By Sr. Eileen McGrory, SC

In the Catholic tradition, Mary, Mother of God, is celebrated with a feast called the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. The Church declared this feast officially on November 1, 1950, by proclaiming that at the end of her earthly life, Mary was taken body and soul into heaven. 

The basis for the proclamation of this article of faith is not drawn from any direct reference found in Scripture nor from accounts of Christians who witnessed the event. It comes from early Christian writings that testify that the belief Mary was taken, body and soul into heaven, was held by the faithful since apostolic times and preserved by the faithful into the following ages.

During the centuries before the formal teaching of Mary’s Assumption, the laity sensed that God had expressed through Mary the eternal divine desire to bring each human being to fulfillment. In this act of union or completion in God, all limitations of the human condition are transcended. Mary in her life gives testament to the divine love for human nature.

The faithful manifested their strongly held belief through art and architecture, song and sculpture, and even by the naming of churches. These art forms were developed as invitations to deeper reflection on Mary’s role in the plan of God for us. 

In the one hundred years prior to the papal announcement, the Vatican received petitions from around the world asking for official church recognition of Mary’s Assumption. This was, indeed, a teaching proclaimed from the pews before it was announced from the pulpit.

Fittingly, on the Feast of All Saints, November 1, which honors the departed whose lives have come to completion in heaven, the Church declared this belief of the people of God an official teaching. Mary is one of us who shows by her faithful discipleship the way to God. Through Mary God has expressed the reality that a human being like us has reached the fulfillment God desires for all.