On November 1, 1950 Pope Pius XII infallibly declared: “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” It was not 1950, some 68 years ago, that the Church came to profess this reality. Rather, this is something which the Church has always professed from the time of the apostles moving forward into the present age.
Some claim that Assumption of Mary into Heaven contradicts Sacred Scripture, but this is not the case. Sacred Scripture may not mention Mary being taken into Heaven, but it does account for Enoch and Elijah who were taken up. If this is true of them, then what makes it so hard to believe that the same can be said of Mary? After all we must remember that the Assumption is not the Ascension. We cannot confuse these two with one another. It was Christ who ascended to Heaven, how, but by His own infinite power. In the case of Mary or Enoch or Elijah we can say that they were assumed, how, but by God’s infinite power, not their own power.
Mary, on the other hand, is set apart from Enoch and Elijah. She is set apart from all the prophets and saints for scripture says of her through the lips of an angel: “Hail, full of grace.” Grace is such an important word and yet in the modern world this word seems to be so hard for us to grasp. I have even been told that you should never mention the word grace in a homily because nobody will know what you are talking about. Well that statement is absurd because we must come to understand the importance that grace plays in our life.
So what is grace? From the Catechism: “grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “grace is a relational term: it does not predicate something about an I, but something about a connection between I and Thou, between God and man.” Therefore to receive grace is to be found in relationship with God. In the case of Mary she was found to be “full of grace” which shows that she had perfectly come to open herself up to the reception of God’s grace. This relationship was not tarnished by the stain sin, but rather she lived as a perfect receiver of the gift of God’s grace. No wonder then that it is so fitting that she is taken body and soul before us into Heavenly glory.
