The
Assumption of Mary
Many non-Catholic Christian ask where the Assumption of Mary into Heaven is in
the Bible? It is not
First of all, it doesn’t
say in the Bible that everything is in the "Bible Alone" (sola
Scriptura).
For example, it doesn’t
say in the Bible how the 3 Persons of the Trinity work together.
The early Church spent the
first 300 years figuring out how the Trinity worked. Mqny non-Catholic
"diagrams" (see an example below) say that around the year 300, when
Constantine had his conversion to the Catholic Faith, that is when the "Catholic
Church went off the rails".
– so precisely when
non-Catholic diagrams say the Catholic Church was lost when Constantine made
Catholicism the official religion of Rome, that was actually the precise time
where the Church was being the Catholic Church; there was a MAJOR break in the
Church, and newly converted Constantine basically convoked the Council of
Nicaea to settle the dispute - and it was at that Council where the priest
Arius was given the label of a heretic in order to help him understand how
serious was his theological error.
Also, with regards to
those who say "By the Bible Alone", Saint Paul says in his second
letter to the Thessalonians “brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the
traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or
by a letter of ours” The "letters of ours" are Paul's
letters in the Sacred Scriptures, and the oral statements are
what the Catholic Church has always referred to as "Sacred
Tradition".
But what does "Sacred
Tradition" say about Mary being assumed body and soul into Heaven?
In the 600’s Saint John
Damascene: “It was fitting that Mary, the spouse, whom the Father had taken to
himself, should live in the divine mansions.”
also in the 600’s, St.
Modestus of Jerusalem said: “Mary 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."
In the 700’s Saint
Germanus said “Your virginal body is all holy and 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”
In the 1200’s Saint
Anthony of Padua, when, while explaining the prophet Isaiah’s words:
"I will glorify the place of my feet," said "you have here a
clear statement that the Blessed Virgin has been assumed in her body, where was
the place of the Lord's feet.”
Also in the 1200’s Saint
Albert the Great said: “"From these proofs and authorities and from many
others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of
God has been assumed above the choirs of angels.”
Also in the 1200’s Saint
Bonaventure said: “Mary’s blessedness would not have been complete unless she
were there [in Heaven] as a person. The soul is not a person, but the soul,
joined to the body, is a person. It is manifest that she is there in soul and
in body. Otherwise she would not possess her complete beatitude.”
In the 1400’s Saint
Bernadine of Siena said “Mary should be only where Christ is."
In the 1500’s Saint Peter
Canitius said “"The teaching of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven has
already been accepted for some centuries, it has been held as certain in
the minds of the pious people, and it has been taught to the entire
Church in such a way that those who deny that Mary's body has
been assumed into heaven are not to be listened to patiently but are everywhere
to be denounced as over-contentious or rash men, and as imbued with a
spirit that is heretical rather than Catholic."
In the 1600’s Saint Robert
Bellarmine said “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, could have been turned into ashes or given over
to be food for worms."
Also in the 1600’s Saint
Francis de Sales said “"What son would not bring his mother back to life
and would not bring her into paradise after her death if he could?"
In the 1700’s Saint
Alphonsus Liguori said “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."
Mary being assumed into
Heaven isn’t in the Bible. But it has been consistently taught in the
“Sacred Tradition” of the Catholic Church.
As Catholics, we work together
on a lot of really good projects together helping the poor and so forth, but it
is important to know that Jesus says in John 17 when He prays “That they may be
one, even as we are one” that means that Christ’s followers should reflect the
same unity as the Trinity, and to the extent that all of us who profess to be
followers of Christ are not united, it will signal to non-Christians that the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not one either.
Putting myself in the
position of a non-Christian for a moment, it would seem ludicrous to me to
become a Christian seeing different denominations believing directly
contradictory things.
Finally, Marian devotion
is not an optional thing a Christian can choose to do or not do. The
Bible DOES say, over and over and over again in the New Testament that Baptism
makes us an adopted son or daughter of God the Father, and an adopted Brother
or Sister of Jesus. Mary is the Mother of Jesus and thus our adoptive
Mother, and one of the commandments is to honor your Mother. Mary is our
adopted Mother, so to fail to honor her is to break one of the 10 Commandments!
We pray for all those who
do not yet honor Mary our Mother, that they will soon realize the error, and
begin honoring Mary moving forward.
