Where is Mother Mary, physically?

[otjm]

Heaven is very much a physical place.

That is what the LDS say.

 

[otjm]

Minor nit-pick

Actually, it is not a minor nit-pick. Words have meaning, and too many people throw words around as if they are more flexible than Gumby. Doing so is at least imprecise; and I applaud.

 

[EndTimes]

Why the focus on bodily assumption if no prominent teaching on Mother Mary’s physical whereabouts? If she went to another (non-physical) realm, why the focus on her physical body? And Jesus’ for that matter?

Why are you now focussing upon that?

 

[clintbranam]

I’m focusing on it because of the glorious mystery of the Assumption of Mary: if the key point is that Mary’s physical body didn’t die and she’s no longer physically here on earth, I’m just curious if there have been any good writings or thoughts on where she is, physically. I think there must be no clear teaching on this but the options that come to mind are: A. She’s physically on another planet or floating around in outer space somewhere with some sort of enhanced physical body that enables her to do this or B. She was assumed into another physical realm–likely with an enhanced body alluded to scripture. But point is: I’m not sure why the focus on her physical earthly body–the resurrected body, in which we Catholics believe–if we have in the back of our minds that heaven is likely someplace outside the physical universe or reality as we know it. Make any sense? If it weren’t a mystery of the rosary, I wouldn’t be as curious.

 

[Inbonum]

@clintbranam Apostolic Constitution of Pope PIUS XII
MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS
DEFINING THE DOGMA OF THE ASSUMPTION
http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-...-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html

 

[Zaccheus]

if the key point is that Mary’s physical body didn’t die and she’s no longer physically here on earth

The Virgin Mary’s physical body did die. Her soul went to Heaven.
Then later her body was taken up to Heaven and now she lives, body nd soul, in Heaven.

on where she is, physically. I think there must be no clear teaching on this

There is a very clear teaching on this. Physically, the Blessed Virgin is in Heaven.

–if we have in the back of our minds that heaven is likely someplace outside the physical universe or reality as we know it. Make any sense?

Heaven is both a physically real realm in which the souls of the Blessed now dwell, and a state of blessed happiness-- the Beatific Vision.
We do not know where the physical Heaven is located, and I for one think it doesn’t matter. It’s real, it’s there and we can go there in time.

Glory be to God.

 

[otjm]

As Pope John Paul 2 said, heaven is not a place; it is a state of being. So no intelligible answer can be given to the question “physically”.

We have several who have said heaven is a physical place. I repeat the above; it is not a planet circling Betelgeuse or Bellatrix or Alnitak.

Physical places are corrupt and corrupting, meaning that they are physical - and if you have ever put something in the back of the refrigerator and forgotten it, that is what I mean - a gradual decline into disorder.

Christ after the Resurrection did not have a “physical” body; he had a “resurrected” body. It appeared the same, sometimes (Read Acts - the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the Apostles, when Christ was on the shore) and sometimes not. It (He)could pass through walls and locked doors; He could bi-locate (on the road to Emmaus while appearing in the Upper Room the evening of the Resurrection). He had nail holes and a gaping wound in His side which did not bleed.

To say He had a physical body is to say He had a body that could corrupt in the grave. Not so.

The vast majority of people simply have no experience of heaven; some few have had an experience of it, and if you spoke with them, they very much experienced something and have a hard time explaining it. FWIW, some people have had what is referred to as a “near death” experience. One can choose to believe that actually happens, or not, or try to come up with some “chemistry affecting the brain” as if it is simply an unexplainable (yet) physical phenomenon. Many saints have had an experience, and there seems a thread of how they explain that reality; but they were not transported to a planet circling Betelgeuse.

Mary is with God. We cannot explain that, but God does not have a physical body (His Son has a resurrected body) and Mary would seem to have the same. Where is she? With God. Where is God? Not on some planet, in spite of what the LDS believe. And we don’t believe.

St. Paul had such an experience (2 Cor 12, 1-4), and see 1 Cor 15, particularly 35-58. Reading it and the Gospels and Acts gives us a bit of insight; but words cannot describe…

To say that heaven is a physical place is to say that God is in a physical place. Ummm… no.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Okay. The LDS also say that it is important to spend time with one’s family.

Christ is FULLY human and FULLY Divine. Humans are beings made up of body and soul. Human bodies inhabit physical planes.

 

[otjm]

But you are presuming that a resurrected body must do likewise. Source please?

 

[TheLittleLady]

My source is Christ’s resurrected body.

 

[otjm]

Then you may want to read what I have recommended; the Apostles found that Christ was the same but not the same; and I will go back to Pope John Paul 2’s comment as I presume him to be more knowledgeable than I. A resurrected body is the same except that it is not the same. When Lazarus came out of the tomb, there is no indication that the linens in which he was wrapped had an imprint of his body upon them, as in the Shroud; and no one has been able to determine how the Shroud was imprinted - something far outside our understanding created that imprint.

God is in heaven; but God is pure spirit; His “throne” is not on Betelgeuse either.

 

[TheLittleLady]

And gnosticism was the earliest heresy.

