An Ancient Assumption

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII made the second infallible statement ever made by a pope.1  Since this was only 60 years ago,2 it’s easy to assume that it’s an innovation, a made-up doctrine that has nothing to do with the faith of the Apostles.  But there was nothing new about the doctrine, just the way it was expressed.  With a shout and a bang, he declared to be infallible a teaching that everyone had pretty much been cool with forever: the Assumption of Mary.

From the Cathedral at Chartres–have you been there? If so, have you been back since they started cleaning the glass? It’s incredible.

What is it?

The official teaching is that at the end of her life, Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven.  Note that she didn’t ascend (by her own power, as Christ did), but was assumed by God’s power.  There is no official stance on whether she floated up kicking and somersaulting, fell asleep,3 appeared to die, or chose to die but was immediately reunited with her body when she was assumed.  What matters is that she lives bodily in heaven with Christ, taken there by God’s miraculous grace.

Why do we believe it?

First and foremost, we believe it because it’s been presented to us as revealed by God.  The Holy Father almost never makes infallible proclamations.  Here, he’s exercising his power of infallibility4 to tell us this is true, so we accept it on faith.

But while that might be admirable on a personal level, it’s certainly not convincing.  As always, I’m a big fan of Scripture, Tradition, and reason to help us through.

Scripture doesn’t give us anything explicit, as is the case with many issues, it being a finite book.  Today’s first reading is as close as we get, where it describes a woman (Rev 12:1) who is the Ark of the Covenenant (Rev 11:19), the mother of the Savior (Rev 12:5), and the mother of all believers (Rev 12:17).  Sure sounds like Mary to me.  Verse 6 tells us that she “fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God.”  So the mother of the Savior, having finished her task, is taken up into a special place prepared for her.  Works for me.

Tradition on the matter isn’t quite as ancient as it is on many Catholic doctrines, but it dramatically predates the Reformation.  Apocryphal texts describe it as early as the 4th century, but I can see why we might not care about them.  Some of the heavy hitters pick it up pretty early, too, along with some more obscure theologians.

The Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord’s chosen ones. . . (St. Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles 1:4, A.D. 575).

It was fitting that the she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped when giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father, It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God (St. John Damascene, Dormition of Mary, A.D. 697)

By the end of the seventh century, Mary’s Assumption was so established as fact that it had its own feast day already, according to Pope St. Sergius.5

I think reason‘s strongest on this one.  We know that death (meaning the separation of body and soul) is a consequence of sin.  St. Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).6  If Mary was without sin (which, I suppose, merits its own post, but just go with it for now), then she couldn’t have died.  Her time on earth came to an end, so God brought her to heaven body and soul (like Elijah and Enoch, so there’s a precedent).

Besides, not one church in the whole world claims to have Mary’s body.  In a world where a church, a museum, and a mosque all claim to have John the Baptist’s head (with three others apparently having been destroyed over the course of history), this silence on the location of Mary’s body is deafening.

I’m inclined to think it’s this one (Mary’s Tomb, an Orthodox church in the Kidron Valley of Jerusalem) simply because it looks older and cooler.

Two churches in Jerusalem claim to be the tomb of Mary, along with one in Ephesus, but nobody claims to have even a pinky toe of the world’s most important Saint.  For a Church that was grabbing at every body part imaginable to ascribe it to a Saint, this is pretty significant.  Not only was there no body, nobody even pretended that there was.  This only makes sense to me if the early Church understood that Mary had been assumed long before anyone bothered to write about it.

And then, of course, there’s the whole parallel between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant (linked above).  It’s unreasonable to assume7 that God would allow the vessel that contained his only-begotten Son to rot.  Her body had been made sacred and deserved to be treated with honor.  If he could preserve her from decay, why wouldn’t he?

Why did it happen?

Do you ever wonder, in the midst of scriptural acrobatics and wordy New Advent articles, why God did these things in the first place?  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that question–he’s always got a reason, and usually more than one.  There’s nothing unfaithful about trying to figure out why, and often it leads us to deeper faith.

Obviously, there are the theological explanations: that Mary’s immaculate nature could not suffer death, that God glorified Mary by giving her an end like that of his Son, or that our feminist God desired “that not only the soul and body of a man, but also the soul and body of a woman should have obtained heavenly glory.”8  Perhaps Mary was given a glorified body that she might teach us how to be fully human when we get our bodies back.9

Look how eager she is to touch him–she’s so cute!

