As we live the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I thought I'd offer a little recap and review of articles I've written and podcasts on Mary's Assumption for your consumption.
Among Women Podcasts:
AW 141: Assumptions, Adversity, and Grace with Woodeene Koenig-Bricker
AW 106: A Pilgrimage to Mary's House, with Sarah Vabulas and readings from Christian Classics on the Assumption.
AW 67: What I Love About Mary, Among Women Listeners share their Mary-love in this Special Edition.
And, finally, here's a reprise of an older article that once ran at Catholic Exchange...
Mary in the Catechism: The
Four Marian Dogmas
The more I get to know her Mary as my Mother, the
more I love her. True love of
someone is based on knowledge of him or her. With that in mind, this might be a
good opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the person of Mary, as recorded
doctrinally in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church.
All four of the Marian dogmas divinely reveal something of Mary’s
personhood. Each truth helps us understand her role in salvation history.
The dogmas, in the order that they were declared as truth by the Church,
are: Mary as the Mother of God, Mary as a Perpetual Virgin (“ever-virgin”),
Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into
heaven.
Growing up Catholic, I never doubted the validity of these dogmas. That
is to say, until I met well-meaning
Christians who just couldn’t buy what the Church was selling about Mary. In other words, I began to have my
doubts about her too.
Sometimes those kinds of challenges are what we need to set us in the
right direction. For me, I thought since the Church held most of these ideas
for thousands of years, it might be worthy of some investigation. (And this was
years before we had the Catechism in
the form we have it today.) I
needed to get to the truth of what was taught about Mary, the real person
behind the serene-looking statue.
Mary as Mother of God
One of the first attacks made on Mary by the naysayers I encountered was
that, indeed, Mary was the mother of Jesus… but certainly not the Mother of
God. Little did I know that this
was exactly the heresy the Church was trying to combat way back in the fifth
century (431 AD) at the Council of Ephesus, when it declared Mary, the “Theotokos”, or “God-bearer”, hence,
“Mother of God.”
The Council of Ephesus, while correcting this heresy, was confirming what
was already revealed in the New Testament writings, which reveal Mary as the
Mother of God. Luke 1: 31, 35 give us Gabriel’s words to Mary at the
Annunciation:
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear
a son, and you shall call his name Jesus… therefore
the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. [Emphasis mine.]
Other scripture passages reveal Mary as
the mother of Jesus, who, we know to be the God-Man. (See Mt. 2:13, Jn. 2:1, Acts 1:14.) And St. Paul vividly
describes Mary’s role in the Incarnation in Galatians
4:4:
“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman…”
[Emphasis mine.]
Even before Ephesus, Tradition
formulated the words of the creed that declared: “[Jesus] was conceived by the power of
the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.”
When the Council of Ephesus decreed
Mary as the Mother of God, it reaffirmed the two natures of Christ found in one
Person: that Jesus is both human and divine. (Later known as the “hypostatic
union.”) Anything outside of that unity makes Jesus into two persons, one human
and one divine, which is heresy.
So we see in this instance, how a Marian doctrine actually flows from and protects the truth about
her Son!
You can read more about this in CCC 466
and 495, but it all summed up rather nicely in CCC 509:
Mary is truly "Mother of
God" since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is
God himself.
What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on
what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn
its faith in Christ.
Mary, Ever-Virgin
The dogma about
Mary’s perpetual virginity maintains that Mary was ever a virgin, before,
during, and after the birth of Christ.
It is often here that Mary’s critics take exception, given our modern
understanding of biology and human reproduction.
A virgin before birth. The prophet Isaiah 7:14 foretold it:
“Therefore, the Lord himself shall give
you a sign. Behold a virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall
be Emmanuel.”
And the New Testament (Luke 1: 26-27) confirms it:
“The angel Gabriel was sent from God…
to a virgin betrothed… and the virgin’s name was Mary.”
And then there is the dialogue between
Mary and the angel at the annunciation that leads to the miraculous
“overshadowing” of Mary by the power of God. (Luke 1:35.)
Tradition also
reaffirms this in the Apostles’ Creed: “Born of the Virgin Mary.”
