Preview: Saint J.H. Newman on Mary's Bodily Assumption

We're going to continue on a Marian Newman theme throughout the month of August in our Monday morning Son Rise Morning Show exchanges, so on Monday, August 15, on the Feast of the Assumption, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will take a look at a few of Saint John Henry Newman's Meditations on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I'll be on at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here on EWTN or on your local EWTN affiliate.

Of course, we must remember that when Saint John Henry Newman wrote these Meditations for the boys of the Oratory School in Birmingham, England, the Catholic Church did not teach infallibly that the Mother of God had been assumed, body and soul, upon her dormition or death. That dogma would not be proclaimed until 60 years after Newman's death. The photograph above (public domain) is of Venerable Pope Pius XII proclaiming the dogma publicly in 1950. His Apostolic Constitution of November 1, 1950, Munificentissimus Deus, stated in its 44th paragraph, after a review of the Tradition of the Church and her Saints, East and West, regarding her Assumption:

after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

Newman mentions Mary's Assumption in the second of the two Discourses to Mixed Congregations I highlighted last week, "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary":

I will be brief, but bear with me if I view her bright Assumption, as I have viewed her immaculate purity, rather as a point of doctrine than as a theme for devotion.

It was surely fitting then, it was becoming, that she {371} should be taken up into heaven and not lie in the grave till Christ's second coming, who had passed a life of sanctity and of miracle such as hers. . . . Why should {372} she share the curse of Adam, who had no share in his fall? "Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return," was the sentence upon sin; she then, who was not a sinner, fitly never saw corruption. She died, then, as we hold, because even our Lord and Saviour died . . . She died that she might live, she died as a matter of form or (as I may call it) an observance, in order to fulfil, what is called, the debt of nature,—not primarily for herself or because of sin, but to submit herself to her condition, to glorify God, to do what her Son did; not however as her Son and Saviour, with any suffering for any special end; not with a martyr's death, for {373} her martyrdom had been in living; not as an atonement, for man could not make it, and One had made it, and made it for all; but in order to finish her course, and to receive her crown.

Newman even mentions the tradition, shared by the Saint John Damascene, that the Apostles, having buried her, opened her tomb (because St. Thomas hadn't made to the funeral--late again!) and found it empty. That's why many paintings of the Assumption show her tomb and the Apostles at the bottom and her Assumption into Heaven on the top, like this painting by Andrea del Sarto (public domain).

In Newman's meditations on the Litany of Loreto, he offers another apologetic for believing that the Mother of God was Assumed into Heaven in considering her titles:

Holy Mother of God

Sinless Mother

Mystical Rose

Tower of David

Powerful Virgin

Help of Christians

Most Faithful Virgin

Morning Star

I've selected just a few of his arguments:

From his meditation on Mary as the Holy Mother of God:

We are told by St. Matthew, that after our Lord's death upon the Cross "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints that had slept"—that is, slept the sleep of death, "arose, and coming out of the tombs after His Resurrection, came into the Holy City, and appeared to many." St. Matthew says, "many bodies of the Saints"—that is, the holy Prophets, Priests, and Kings of former times—rose again in anticipation of the last day.

Can we suppose that Abraham, or David, or Isaias, or Ezechias, should have been thus favoured, and not God's own Mother? Had she not a claim on the love of her Son to have what any others had? Was she not nearer to Him than the greatest of the Saints before her? And is it conceivable that the law of the grave should admit of relaxation in their case, and not in hers? Therefore we confidently say that our Lord, having preserved her from sin and the consequences of sin by His Passion, lost no time in pouring out the full merits of that Passion upon her body as well as her soul.

From his meditation on the Sinless Mother title:

One reason for believing in our Lady's Assumption {65} is that her Divine Son loved her too much to let her body remain in the grave. A second reason—that now before us—is this, that she was not only dear to the Lord as a mother is dear to a son, but also that she was so transcendently holy, so full, so overflowing with grace. Adam and Eve were created upright and sinless, and had a large measure of God's grace bestowed upon them; and, in consequence, their bodies would never have crumbled into dust, had they not sinned; upon which it was said to them, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." If Eve, the beautiful daughter of God, never would have become dust and ashes unless she had sinned, shall we not say that Mary, having never sinned, retained the gift which Eve by sinning lost? What had Mary done to forfeit the privilege given to our first parents in the beginning? Was her comeliness to be turned into corruption, and her fine gold to become dim, without reason assigned? Impossible. Therefore we believe that, though she died for a short hour, as did our Lord Himself, yet, like Him, and by His Almighty power, she was raised again from the grave.

From the Mystical Rose meditation:

. . . if her body was not taken into heaven, where is it? how comes it that it is hidden from us? why do we not hear of her tomb as being here or {67} there? why are not pilgrimages made to it? why are not relics producible of her, as of the saints in general? Is it not even a natural instinct which makes us reverent towards the places where our dead are buried? . . . Christians from the earliest times went from other countries to Jerusalem to see the holy places. And, when the time of persecution was over, they paid still more attention to the bodies of the Saints, as of St. Stephen, St. Mark, St. Barnabas, St. Peter, St. Paul, and other Apostles and Martyrs. These were transported to great cities, and portions of them sent to this place or that. Thus, from the first to this day it has been a great feature and characteristic of the Church to be most tender and reverent towards the bodies of the Saints. Now, if there was anyone who more than all would be preciously taken care of, it would be our Lady. Why then do we hear nothing of the Blessed Virgin's body and its separate relics? Why is she thus the hidden Rose? Is it conceivable that they who had been so reverent and careful of the bodies of the Saints and Martyrs should neglect her—her who was the Queen of Martyrs and the Queen of Saints, who was the very Mother of our Lord? It is impossible. Why then is she thus the hidden Rose? Plainly because that sacred body is in heaven, not on earth.

If you are interested in more background on the declaration of the Dogma of Our Lady's Assumption, I highly recommend Mary’s Bodily Assumption by Matthew Levering from Notre Dame University Press which I reviewed a few years ago. From the publisher:

In Mary’s Bodily Assumption, Matthew Levering presents a contemporary explanation and defense of the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption. He asks: How does the Church justify a doctrine that does not have explicit biblical or first-century historical evidence to support it? With the goal of exploring this question more deeply, he divides his discussion into two sections, one historical and the other systematic.

Levering’s historical section aims to retrieve the rich Mariological doctrine of the mid-twentieth century. He introduces the development of Mariology in Catholic Magisterial documents, focusing on Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Munificentissimus Deus of 1950, in which the bodily Assumption of Mary was dogmatically defined, and two later Magisterial documents, Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium and Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Mater. Levering addresses the work of the neo-scholastic theologians Joseph Duhr, Aloïs Janssens, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange before turning to the great theologians of the nouvelle théologie—Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Joseph Ratzinger—and their emphasis on biblical typology. Using John Henry Newman as a guide, Levering organizes his systematic section by the three pillars of the doctrine on which Mary’s Assumption rests: biblical typology, the Church as authoritative interpreter of divine revelation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the fittingness of Mary’s Assumption in relation to the other mysteries of faith.

Levering’s ecumenical contribution is a significant engagement with Protestant biblical scholars and theologians; it is also a reclamation of Mariology as a central topic in Catholic theology.

Holy Mother of God, Assumed into Heaven, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!