Or maybe Jesus just loved his Momma so much that he wanted to be with her in heaven.  If you’ve got Spotify, do yourself a favor and listen to this song by Danielle Rose, a testimony to how beautiful the body of Mary is because of how it held and loved the body of Christ.  Maybe beneath all the theological significance is a sweet example of a son who just wanted to be with his Momma.  Maybe what we need to learn from it is to be homesick for heaven the way Mary was, to long to be in the presence of Christ so desperately that when our time comes we practically fly there.

There’s nothing innovative about the doctrine of the Assumption.  It’s an ancient doctrine whose beauty is ever-new, drawing us deeper into a love of Our Lady and a longing for heaven.  So praise God for the event and the Solemnity and the ex cathedra proclamation, and praise God especially for the gift of his mother as our mother, loving us from heaven and teaching us to follow Christ.

Mary Assumed into Heaven, pray for us!

 

  1. There are those who think that early popes made ex cathedra statements, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence of this. Certainly this was only the second of the modern era. []
  2. I say things like “only 60 years ago” to teenagers and they look at me like I’m crazy, but in the grand scheme of the Church, 60 years ain’t much. []
  3. Eastern Christians call this the Dormition, the falling asleep of Mary. []
  4. I had almost finished a post on infallibility yesterday when WordPress ate it. Eventually, I’ll overcome my discouragement and rewrite it. Bear with me. []
  5. No link on this one as nothing’s showing up in my feeble Google searches, but I have it on Pius XII’s authority, so we’ll go with it. []
  6. Can I just tell you that I stumble over this every time I encounter it because I know the verb is supposed to be singular but the subject is clearly plural and WHAT is going on with THAT??? []
  7. hah []
  8. Munificentissimus Deus 33 []
  9. You did know that we’re getting our bodies back, right? When we die, at best we become saints, but never angels. And at the end of the world, we’ll get our bodies back and I think we’ll be able to fly but there’s no official teaching on the matter 😛 []

Mary, Ark of the Covenant

I struggled with the idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary for a long time.  I wasn’t raised with her and it’s hard to see how all that weird Catholic stuff with songs and statues and candles and parades isn’t worship.  I figured early on that I could just ignore it and be okay, but, as it turns out, you can’t really be Catholic if you’re not at least trying to be into Mary.  So I tried.

I started praying a rosary every day, I went to Medjugorje, and I even did St. Louis de Montfort’s total consecration to Mary.  But I still didn’t get it.

And then I found the key somewhere surprising–the Old Testament.  For pretty much everything I understand about Mary, I’m eternally (literally) in the debt of Scott Hahn, specifically his work in Hail, Holy Queen.  When I read that book, I started to see that Mary is literally all over the Bible–the ancients were just subtler than I wanted them to be.

Marian theology’s too much for one post, obviously.  Here I want to focus on Old Testament typology (foreshadowing) and Mary as the Ark of the Covenant.  I’ll share the experiences in prayer that led me to a deeper understanding of Mary some other time.  For now, let’s talk Scripture.

The Ark of the Covenant is an ancient artifact stolen by the Nazis that will consume you with lightning if you–oh, wait.  Not so much.

George Lucas didn’t get everything right.

The Ark was the center of God’s presence for the Israelites.  In Exodus 25, it is described in detail as acacia wood plated with gold.*  According to Exodus, the tablets of the ten commandments were placed inside (Ex 25:21).  Numbers 17:25 suggests that Aaron’s staff may have been placed there as well, but it’s unclear until Hebrews 9:4:

…the ark of the covenant entirely covered with gold. In it were the gold jar containing the manna, the staff of Aaron that had sprouted, and the tablets of the covenant.

So the Ark of the Covenant held the presence of God and contained the life-giving bread, the high priest’s staff, and the word of God.

See where I’m going with this?

The Ark was treated with reverence, not because it was God but because it contained God (in a sense).  It led the Israelites and was given a place of highest honor.

This is all on my mind because of the Feast of the Visitation yesterday, in which we celebrate Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.  We’re used to these words because we’ve heard the story so much: the infant leaped, how does it happen that the mother of my Lord should come to me.  But those Jews who read Luke’s Gospel would have been familiar with them, too, because the same words are used in reference to the Ark in 2 Samuel 6, where King David was bring the Ark of the Covenant into the hill country (Lk 1:39).  Check it out:

Then David came dancing before the LORD with abandon, girt with a linen ephod. (2 Sam 6:14)

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb. (Lk 1:41)

Now, I’m no Greek scholar, but I did manage to ascertain that the Greek word for dancing in the Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament) is the same as the word for leaping in the New Testament.