A virgin during the birth. CCC 499
reiterates, what the Second Vatican Council had previous taught:
The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the
Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving
birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not
diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it.
Put another way,
the birth of Jesus was a miraculous birth, just as his conception
miraculous. The “integrity” of
Mary’s sinless body was never violated by this birth. This idea was held from
the time of the early Church Fathers. Later, the Council of Trent (16th
century) used this analogy to describe Christ’s birth: The newborn Christ came
forth from the womb of Mary “as rays of the sun penetrate the substance of
glass without breaking or injuring it in the least.”
It also follows
that Mary’s childbirth would be exempt from pain, since she was a sinless
creature (see “Immaculate Conception” below), and laboring in childbirth is a
result of Original Sin (Gen. 3:16).
A virgin after the birth. Many
people take issue with the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity, given New
Testament accounts that mention the supposed “siblings” of Jesus (Cf. Mk 3:31-35; 6:3; 1 Cor 9:5; Gal 1:19). The Catechism
replies in paragraph 500:
Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised
that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always
understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin
Mary. In fact James and Joseph, "brothers of Jesus", are the sons of
another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls
"the other Mary" They are close relations of Jesus, according to an
Old Testament expression.
Then, there are
the words of Jesus from the cross giving Mary into the care of John (John
19:26-27). If Jesus had siblings, especially brothers, would not Mary’s care be
entrusted to them? Instead, John
takes Mary in.
I admit this one
was a tough one for me to fully believe, at first. I could understand that
Jesus was Mary’s only son, but I was not so sure about the lack of marital relations
between Joseph and Mary. Wouldn’t a holy marriage be consummated? Not
necessarily, so I learned.
I admit my
sensibilities, formed in part by modern culture, had trouble understanding this
idea of a holy marriage without the marital act. I needed more information. And
I found it, in learning the importance of mutual understanding and consent in a
marriage. Our modern catechism
teaches that marriage is first based on an exchange of consent, and then, only
then, it may be consummated physically. (See CCC 1639-1640.) But the consent is
the heart of the marriage bond, not the consummation.
While the Catechism does not go into detail on
this exact point of Mary and Joseph’s marriage, I offer this helpful
explanation from Dr. Mark Miravalle’s Introduction
to Mary, reflecting on their marital union:
Finally, some
would argue that if the marriage between Mary and Joseph was never consummated,
then it would not have been a true marriage or would have been unnatural. However, the essence of the marriage
bond between husband and wife is their complete and unconditional gift of self
and union of the heart, of which the physical union is a concrete sign. If for a good and holy reason husband
and wife should choose to refrain from relations, either for a time or permanently
(under exceptional circumstances), this would not invalidate a marriage or
affect its true bond, which is rooted not in the physical but in the spiritual
union of the spouses.
There are numerous
examples in Scripture where God asks married couples to renounce [or abstain
from] relations.
[See Ex 19:15; 1
Sam 21:15; 1 Cor 7:5.]…
These scriptural
examples show that when men and women are near what God has sanctified, it can
be also appropriate for them to respond by giving themselves directly and
undividedly to God. If in these cases it was fitting that men and women should
remain abstinent, it can hardly be surprising that present before the great
miracle of the Incarnation, Mary and Joseph chose to remain permanently
virginal as well.
CCC 506 alludes to Mary’s faith and undivided
heart here:
Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her
faith unadulterated by any doubt, and of her undivided gift of herself to
God's will. It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Savior:
[St. Augustine taught:] "Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith
in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ."
The Immaculate Conception
The dogma of the
Immaculate Conception was finally promulgated in 1854… but the seeds of it are
found much earlier in a careful reading of scripture. When the Angel addresses
Mary at the Annunciation, he does not address her by her name. Instead, he uses
the title “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” This title might as well
be her name, for it describes Mary’s true nature; her person is full of grace.
Notice that she is addressed as “full of grace”, even before the Angel announces that she will be asked to be the Mother
of God.
Know anyone that
fits that description? Nope. She’s the only one. The rest of humanity is
fallen.
