The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thursday, August 15, 2024

Luke 1, 39–56

Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

And Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.”

Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, into heaven after her life on earth ended is not recorded in the words of the Holy Scriptures.  However, the doctrine of her Assumption n has been held by the Church from the earliest time.  Apocryphal works were written in the first centuries after the Ascension of our Lord into heaven purporting to give the story of her Assumption,  regardless of the veracity of the details of these accounts, they testify to the widespread belief in the doctrine.  The stories given are broadly similar: at a certain point in her life, either three and fifteen years after the Ascension, the Virgin Mary recognized that the time for her departure had arrived.  Yearning with all her heart to be reunited with her Son, she took to bed, at which time the Apostles, then spread throughout the world, were gathered together again at her side by the angels.  She spoke to them one last time and then her soul left her body, leaving the Apostles in deep grief for having lost the Mother whom Christ had left them.  They then set her body in a tomb very much like that of the Lord’s Body after erected his Death on the Cross.  Three days later, St. Thomas, not present at her departure, entered the tomb only to find it empty, leading the Apostles to understand that she had been taken up, body and soul, into heaven.  She is variously said to have died in Jerusalem or in Ephesus.  

The feast celebrating Mary’s Assumption was celebrated on different dates during the first eight centuries of the Church, including in January.  The date was settled on August 15 throughout the Church by the beginning of the ninth century, as is attested in books of sermons and sacramentaries.  The doctrine was defined in 1952 by Pope Pius XII.

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”  We can hear the choirs of angels crying out these words of Elizabeth with rapturous joy as the heavens received their Queen.  “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” How fitting for the Archangel Gabriel who brought her the message of the Incarnation to greet her in this way!  “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”  And how radiant these words of the Blessed Virgin as she beheld her Son again!