Assumption
♥ Belief that Mary has been taken up and is now in heaven with both her body and her soul has been part of the teaching of the Catholic Church since the earliest centuries of Christianity.
♥ By the end of the Middle Ages, belief in Mary’s Assumption into heaven was well established theologically and part of the devotional expressions of the people.
♥ The word Assumption comes from the Latin verb assumere, meaning “to take to oneself.” Our Lord Jesus Christ took Mary home to himself where he is. In the light of a long history of Christian belief since patristic times, in 1950, Pope Pius XII defined Mary’s Assumption into Heaven as a dogma[1] of Roman Catholicism. “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.”
♥ Today, the belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is universal in the East and in the West; according to Benedict XIV (De Festis B.V.M., I, viii, 18) it is a probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous.[2]
Mother of Life: Guide And Protector Of Life
♥ While the human remains and final resting places of key figures like St Peter or St Paul would become shrines and centres of pilgrimage, in the case of the Blessed Mother of Jesus – the most honoured figure of all besides Our Lord Himself – there is no known final resting place, no relics to venerate.
♥ But for many Catholics, the most telling verification of the Assumption can be found, not so much in learned theological treatises or definitive doctrinal statements, however necessary these are, but per medium of Mary’s many apparitions which the Church has declared worthy of belief, like Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, and others. [3]
♥ These appearances of Our Lady in a glorified body themselves have lent strong, if indirect, support to the reality of the Assumption. Let us examine, for instance, one of Mary’s apparitions as our Lady of Guadalupe.
[1] Dogma (Gr. dogma from dokein) is a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. It might be described briefly as a revealed truth defined by the Church. Retrieved July 21, 2007 from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05089a.htm
[2] Retrieved July 22, 2007 from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm
[3] Retrieved August 2, 2007 from http://secaucusimmaculateconception.com/sacraments-2/messages
Brosh Legaspi 
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