How does Mary point us to our destiny?


Pope Pius XII defined the dogma this way: 


‘Proof’ of the Assumption 

What evidence is there for the Assumption? 

To begin with, we have the witness of the New Testament, which already takes for granted the image of Mary as a cosmic heavenly figure by the time of the Book of Revelation (roughly A.D. 90) (see sidebar below). In that book, she is identified not merely as the Mother of the One who is to “rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” but of “the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.” 

This obviously Marian allusion is telling, particularly because it appears in a book that is closely associated with the one Evangelist who, above all, also writes a Gospel to emphasize the fact that Mary is the Mother not only of Jesus, but of all the baptized: 


Early tradition 

That said, however, we must again remember that the tradition of the Assumption is not based on Scripture, but rather precedes the writing of the New Testament. The Church does not read a strange text in Revelation about a woman clothed with the sun and then say, “Let’s pretend this refers to Mary and invent a story about her being assumed into heaven.” Rather the Assumption occurs (most likely in the 40s or 50s) and the Church carries the tradition with it into history, where it is reflected in various ways (including in Chapter 12 of Revelation some 40 or 50 years later). 

Commonly held belief 


For instance, Easterners tend to think that Mary died, while Westerners tend to think she didn’t (see sidebar “Did Mary die?”). Traditions about her final resting place diverge and place her burial in Ephesus or Jerusalem. Also, there is a curious (and telling) lack of relics for Mary. 

What this reflects, ironically, is unanimity about the basic tradition rather than doubt. The early controversies in the Church concerned the person and work of Jesus, not the Blessed Virgin. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, assumed into heaven, turns up in tomb art as far away as Spain as early as A.D. 312, indicating it was already a long-settled matter by the time it crossed the Mediterranean. 

In 373 St. Ephraem recorded a tradition that the Virgin was assumed — and nobody rebukes this as an unheard-of novelty. 

Similarly, various apocryphal and spurious works such as the De Obitu S. Dominae and De Transitu Virginis, as well as various Fathers of the early Church, bear witness to the Assumption. Much is made of these spurious works by critics, as though the Church stole the idea of the Assumption from them. 

But, in fact, the spurious works are simply reflecting what was already commonly believed by Christians. Indeed, in the East, the Church promulgates the feast of the Dormition in the fourth century and there is simply no controversy. That’s the surest evidence the tradition was already ancient: When you are looking at a feast you are seeing the tip of an iceberg whose bulk is nothing other than the common belief of all normal Christians at the time. 

Virtue amid corruption 

The question is: Why did the pope define this commonly accepted point of faith as dogma in 1950? 

And the answer lies in the encyclical that proclaimed the dogma: Munificentissimus Deus. 


Finally, it is our hope that belief in Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven will make our belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective. 

As the 19th century attacked the dignity of our origins in unprecedented ways, the 20th century blasphemed (and the 21st century continues to blaspheme) the dignity of our destiny. Again and again and again, the 20th century, rooted in the philosophies of pride from the 19th century, screamed and blared that our final destiny was the oven, the mass grave, the concentration camp, the gas chamber, the muddy trench, the frozen Siberian waste, the anonymity of the cubicle, the facelessness of the production line, the dereliction of the nursing home, the dumpster behind the abortuary.  

It taught us that people who can’t produce should die; people with defective bodies or brains should die; people who did not look like us should die; children should die; old people should die; and that we are all means to ends and not creatures made in the image of God, for whom he was willing to die. In the midst of this insanity — directly after a war in which all these horrors had been manifest, the pope was moved to ask the Church whether the Assumption should be declared a dogma of the Faith. 

The Church overwhelmingly assented.

Model disciple  

Mary’s destiny is the sign of our destiny. As she is the icon of the Church, so she is the model disciple who shows not only how to follow Christ, but the reward awaiting those who do. 

The Triune God wills to grant us, as he has already granted her, the ecstatic crowned glory of complete union — body, soul and spirit — with himself in eternity. The Church, in pointing to Mary, is simply underscoring that fact. She is the great sign of hope for all believers in Christ. 

This is the final installment of an eight-part series. Mark Shea is senior content editor at and writes the Catholic and Enjoying It! blog at He writes from Washington state.

Did Mary Die? (sidebar)


— St. Epiphanius  

The Woman Clothed With the Sun (sidebar)  





When the dragon saw that it had been thrown down to the earth, it pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child ... and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus (Rv 12:1-6,13,17).