Mary’s detractors
what to know what makes her so special?
If she is human, she should be subject to all the pitfalls of humanity,
and just as sinful are the rest of us, right? Not quite. There’s more to Mary’s story, and it takes a very
careful reading for Scripture to parse it out. Not to mention 2000 years of
biblical interpretation and theological reflection.
What’s sooooo
special about Mary is her Immaculate Conception. And it means this: Mary was
redeemed by the merits of her Son Jesus at Calvary – who is God – at her
conception, so she never received a fallen nature. The nature she received was
like that of Eve’s before the Fall.
And recall, that after the fall, the Immaculate Conception is implied,
theologians say, in this verse from Genesis 3:15, that speaks of a woman to
come:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise
his heel.
This is why we
have references to Mary as the “new Eve.” And why St. Jerome (4th
century) taught this about Mary: "Death
through Eve, life through Mary." CCC 508 states:
From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin
Mary to be the mother of his Son. "Full of grace", Mary is the most
excellent fruit of redemption: from the first instant of her conception, she
was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from
all personal sin throughout her life.
Mary, we might
say, is the first person redeemed, by an application of the grace of Christ’s
victory over sin and death on the Cross. And her sinless, loving heart, allowed
her the perfect response to God’s call on her life: “Yes!”
Blessed Duns
Scotus (d. 1308) called it “preservative redemption.” Preservative redemption
addressed this question of Mary’s redemption taking place before her Son was
even born. Huh? The short of it is
this: God, the Creator of time, is
also Lord over time, and can work outside of time. And God can apply his graces throughout history (time) as He
deems fit. Therefore, God, in his
divine plan of salvation, willed that Mary would be saved first, in her
humanity, by the application of the graces won on the Cross for humanity by her
Son, Jesus… providing a perfectly pure temple for the Holy Spirit to later
“overshadow” and allow the Son of God to take on flesh in a sinless womb.
Whew! Got all
that?
This is what the Catechism says in CCC 491 and 492:
Through the centuries the Church has become ever more
aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the
moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of
her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue
of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from
all stain of original sin.
The splendor of an entirely unique holiness by which Mary
is enriched from the first instant of her conception comes wholly from Christ:
she is redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.
The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and chose her in Christ before the
foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless
before him in love.
Mary’s Assumption
(If you are still reading this far, especially
after trying to understand the depth of the Immaculate Conception, the
Assumption is almost easy to
understand!)
We start back to Genesis 3:15 (above)
where the enmity between the woman and the serpent represents the past (Eve)
and the future (Mary) who will share in the victory of her Son over the Devil.
As we know, the effects of Original Sin
were sin and death. Jesus, by his Cross and Resurrection has set us free from
both. And by his merits, we see this perfected in the person of Mary. First, her Immaculate Conception shows
how Jesus conquered sin, and by his grace, preserved her from Original Sin.
Second, we see how Mary’s Assumption, is a particular grace awarded to Mary, so
she, who is sinless, does not undergo bodily corruption at the end of her
earthly life.
The Assumption of Mary is a natural
consequence of the Immaculate Conception. And, it is a unique privilege that
the Son affords his Mother.
CCC 966 teaches:
Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of
original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up
body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all
things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of
lords and conqueror of sin and death. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a
singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the
resurrection of other Christians.
Finally, Mary’s assumption serves as an
eschatological sign (pointing to things to come in the afterlife)… she reminds
us of the perfected Church we will become in heaven, as she is an icon of the
Church both now and in the future.
CCC 972 states:
The Mother of Jesus, in the glory
which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of
the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines
forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and
comfort to the pilgrim People of God.
Mariology
(the study of Mary) is a discreet field of study within theology. There is so
much more that could be said on all these dogma. Today’s lesson is but a taste.
But I pray
that you will come to love Mary in a deeper way, as you see just how intimately
her life is bound to the life and grace of her Son, Jesus. Mary has no power in
and of herself, save what comes to through Jesus. By way of a final analogy… if Jesus is the sun, Mary is the
moon… always reflecting Him!
©2009 Patricia W. Gohn
