Bound in Love

Assumption vs. Ascension

Jesus ascended to Heaven by his own power. The others we read about in the Scriptures are “taken up” rather than going up by their own efforts. The first case is Enoch (Gen 5:24) who “walked with God, then was no more, because God took him.” The letter to the Hebrews explains that Enoch “was taken up and did not experience death” (Heb 11:50) because of his faith. The taking up of Elijah from Elisha as they walked together was likewise due to a taking up, in this case a chariot of fire and horse of fire coming between the two of them; and Elijah went up to heaven in the whirlwind.” (2 Kgs 2:11) And we have in the New Testament the famous line from 1st Thessalonians that is the basis for the Protestant concept of “The Rapture.” Paul writes, “those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord.” (1 Thess 4:16-17) The Greek and Latin Fathers from John Chrystostom to St. Jerome taught that the people who were alive at the Second Coming would not die – experience death – before they went to be with Jesus in Heaven. The Creed says this when it says, “he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

Gethsemane and Ephesus

Some sources from the East suggest May spent her last days in Jerusalem and was set at Gethsemane and from there was taken up into Heaven. A church was built over that spot in the 4th century, and its replacement stands there today.

Other sources point to Ephesus as the place of her dormition since John was in Ephesus and he had been entrusted to take care of Mary as his Mother by Jesus from the Cross.

Death/Dormition

The dogma promulgated by the Church leaves open the question of whether she died or not. The details of whether or not her soul left her body, as will happen for all of us, is unaddressed dogmatically, and so there are many thoughts offered by writers over the centuries.

A few say she did not suffer death, but others argue that since Jesus, son of Mary, died, it is unlikely Mary would not. She is, after all, his best disciple. She would want to follow her Son wherever he went, even to the realm of the dead.

St. Augustine said, “Mary, as a daughter of Adam died as a consequence of sin.”

St John of Damascus said, “She obeys the law of her own Son, and inherits this chastisement as a daughter of the first Adam, since her Son, who is the life, did not refuse it. As the Mother of the living God, she goes through death to him.”

John Paul II said, “The fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality. The Mother is not superior to the Son who underwent death.”

No Corruption

Whether she died or not (Elijah and Enoch were taken up to Heaven not seeming to have died before, during or after), she was not subject to the law of death, which is the corruption of the body in the grave. If she died, then she was assumed into heaven before her sacred body saw corruption.

How Old is the teaching of the Assumption?

We read Genesis 3:15 as pointing to Mary’s special role. She is the woman whose son will win victory over Satan and his agents. The Church has never looked for her bodily relics, nor proposed them for veneration. A good guess is that the revelation was made to one or more Apostles, since otherwise it is hard to explain the universal tradition of Mary’s Assumption in the East and the West from no later than the 7th century. As with most Marian feasts, the feast was first celebrated in the East and was known as the Memory of Mary, and then it was called the Dormition (the falling asleep) of Mary, and this was celebrated in the East by the 4th century. Even the separated Churches (Nestorians, Coptics) that moved away after the Council of Ephesus in 431 have the Assumption on their calendar, suggesting it was already in place when they split. We see this feast being celebrated in Germanic lands as early as 650AD. Pope Sergius I (687-701) was a Syrian who introduced the feast to the Roman calendar. The name was changed from Dormition to Assumption under Pope Hadrian I in the 8th century. In the West, theologians developed the teaching in beautiful homilies connecting Mary to the Ark of the Covenant and the linkage between her perpetual virginity and her uncorrupted transport to Heaven. Even Martin Luther held solid on the Assumption.