The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on Tuesday, August 15, 2023. On this holy day of obligation, we commemorate when Mary’s body and soul were assumed into heaven and she passed into eternal life.

On November 1, 1950, Venerable Pope Pius XII proclaimed as Dogma that the Virgin Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”. This truth of faith was known by Tradition, was affirmed by the Fathers of the Church, and was a particularly important aspect in the veneration of the Mother of Christ. Precisely this devotional element, so to speak, was the driving force behind the formulation of this Dogma. The Dogma appears as an act of praise and exaltation of the Holy Virgin. It also emerges from the text of the Apostolic Constitution, where it affirms that the Dogma is proclaimed for “the honor of her Son...for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church”.

In the mystery of her Assumption, Mary experiences immediately what we all will experience eventually, a bodily resurrection like Christ’s own. “The Immaculate Virgin...when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of death” (CCC, no. 966).

The feast has many different names -- Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, and the Feast of the Assumption to name a few -- it has been celebrated since the fourth century C.E. 

With Prayers,
Father Raju Macherla