Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Since the Incarnation is the distinctively Christian dogma that marks it out from other religions, the Church rightly gives especial veneration to the mother of God Incarnate, who was chosen to be the mother of the Word made flesh. The Council of Ephesus in 431 affirmed her to be the theotokos, the God bearer, for she conceived in her womb the Word made flesh. As the hymn has it
How blest that Mother in whose shrine
The great artificer divine
Whose hand contains the earth and sky
Ordained as in his ark to lie.
The Church honours Mary as pre-eminent among the saints, not as a figure of independent greatness in her own right, but rather in relation to the child whom she bore, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, that they might obtain the adoption of sons.
Blessed were the chosen people
Out of whom her Lord did come
Blessed was the land of promise,
Fashioned for his earthly home
But more blessed was the mother,
She who bare him in her womb
God in Christ has entered into the world to redeem us from the curse that fell upon our race as a consequence of the fall of man. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The Church Fathers develop this point further by saying that Mary’s positive response to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, “Be it unto me according to thy Word”, reverses Eve’s disobedience. Our vocation as Christians is to become by grace what he is by nature, who humbled himself to share our humanity that we might share his divinity. Mary is the supreme example of one who became by grace what he is by nature. It is therefore right that we celebrate her Conception, her Nativity, her Purification in the Temple and her Dormition or Assumption.
Today’s feast, the Dormition or Assumption, celebrates the doctrine that at the end of her earthly life, Mary underwent physical death, but that her body was taken up or assumed into heaven, and her grave was found to be empty. She has passed beyond death and lives already in the age to come, becoming the prototype of the risen and glorified humanity that we all aspire to share in on the last day. The purpose of this doctrine is not to separate her from the rest of humanity, but to show her as the supreme example of one who became by grace what Christ is by nature, which is the ultimate vocation of all humanity.
Speculation about what happened at the end of Mary’s earthly life arose in the early centuries of the Church and the doctrine of her Assumption has been the generally received teaching of the Church in both East and West since at least the sixth century. In 1950, it was made an official dogma of the Western Church by Pope Pius XII. Unfortunately, after the promulgation of this dogma, the traditional Mass for the Assumption was replaced by a new Mass which was designed to teach more explicitly than the traditional Mass for this feast the doctrine of the Bodily Assumption of Mary. A similar situation had already developed in the nineteenth century when the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854 had led to the replacement of the traditional Mass for the Conception of Mary with a new Mass designed to teach more explicitly the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception that Pope Pius IX had proclaimed.
It is important to emphasise this point at the present time. Attention has rightly been given to the renewed attempt to suppress the traditional Roman Rite, and how this cannot be reconciled with the traditional view of the role of the Bishop of Rome to be the guardian of the deposit of faith, rather than an innovator. It is less commonly realised that the root cause of the present crisis lies in the triumph of Ultramontanism in the nineteenth century under Pope Pius IX at the First Vatican Council in 1870. This replaced the older conception of the Bishop of Rome as the guardian of the deposit of faith with a new conception of his role as an innovator who could make new dogmas and innovate in matters of liturgy. This unfortunately led to the replacement of the traditional rites for both the respective feasts of the Conception (in 1854) and the Assumption of Mary (in 1950). This was a foretaste of what was to come after the Second Vatican Council, when the traditional Roman rite was replaced by a new Mass less securely rooted in the tradition of the Church than the traditional Roman rite, which it had previously been the role of the Bishops of Rome to safeguard. It is especially important at the present time that we hold fast to the traditional Roman rite and the older teaching of the Bishop of Rome as a safeguard of the deposit of faith, rather than an innovator.
It is above all from the traditional liturgies of the Church that we learn the Church’s teaching about Mary. As the great Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky put it: “It is hard to speak and not less hard to think about the mysteries which the Church keeps in the hidden depths of her inner consciousness… The Mother of God was never a theme of the public preaching of the Apostles; while Christ was preached on the housetops, and proclaimed for all to know in an initiatory teaching addressed to the whole world, the mystery of his mother was revealed only to those who were within the Church…. It is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of our hope, fruit of faith, ripened in tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not try to dogmatise about the supreme glory of the Mother of God.”
We honour Mary, as higher than the cherubim and more glorious than the seraphim, because she above all, in giving birth to the Word made flesh, and being at the foot of the Cross in his passion, sought first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Praise O Mary. Praise the Father
Praise thy Saviour and thy Son
Praise the Everlasting Spirit
Who hath made thee Ark and Throne
O’er all creatures high exalted
Lowly praise the Three in One
Hail Mary! Hail Mary! Hail Mary! Full of grace.
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