The Dogmatic Definition of the Assumption

Abstract

THE DOGMATIC DEFINITION OF THE ASSUMPTION THE following proposition, taught by the Church in both the Fourteenth and Seventeenth General Councils and defined by Benedict XII must be held by faith: "According to God's common ordination the souls of all the Saints who departed this life before the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and also . . . of the other faithful departed after their reception of Christ's holy baptism, in whom, when they died, there was nothing requiring purification (or) will not be when in the future they shall die--or if there was or shall be in them at the time of death anything requiring purification, when they shall have been purified after death-immediately after their death and the aforesaid purification, they, after the Ascension of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, into heaven, were, are, and shall be in heaven even before the resurrection of their bodies and the general judgment" (Denz. 530). The Assumption, therefore, of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not to be understood as if it were a question of the glory of her soul alone, for this is common to all the saints: but it is a question of that singular privilege of the Mother of God according to which she was assumed into heaven not only as to her soul, but also, like her only-begotten Son, even in body-therefore totally. If Mary did die, then, this privilege includes an anticipated glorious resurrection. I say: if she did die. Historically there is no evidence of that death. There have been, and are, theologians of the opinion that she never died. To this, they say, the universal law of death is not opposed, as the universal law of sin was not opposed to the Immaculate Conception. If May was exempted from one law, why not from the other? If this is so, the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin does not include a resurrection but on a certain day fixed by the 41 42 CASPAR FRIETHOFF wisdom of God she was assumed without the intervention of death. The Church's opinion in the matter seems opposed to this teaching. According to the ancient and venerable Gregorian Sacramentary, still preserved in the rite of the Order of Preachers, Cistercians, Premonstratensians and others, the prayer of the Church on the feast of the Assumption is: May this hallowed feast dower us with saving grace, 0 Lord; since today the Mother of God underwent the death of the body, yet could not be held in death's bonds, as having brought forth thine incarnate Son, etc. Holy Mother Church through the dogmatic definition of the bodily Assumption of the Mother of Go_d solemnly proposes the Assumption to the faithful as divinely revealed: therefore as pertaining to the deposit of faith, and to which we firmly assent without any discussion. Most naturally then the question arises when did God reveal this truth. Divine revelation was definitively ended at the death of the last Apostle: consequently, whatever the Church proposes to us, at any time, as divinely revealed certainly must have been revealed, before that event. The sources whence the Church can draw these truths are two. The first is Tradition by which divine truths " received from the mouth of Christ Himself by the Apostles, or given over as it were, by liand from the Apostles themselves under the dictate of the Holy Ghost, have come down to us " (Denz. 783) . The other source is Sacred Scripture in which, under the inspiration of the same Holy Ghost, these truths ·handed on were, in part, written. If the~ the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is divinely revealed, it must be found either in Tradition alone, or both in Sacred Scriptu:r,e and Tradition. Experts are not in agreement as to whether or not there was, in the first centuries, mention of our Lady's Assumption properly so called. If there was not, that would be disastrous if such an Assumption had to be proved historically. But actu- THE DOGMATIC DEFINITION OF THE ASSUMPTION 48 ally if we consider it merely as an historical fact we could never achieve our purpose. For historical facts cannot...