The true beauty of the Mother of God is in her soul and hence incorruptible.
Giovanni Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
TRADITION: - THE RISEN CHRIST APPEARED TO HIS MOTHER
"Although the gospel accounts of the Lord's Resurrection do not mention the Blessed Virgin Mary, a tradition dating at least to the fifth century maintains that the risen Christ appeared to His Mother. According to the Latin poet Sedulius, Christ appeared first to the Virgin Mary before any of the other witnesses mentioned by the evangelists or St Paul (1 Cor 15:6). Indeed, in this account, Mary who at the Annunciation served as the gate through which Jesus entered the world, now received the good news of the Lord's Resurrection precisely in order to become the herald of His second coming. "
From Mariology; A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians and Consecrated Persons. Page 662.
Mark Miravalle, (Ed.) 2007. Queenship Publishing, USA,
ISBN: 978-1-57918-355-7
https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Mariology.html?id=ez0VRbQi1i4C&redir_esc=y
With thanks to Google books
Friday, October 1, 2021
ASSUMPTION BELIEF IS ANCIENT: BY DR LUKY WHITTLE
ASSUMPTION BELIEF IS ANCIENT
For almost sixteen centuries Catholics have believed that the Blessed Virgin’s body did not suffer corruption after death but that she was taken up body and soul into heaven.
The
Catholic Church’s second – and thus far – final Mariological dogma is the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven.
Solemnly defined by Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) on
In
the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus
Deus, Pope Pius XII wrote:
“We proclaim, declare and define as a dogma revealed by God, the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into glory of heaven.”
The Bible does not tell us how Our Lady underwent the process of death, to which the Eastern Church so luminously refers as her “dormition” or falling asleep.
Catholic tradition and/or legend maintains that when Mary’s days on earth had ended, she, surrounded by the apostles, fell into the sleep of death. Only the apostle Thomas was absent when Mary was carried to the tomb and buried.
When he finally arrived, he broke down to hear of her death and begged to be taken to her tomb. They took him to the place. When they opened it they found that the body had gone.
In its place a sheaf of
lilies, symbolic of purity, was found. This tradition is captured in a poem by Sister
M Angeline SSND titled “Memories of the Assumption”.
They bore her in a reverent group
To a holy place
Left her body in the earth
Her body, full of grace
But Thomas, tardy, slow of foot,
Absent when she died
Spent with sorrow, craved to see
Her of the Crucified
There was a swift intake of breath
A hurried silent breath
Startled, they opened the newmade
tomb
To find but lilies there.
Records of debates concerning the Assumption go back as far as the sixth century AD. One of the first English poems in which the belief that Mary’s body and soul were united in heaven is contained is one written by the poet William of Shoreham in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. He wrote: “The fifth joy of that woman (occurred) when her body came to heaven (and her) soul took to the body, as had been its custom (before death occurred).”
That
it took fifteen centuries before a belief that appears to have been universally
accepted in the Church to be included in
its official doctrine bears witness to the endurance to which a writer once referred
as “the patience that is
The
year 1950 was a golden age for Marian devotion in the Church. This trend was followed a decade later by an
epoch in which some radical Catholics would – in the name of ecumenism -
challenge and dispute the renown of Mary.
Pope Pius XII had already forestalled their objections when he wrote in
defence of Catholic Mariology in his encyclical letter Fulgens Corona published on
Non-Catholics and reformers are …
mistaken, when … they find fault with, or disapprove of, our devotion to the
Virgin Mother of God, as if it took something from the worship due to God alone
and to Jesus Christ. The contrary is
true because any honor and veneration which we may give to our heavenly Mother
undoubtedly redounds to the glory of her divine Son, not only because all
graces and all gifts, even the highest, flow from Him as from their primary
source, but also because ‘the glory of children are their fathers’ (Proverbs
17:6).
How
was Our Lady taken up to heaven? The
human mind with its limited capacity for rapture tends to be constrained in its
efforts to contain this glory. It took a
poet with a joint capacity for faith and verbal expression like Sister Dennis
OP to give voice to her imagination. Her
Assumption poem which she titled “Flying Birds” was first published in The
Tablet of
In a compact body, keeping perfect
rhythm,
Above the smoking factory chimney’s
crest,
Regardless even of the beauty of the
green fields,
Waving trees, and joyous, shouting
children,
The birds circle the heavens in
their morning flight.
So, surely, must the Angels have
borne aloft
Our Lady on that first Assumption
Day!
Intent on the beauty of Him on whom
they desire to look,
They ignore the things of earth and
gaze on her
Whom clothed with the sun, the moon
under her feet,
They bear to joyful reunion with her
Son –
With Him who is also her God.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
In terms of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the gate which God chose through which His Son entered the world needed to be one untainted by original sin. Thus the conception of Mary uncontaminated by the effects of the Fall was effected through the Will of God. This event - known as the Immaculate Conception - however did not sever either her human identity nor her unity with suffering humanity.
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