that the Catholic faith has gotten way too complicated. I thought the whole point of doctrines/dogmas was to clarify teachings and that they always teach us something about Christ. The OP wanted to know where the idea of the Assumption is found biblically and why the Church made it a mandatory belief for Catholic. And it is obvious that we Catholics have anything but “clarity” on this teaching. So what did making it dogma accomplish, except that now we are obliged to believe in a teaching about which we have little core information and that seems to breed confusion and doesnt teach us anything about Christ we didn’t already know.

I give up. I will just believe that Mary was taken up into heaven, and try not to think about the how’s, why’s and ifs and just hope there isn’t a “need” for a 5th Marian dogma.

The Dogma does teach us everything we need to know about Mary’s Assumption. But that’s not enough for some. NO Pope since then has made any other Infallible statements to add anything else to it. So it must be complete. I am satisfied with that. It’s not the Church that breeds confusion! God Bless, Memaw

 

[RyanBlack]

OK, you tell me who was there, besides God and the Blessed Mother. And you prove it with “facts” not just speculation! No matter how pious it may be. God Bless, Memaw

Traditions of the Church are not mere speculation. Traditional teaching is that the Apostles, except for St. Thomas, were present with the Theotokos at the time of her death. Your pontifications that no one was present are contrary to your claim that you add nothing to the dogmatic teaching. I’m not saying that you are required to believe this tradition. What I am saying is that when you insist that there were no witnesses, you deny an ancient tradition of that has not been rejected or replaced by the Dogma of the Assumption.

 

[KnitNut]

OK, you tell me who was there, besides God and the Blessed Mother. And you prove it with “facts” not just speculation! No matter how pious it may be. God Bless, Memaw

But Memaw, this works both ways…the dogma doesn’t say she was ALONE, either. (I just read it. If I’ve misread it, please show me the correct paragraph.)

So you are “speculating”, too. You are BLASTING people, yet you’re on the same footing - there is no comment EITHER WAY, in the dogma.

The difference is, the others have writings of the Fathers, and of multiple RC popes, backing them up in the belief that she died, and that it was witnessed. Can you point to a single Father, or a single pope, who specifically say she was alone? Please don’t blast back - merely provide a single source supporting your claim…or say, “I don’t have one. It’s just what I personally choose to believe.”

This discussion is one of the unintended consequences of trying to make things dogma that…well…aren’t truly necessary for one’s salvation. smh Lord have mercy.

 

[RyanBlack]

It seems abundantly clear to me that, in spite of the lack of witnesses asserted by Memaw, Pope Pius XII affirmed and taught that the Theotokos did in fact die and was resurrected.

From Munificentissimus Deus:

1. “Thus St. John Damascene, an outstanding herald of this traditional truth, spoke out with powerful eloquence when he compared the bodily Assumption of the loving Mother of God with her other prerogatives and privileges. ‘It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father. It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God.’”
2. "**These words of St. John Damascene agree perfectly with what others have taught on this same subject. **Statements no less clear and accurate are to be found in sermons delivered by Fathers of an earlier time or of the same period, particularly on the occasion of this feast. And so, to cite some other examples, St. Germanus of Constantinople considered the fact that the body of Mary, the virgin Mother of God, was incorrupt and had been taken up into heaven to be in keeping, not only with her divine motherhood, but also with the special holiness of her virginal body. ‘You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissolution into dust. Though still human, it is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged and sharing in perfect life.’ And another very ancient writer asserts: ‘As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him.’

 

[RyanBlack]

Also from Munificentissimus Deus:

1. In the liturgical books which deal with the feast either of the dormition or of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin there are expressions that agree in testifying that, when the Virgin Mother of God passed from this earthly exile to heaven, what happened to her sacred body was, by the decree of divine Providence, in keeping with the dignity of the Mother of the Word Incarnate, and with the other privileges she had been accorded. Thus, to cite an illustrious example, this is set forth in that sacramentary which Adrian I, our predecessor of immortal memory, sent to the Emperor Charlemagne. These words are found in this volume: “Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten your Son our Lord incarnate from herself.”
2. However, since the liturgy of the Church does not engender the Catholic faith, but rather springs from it, in such a way that the practices of the sacred worship proceed from the faith as the fruit comes from the tree, it follows that the holy Fathers and the great Doctors, in the homilies and sermons they gave the people on this feast day, did not draw their teaching from the feast itself as from a primary source, but rather they spoke of this doctrine as something already known and accepted by Christ’s faithful. They presented it more clearly. They offered more profound explanations of its meaning and nature, bringing out into sharper light the fact that this feast shows, not only that the dead body of the Blessed Virgin Mary remained incorrupt, but that she gained a triumph out of death, her heavenly glorification after the example of her only begotten Son, Jesus Christ-truths that the liturgical books had frequently touched upon concisely and briefly.
3. Thus St. John Damascene, an outstanding herald of this traditional truth, spoke out with powerful eloquence when he compared the bodily Assumption of the loving Mother of God with her other prerogatives and privileges. “It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father. It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God.”
4. In like manner St. Francis de Sales, after asserting that it is wrong to doubt that Jesus Christ has himself observed, in the most perfect way, the divine commandment by which children are ordered to honor their parents, asks this question: “What son would not bring his mother back to life and would not bring her into paradise after her death if he could?” And St. Alphonsus writes that “Jesus did not wish to have the body of Mary corrupted after death, since it would have redounded to his own dishonor to have her virginal flesh, from which he himself had assumed flesh, reduced to dust.”
5. Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, 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.

 

[Peter_J]

This is a really silly debate.

Don’t worry, I’m used to it.

But seriously …

We don’t need to wait for a special papal definition to believe things that have always been believed.

Well said.

 

[Peter_J]

That’s what worldly thinking might lead one to expect, but this King has but one bride. It is the Church.

No argument.

But consider, perhaps the Queen-Mother tradition in Israel was not solely due to kings being polygamous.

 

[RyanBlack]

From the General Audience of Pope St. John Paul II, 25 June 1997:

Mary and the human drama of death

1. Concerning the end of Mary’s earthly life, the Council uses the terms of the Bull defining the dogma of the Assumption and states: “The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over” (Lumen gentium, n. 59). With this formula, the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, following my Venerable Predecessor Pius XII, made no pronouncement on the question of Mary’s death. Nevertheless, Pius XII did not intend to deny the fact of her death, but merely did not judge it opportune to affirm solemnly the death of the Mother of God as a truth to be accepted by all believers.
   Some theologians have in fact maintained that the Blessed Virgin did not die and was immediately raised from earthly life to heavenly glory. However, this opinion was unknown until the 17th century, whereas a common tradition actually exists which sees Mary’s death as her entry into heavenly glory.
2. Could Mary of Nazareth have experienced the drama of death in her own flesh? Reflecting on Mary’s destiny and her relationship with her divine Son, it seems legitimate to answer in the affirmative: since Christ died, it would be difficult to maintain the contrary for his Mother.
   **The Fathers of the Church, who had no doubts in this regard, reasoned along these lines. One need only quote St Jacob of Sarug (†521), who wrote that when the time came for Mary “to walk on the way of all generations”, the way, that is, of death, “the group of the Twelve Apostles” gathered to bury “the virginal body of the Blessed One” **(Discourse on the burial of the Holy Mother of God, 87-99 in C. Vona, Lateranum 19 [1953], 188). St Modestus of Jerusalem (†634), after a lengthy discussion of “the most blessed dormition of the most glorious Mother of God”, ends his eulogy by exalting the miraculous intervention of Christ who “raised her from the tomb”, to take her up with him in glory (Enc. in dormitionem Deiparae semperque Virginis Mariae, nn. 7 and 14: PG 86 bis, 3293; 3311). St John Damascene (†704) for his part asks: “Why is it that she who in giving birth surpassed all the limits of nature should now bend to its laws, and her immaculate body be subjected to death?”. And he answers: “To be clothed in immortality, it is of course necessary that the mortal part be shed, since even the master of nature did not refuse the experience of death. Indeed, he died according to the flesh and by dying destroyed death; on corruption he bestowed incorruption and made death the source of resurrection” (Panegyric on the Dormition of the Mother of God, n. 10: SC 80, 107).
3. It is true that in Revelation death is presented as a punishment for sin. However, the fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality. The Mother is not superior to the Son who underwent death, giving it a new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation.
   Involved in Christ’s redemptive work and associated in his saving sacrifice, Mary was able to share in his suffering and death for the sake of humanity’s Redemption. What Severus of Antioch says about Christ also applies to her: “Without a preliminary death, how could the Resurrection have taken place?” (Antijulianistica, Beirut 1931, 194f.). To share in Christ’s Resurrection, Mary had first to share in his death.
4. The New Testament provides no information on the circumstances of Mary’s death. This silence leads one to suppose that it happened naturally, with no detail particularly worthy of mention. If this were not the case, how could the information about it have remained hidden from her contemporaries and not have been passed down to us in some way?
   As to the cause of Mary’s death, the opinions that wish to exclude her from death by natural causes seem groundless. It is more important to look for the Blessed Virgin’s spiritual attitude at the moment of her departure from this world. In this regard, St Francis de Sales maintains that Mary’s death was due to a transport of love. He speaks of a dying “in love, from love and through love”, going so far as to say that the Mother of God died of love for her Son Jesus (Treatise on the Love of God, bk. 7, ch. XIII-XIV).
   Whatever from the physical point of view was the organic, biological cause of the end of her bodily life, it can be said that for Mary the passage from this life to the next was the full development of grace in glory, so that no death can ever be so fittingly described as a “dormition” as hers.
5. In some of the writings of the Church Fathers we find Jesus himself described as coming to take his Mother at the time of her death to bring her into heavenly glory. In this way they present the death of Mary as an event of love which conducted her to her divine Son to share his immortal life. At the end of her earthly life, she must have experienced, like Paul and more strongly, the desire to be freed from her body in order to be with Christ forever (cf. Phil 1:23).
   The experience of death personally enriched the Blessed Virgin: by undergoing mankind’s common destiny, she can more effectively exercise her spiritual motherhood towards those approaching the last moment of their life.