 

[Inbonum]

@clintbranam

But point is: I’m not sure why the focus on her physical earthly body–the resurrected body, in which we Catholics believe–if we have in the back of our minds that heaven is likely someplace outside the physical universe or reality as we know it. Make any sense? If it weren’t a mystery of the rosary, I wouldn’t be as curious.

Part1
I will start from here:
Cathecism of Catholic Church says

990 The term “flesh” refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality.536 The “resurrection of the flesh” (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our “mortal body” will come to life again.537

Risen with Christ
1002Christ will raise us up “on the last day”; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ:
And you were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead . . . . If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.559

1003United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with Christ in God."560 The Father has already "raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."561 Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we "also will appear with him in glory."562

1004 In expectation of that day, the believer’s body and soul already participate in the dignity of belonging to Christ. This dignity entails the demand that he should treat with respect his own body, but also the body of every other person, especially the suffering:
The body [is meant] for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? . . . . You are not your own; . . . . So glorify God in your body.563

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a11.htm
If our bodies are important then how Mary’s body wouldn’t be?

 

[Inbonum]

Part2
As you can see, people in history asked themselves and thought what happened with Mary after death, did She die, where is Her body etc. Because Mary is Mother of God, obviously She IS important.

1. In the fifteenth century, during a later period of scholastic theology, St. Bernardine of Siena collected and diligently evaluated all that the medieval theologians had said and taught on this question. He was not content with setting down the principal considerations which these writers of an earlier day had already expressed, but he added others of his own. The likeness between God’s Mother and her divine Son, in the way of the nobility and dignity of body and of soul - a likeness that forbids us to think of the heavenly Queen as being separated from the heavenly King - makes it entirely imperative that Mary “should be only where Christ is.”(35) Moreover, it is reasonable and fitting that not only the soul and body of a man, but also the soul and body of a woman should have obtained heavenly glory. Finally, since the Church has never looked for the bodily relics of the Blessed Virgin nor proposed them for the veneration of the people, we have a proof on the order of a sensible experience.(36)

1. The above-mentioned teachings of the holy Fathers and of the Doctors have been in common use during more recent times. Gathering together the testimonies of the Christians of earlier days, St. Robert Bellarmine exclaimed: “And who, I ask, could believe that the ark of holiness, the dwelling place of the Word of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, could be reduced to ruin? My soul is filled with horror at the thought that this virginal flesh which had begotten God, had brought him into the world, had nourished and carried him, could have been turned into ashes or given over to be food for worms.”(37)

1. 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?”(38) 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.”(39)

http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-...-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html
And it brought other questions reffering to her motherhood which isn’t as any other on Earth, and answer as this one:

1. 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.

Wouldn’t be strange if that wouldn’t be important?
I hope it gives you some answers.

 

[EndTimes]

I’m focusing on it because of the glorious mystery of the Assumption of Mary: if the key point is that Mary’s physical body didn’t die and she’s no longer physically here on earth, I’m just curious if there have been any good writings or thoughts on where she is, physically.

Rhetoricaly speaking:
Physically (Resurrected Body), Spiritually, Both, All, comma,
Blessed Mary - Virgin Mother of Jesus - is in Heaven!
Taken up and seen by Witnesses…
Greek Orthodox also speak much of Mary and her last days

 

[otjm]

It was, and neither John Paul 2 nor I are gnostics.

From John Paul 2’s General Audience, Wednesday,m July 21, 1999: “In the context of Revelation, we know that the “heaven” or “happiness” in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.” (my bold)

Further, he states: “It is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in describing these “ultimate realities” since their depiction is always unsatisfactory. Today, personalist language is better suited to describing the state of happiness and peace we will enjoy in our definitive communion with God.” (my bold)

Note he describes heave as a state of being; not a place.

And definitely not Betelgeuse.

None of what he says indicates we will not have a resurrected body; but to say it is a “physical body” is to misread the Gospels and Acts.

And that is not gnosticism; it is the fact that what lies beyond is, as St. Paul indicated, beyond words.

Mary appeared to Juan Diego; it was not some “vision” ; she approached him and rearranged the roses in his tilma.

 

[otjm]

If our bodies are important then how Mary’s body wouldn’t be?

Mary’s body is important; but it is a resurrected body, not a corruptible one. And the Church has little to say beyond what Scripture tells us -see the Gospels and Acts. It is “the same, but not the same”.

 

[Online_Knight]

This “smacks” right into some questions I’ve been having lately.

1. Where do Catholics get the information about our Blessed Mother’s Assumption & Coronation that we meditate on while praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary?
2. Related to #1… why was there a tomb of the Blessed Mother (where fragrant lilies were found) if she was taken-up body and soul into Heaven?
3. A little unrelated, but also on my mind… when the women were going to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body on what became Easter Sunday, how were they going to get in?
   Thanks for any help with these!

 

[EndTimes]

Placing ‘physically’ on the side burner for a time…

Mary’s in Heaven.

 

[Dovekin]

1. From Mary?
2. 3 or 4 of them, even.
3. Did anyone ever say Christians were good planners?

They were saying to one another, “Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”
When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back; it was very large.
Mark 16:3-4