“May today’s venerable festivity, O Lord, bring us salutary aid,
whereon God’s Holy Mother underwent temporal death, yet, could
not be held fast by the shackles of death, who gave birth to Your Son
made flesh of her.”¹
From the moment when the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception was
defined as a Dogma of the Faith, numerous petitions were sent to Rome
asking for a definition of her Assumption as the crowning glory of the
privileges which stem from being Mother of God. 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 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.”²
This definition, though, left open the question as to whether the Virgin
Mary died before being assumed into heaven. Prima facie, as Mary was
free from original sin due to being immaculately conceived, she would also
have been free from all its consequences, including death. 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 wish to be more conformed to her Son who died for all humanity.
Yet this death, they say, 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 Mary is as
follows: The First Adam and the First Eve both shared the same fate due to
their sin, namely death and decomposition into dust. It follows that the New
Adam and the New Eve should also share the same reward for their fidelity.
Christ, by His glorious death, resurrection and ascension, gained a perfect
victory over the devil, hell, sin and death. The Virgin Mary, as the
immaculately conceived Mother of God, is most intimately associated with
Christ’s perfect victory (Gen. 3:15). If there was no Assumption of Mary,
she would have been vanquished by death and that parallel to Christ would,
therefore, be destroyed.
1
The Gregorian Sacramentary.
2
Munificentissimus Deus, 1950.
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