 

[RyanBlack]

OK, you tell me who was there, besides God and the Blessed Mother. And you prove it with “facts” not just speculation! No matter how pious it may be. God Bless, Memaw

May I suggest you address that to two saints of the Church: Pope St. John Paul II and St. Jacob of Sarug?

From his General Audience, 25 June 1997

1. Could Mary of Nazareth have experienced the drama of death in her own flesh? Reflecting on Mary’s destiny and her relationship with her divine Son, it seems legitimate to answer in the affirmative: since Christ died, it would be difficult to maintain the contrary for his Mother.
   The Fathers of the Church, who had no doubts in this regard, reasoned along these lines. One need only quote St Jacob of Sarug (†521), who wrote that when the time came for Mary “to walk on the way of all generations”, the way, that is, of death, “the group of the Twelve Apostles” gathered to bury “the virginal body of the Blessed One” (Discourse on the burial of the Holy Mother of God, 87-99 in C. Vona, Lateranum 19 [1953], 188).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Your assuming an awful lot here, where is your infallible proof? My Infallible proof did NOT say that Mary died or that her soul was separated from her body, or that she resurrected!! God Bless, Memaw

Where the assuming exactly Memaw ?
That is a natural reading of the texts and the mind of the writers if one has a full understanding of history, context and all the theological motifs in play.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

An icon is not infallible either.But the Dogma is. God Bless. Memaw

Memaw here is the clear error in Catholic understanding of the Assumption.

If you believe the below icon (which clearly shows Mary’s soul separated from her body) contradicts the Dogma of the Assumption then your understanding of the Dogma is mistaken sorry.

Nobody on this forum will agree with you on this point the from what I see.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I am saying tradition and the Pope’s teach Mary died and they may not be validly interpreted as saying otherwise. That teaching has not yet been infallible declared.

In contradistinction the Church is silent and purposely ambiguous on this point in its infallible declarations.

That Mary did not die is not a teaching of the Pope’s but only of theologians since C17 and perhaps one or two major theologians before that time.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I did NOT ever say that the word “intact” was in the Dogma of the Assumption. I used it to explain that her body and soul never separated at the time of her Assumption. Others used the word “complete” but I never accused them of asserting that word in the dogma. did you? or the word “together”. Seems to me others are asserting much more into this subject than I. I have stated many times, I believe fully in the Dogma of the Assumption and not all your carryings on. God Bless, Memaw

It’s good to see you have changed your view then Memaw.
It would be banal to hold you only meant her body and soul were conjoined when she entered heaven. That is patently obvious to all here.

At first you clearly asserted the Dogma was saying more than the above banality.