The Assumption of Mary

On August 15 the Church celebrates the belief, defined as dogma by Pius XII in 1950, that Mary at the end of her earthly life was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory. The feast is among the oldest in Christianity, kept in Jerusalem from at least the fifth century. It is the Church's confidence that what Mary is now, the rest of the redeemed will be — body and soul — at the resurrection of the dead.

The Assumption affirms that the body is not discarded in salvation but glorified. In a world that often treats the flesh as incidental or disposable, the feast insists that God's redemption reaches to the marrow of creation. Mary's bodily glorification is the firstfruits of a promise made to all the baptized — that nothing human is left behind in the passage from death to life.