What is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary?
Celebrated on August 15, the Assumption is one of the great feasts of Christian life. It commemorates the glory of Mary with God.
What does the Feast of the Assumption mean?
Mary is a woman of Israel. She lived fully but without sin. Her life was filled by the Spirit of God. After her death, Mary was taken up to enter immediately into life in God. The feast of the Assumption is therefore the celebration of the reception, in Mary, of eternal life even in the flesh. With the resurrection of Jesus, it is the announcement of our own personal resurrection that is revealed. This is what we say in the creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the body”. To believe in God, to believe in his Son and in his Good News, is also to believe in eternal life and the resurrection of the body.
What is the difference between Ascension and Assumption?
The Feast of the Assumption, fixed on August 15 since the 6th century, celebrates the death, resurrection, entry into heaven and coronation of the Virgin Mary. The word “assumption” comes from a Latin word meaning “to take away”, and not “ascension”, which means “to go up”, to mark that Mary was taken up to heaven, body and soul, by virtue of a special privilege.
By her “yes” to God, Mary welcomed into her flesh the one who is the Master of life.
What was this privilege? To have accepted to be the mother of Christ. By her “yes” to God, Mary welcomed into her flesh the one who is the Master of life and over whom death no longer has any power: Jesus Christ.
Since when do we celebrate the Assumption?
In France, the Assumption was solemnized following the vow of Louis XIII in 1638.
The feast of the Assumption, or of the “Dormition” as the Christians of the East call it, was celebrated from 431, when the Council of Ephesus defined the belief (the dogma) of “Mary, Mother of God”. At the beginning of the 8th century, this feast was enriched with an office on the evening before (vigil). In France, the Assumption was solemnized from the vow of Louis XIII, in 1638, since he consecrated the country to Mary.
In the universal Church, this feast unfolds with the proclamation of the dogma of the “Assumption of the Virgin Mary” by Pope Pius XII in 1950. The feast of the Assumption is a summary of the believer’s journey. If I place my faith in the resurrected Jesus, I am destined body and soul to live in the bosom of God. And Mary was the first to experience this.
