Mary’s Assumption: An Important Dogma

Mary’s Assumption: An Important Dogma

IN a recent discussion with a group of Catholics, the question arose: . . .

. . . what practical spiritual good is accomplished by the definition of a dogma like the Assumption of our Blessed Lady? Granted that we accept the Assumption as a truth of the faith. But is it not merely a personal prerogative of Our Lady, affecting only her but having little value for the spiritual life of the Catholic people?

The query is reminiscent of a distinction that was somewhat popular a few years ago; some of Our Lady’s prerogatives are “functional” while others are simply “decorative”. Her divine motherhood and her association with Christ were considered functional. Her Immaculate Conception and Assumption were nothing more than decorations, like jewels added to a crown.

The distinction, however, is only imaginary. There is no such thing as a truth of the faith that is merely decorative, intended only to enhance the prestige of an individual.

All Truths Revealed By God Have a Definite Salvific Purpose

All the truths that God has revealed to us have a definite salvific purpose. They are there to help us attain the salvation that God wills for us.  No doubt it is true that we sometimes have to search deeply in order to see the redemptive import of a particular dogma. The truths of the faith are all mysteries of an inexhaustible content. But God gave us a mind to think with, and it is important that we use it in the process of working out our salvation,

Let’s consider Our Lady’s Assumption, then, from the point of view of its practical, salvific effect in the redemption of mankind. It is indeed a personal prerogative of Our Blessed Lady in the sense that she alone, of all the redeemed, has been taken body and soul into heaven. The privilege has nevertheless important consequences for the rest of the human race.

FOR one thing, the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption is a reminder that we all have an eternal destiny. A reminder that our life is not limited to the present existence here on earth. And this is a reminder that all of us need, especially nowadays. We are living in an age of secular humanism. An age that refuses to accept the supernatural. We live in an age that ignores the reality of a future life. An age that makes man the measure of all things and rejects the influence and the presence of God. An age that is terrified of death because it can see nothing beyond the grave.

The Assumption of Our Lady Focuses  . . .

Additionally, the Assumption of Our Lady focuses our attention on the truth of the resurrection of the body, a point that modern secularism refuses even to consider. It recalls to us the fact that Christ is victorious over sin and death, that we too shall rise from the dead as He did on Easter morning.

Then, too, the Assumption of Mary makes us realize the value and the dignity of the material world. Especially the value and dignity of the human body. It stresses the truth that God looks upon His material creation as good. And, it is a gift that He has given to man, a gift that should not be abused. It especially reminds us that, like our Blessed Lady, we also are temples of the Holy Spirit, not only in our souls, but in our whole human personality that is composed of matter and spirit.

. . . Our Attention of the Resurrection of the Body

AND it reminds us of another important point; the love that Christ has for His own Blessed Mother. It shows Him glorifying her by taking her to heaven, body and soul. This is His culminating act of love for the woman who gave Him his human life. And sets an example for the kind of love and veneration we should have for her. To those who object that we Catholics pay too much attention to Our Lady, we can always point out to them that Christ’s own love for her far exceeds even the most intense and wide-spread human devotion to her.

And finally, we should consider this. Her Assumption into heaven puts her in a position where she can be a real, true, human mother to all of mankind. The Second Vatican Council tells us that her motherhood of the human race “continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office, but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.”