David said, “How can the ark of the LORD come to me?” (2 Sam 6:9)

Elizabeth said, “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43)

Again, we’re seeing the same language here, only replacing Ark with Mother.

The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months. (2 Sam 6:11)

Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. (Lk 1:56)

So Luke’s definitely feeling this Ark of the Covenant business, but John makes it even clearer in Revelation.  Turn to Revelation 11:19 (right before Revelation 12, which we hear read from on pretty much every Marian feast day).

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm.

Wow.  That’s pretty intense.  To give you some context, the Ark of the Covenant, which was the center of Israelite worship, had been lost for centuries.  According to 2 Maccabees 2, Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave right before the Babylonian Captivity (around 587 BC).  So for 600 years, the most important thing in the world was lost.  And John saw it!  It was such a huge deal that there was lightning, thunder, hail, and an earthquake.  This thing is for real!

And then the chapter ends and John moves on.  “I saw the Ark!  It was epic!

“Then this other time I saw a lady.”

That’s how it reads to us, with a big, bold “Chapter 12” separating his proclamation that he saw the Ark from his description of the Ark.  But remember, John didn’t write in chapters.  He said, “I saw the Ark!  It was epic!  A lady in the sky with a crown of 12 stars….  She was the mother of all Christians” (Rev 11:19; 12:1, 17; paraphrased).

John is explaining here that Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant.  Just as the old Ark contained the life-giving bread, Mary contains Jesus, the Bread of Life (John 6).  Just as the old Ark contained the high priest’s staff, Mary contains our Great High Priest (Heb 4:14).  Just as the old ark contained the word of God, Mary contains the Word of God made flesh (Jn 1:1-3, 14).

“Okay, so Mary’s like some box,” says the voice in my head.  “So what?”

So what??  So everything!!

Seriously, understanding this is a huge step towards understanding pretty much everything the Church teaches about Mary.

The Immaculate Conception

(This is when Mary was conceived without Original Sin, not when she conceived Jesus.  Think embryonic Mary.  More on this topic another time.)

The Ark of the Covenant was specially prepared to house God’s presence (see Ex 25 again).  It was pure and holy, made specifically for a divine purpose.  If Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, she, too, must have been prepared from her creation for this purpose.  She must have been pure, not by her own power but by the power of Him who created purity.  They wouldn’t have used a random box for the Ark; God wouldn’t have used a random sinner for the Mother of God.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

(Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ.  Again, more on this later.)

The Ark of the Covenant was created for a sacred purpose and was made sacred by what it contained.  If one were to empty the Ark of its holy contents, one would not then use it as a jewelry box or a stepstool.  It was consecrated to one divine purpose; to use it for a worldly purpose would defile it.  Now sex is holy and beautiful (see this beautiful reflection by Elizabeth Hanna Pham for proof), but sex must be open to life.  And every baby besides Mary and Jesus is conceived with Original Sin.  For Mary’s sanctified womb to nurture fallen life would defile it, just as using the Ark for a good but profane** purpose would be wrong.

The Assumption

(Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven by the power of God.  She never suffered death, the separation of body and soul, as it’s a consequence of Original Sin.)

The Ark of the Covenant, as I said above, was made sacred by what it bore.  Middle Eastern culture has a strong sense of sanctity (and profanity) being contagious, if you will.  See pretty much the whole book of Leviticus for proof.

Having been made sacred, even if it had been emptied, it would have been honored.  It wouldn’t have been left in the desert to rot (can things rot in the desert?) and it wouldn’t have been broken up and tossed.  If Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, she, too, must be revered even after she no longer contains the presence of God.  An empty Ark wouldn’t have been tossed; Mary’s body wouldn’t have been left to decay.  Since the options seem to be death (nope), immortality (I think we’d know if she was 2000 years old), or eternal life in the body (the Assumption), I think the logical answer is clear.

Reverence for Mary

No, the Bible doesn’t tell us to have parades and sing songs to Mary (although Luke 1:48 sure seems to suggest it), but that’s how Israel handled the Ark.  Luke and John both make it clear to the discerning reader that the Ark is a type of Mary.  So we honor her, we respect her, we pray through her, not because of who she is but because of whose she is and who he made her to be.

*These are the kinds of passages that make me want to skim.

**Profane, in this sense, does not mean evil but secular, non-sacred.