The Church has not taken a position on this issue or whether Mary was Assumed into Heaven while still alive or whether she died first. All these issues are left open for individual interpretation.
**Hardly true.
The Church is VERY clear that the Theotokos, like her Son, suffered physical death.
This is emphasized in the liturgical texts of the Byzantine Churches. (Lex orandi, lex credendi.)
Furthermore, the Roman office of the Assumption promulgated by Pius XII at the time he declared it a dogma of faith has this in one of the Matins lessons (the fifth, to be exact), from a sermon by St. John of Damascus.
“But she yielded obedience to the law established by him to whom she had given birth, and, as the daughter of the old Adam, underwent the old sentence, which even her Son, who is the very Life Itself, had not refused [that is, physical death[/COLOR]] ; but, as the Mother of the living God, she was worthily taken by him unto himself.”"**
The following was written by Robert Haddad
Robert Haddad has been actively involved in catechetical and apologetical work since 1990.
After receiving over 85 000 petitions from Religious and Clergy, and over 8 000 000 from the lay faithful, Pope Pius XII infallibly proclaimed and defined the Dogma of the Virgin Mary’s assumption on November 1, 1950:
"The Immaculate Mother of God, Mary Ever-Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed, body and soul, into heavenly glory."27
This Definition, though, left open the question as to whether the Virgin Mary died before being assumed into heaven. Prima facie, as the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin due to being immaculately conceived, She would also have been free from all its consequences, death being one of them. There are a number of great saints and theologians, however, such as St. Louis de Montfort, who hold that the Virgin Mary did die before being assumed due to Her wishing to be more conformed to Her Son who died for all humanity. Yet, this death was not accompanied by pain and suffering but rather, according to St. Francis de Sales, was a death of love, with Her soul leaving Her body out of Her great desire to be re-united with Christ.
The theological reasoning for belief in the assumption of the Virgin Mary is as follows: Christ, by His glorious death, resurrection and ascension, gained a perfect victory over the devil, sin and death. The Virgin Mary, as the immaculately conceived Mother of God and the New Eve, is most intimately associated with Christ’s perfect victory (Gen. 3, 15). If there was no assumption of the Virgin Mary, She would have been vanquished by death and Her parallelism with Christ would therefore be destroyed.28
No one can reasonably doubt that the Virgin Mary’s soul is now in heaven; Jesus Christ would not have it otherwise: “A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars…And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12, 1-5). The doctrine of the Virgin Mary’s assumption is not contained explicitly in Scripture, but the fact that Scripture does not record an event is no absolute argument against it. The Bible does not record the death of St. Joseph either, but all believe this must have happened.29
Belief in the Virgin Mary’s assumption can be traced back to the earliest days of the Church. A first century work attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite entitled the “Books of Divine Names” records a funeral panegyric pronounced by a said Hierotheus, who purported that the Apostles had been divinely warned of the impending death of the Virgin Mary. All, except St. Thomas, managed to return in time for Her death and funeral. For three days the Apostles and other faithful kept up a vigil at the Virgin’s tomb, where they heard at times the distinct sound of heavenly music. When St. Thomas finally arrived, he requested to see the body of the Virgin Mary. To everyone’s surprise, when the tomb was opened Her body was not there, only flowers and Her burial shroud being left in the sepulchre.30
As early as the fifth century Catholics were celebrating a “memorial of Mary.” This primitive celebration eventually evolved into the Feast of the Dormition (falling asleep) of the Virgin. Also in the fifth century St. Augustine would write:
"This venerable day has dawned, the day that surpasses all the festivals of the saints, this most exalted and most solemn day on which the Blessed Virgin was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. On this day the queenly Virgin was exalted to the very throne of God the Father, and elevated to such a height that the angelic spirits are in admiration."31
Further homilies on the Assumption appeared during the 6th century. In the 8th century the following prayer was written for August 15:
"On this day the Holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but could not be held fast by the bonds of death, who gave birth to Our Lord made flesh."32
The bodies of the glorious Apostles, the Martyrs who shed their blood for Christ, men and women noted for their holiness, have been carefully preserved and venerated in the Church from the beginning of Christianity. While the remains of St. Peter and St. Paul are jealously possessed in Rome, no Christian city or centre has ever claimed to possess the bodily remains of the Virgin Mary. No doubt relics of the Virgin Mary would have been regarded of greater value than those of other Apostles or Saints, so close She was to Christ.
Continued in next post
but that’s my individual interpretation.