Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2025
This Friday, August 15, we celebrate the Assumption of Mary, a holy day of obligation for Catholics. The feast of the “Dormition” of Mary is an old feast of the Eastern Christian churches and one of the oldest feasts of Mary. Belief in the Assumption of Mary is ancient. In the Eastern Churches there is a tradition that Mary “fell asleep”. It means death, but death without pain or trauma. There are legends that when the disciples came back to her grave a day or so later, her body was gone and they understood that her body had ascended to heaven.
The western tradition is that Mary never died, that she was taken to heaven while fully alive, much like Elijah in the Old Testament who went to heaven in a fiery chariot. When Pope Pius XII in 1950 defined the Assumption of Mary as an infallible dogma, he was careful not to state whether she died first (fell asleep) or was taken to heaven alive. There two valid traditions in the Church and it is not important which is accurate.
Eastern Christians propose that since death is a result of sin, and since Mary was sinless, that she never died. Western Christians reason that Mary would have had the same path as her Son, death followed by resurrection.
The Assumption or Dormition of Mary is relevant for us because we will follow Mary into heaven one day. Mary was preserved from sin and the sinless Mary was taken to heaven, body and soul. We have all sinned, yet through forgiveness, we too will be sinless and we too will follow Mary to heaven and at the end of time, we will rise in our bodies and be in heaven body and soul.
The privileges that Mary received—sinlessness through God’s grace and a bodily assumption to heave—are gifts that we will receive also. Our blessedness is given through forgiveness of sin.
When I came to Saint John’s in 1991, there were 18 Masses on holy days of obligation. In the early 1990s, the number of holy day Masses was reduced to about 12. Now we have 3. This illustrates the decline in Catholic practice and the decline of Center City’s shopping and office work economy.
Regardless, go to Mass on August 15 and give thanks for God’s promise of forgiveness and salvation.
