Therefore, we'll reflect on this 75th anniversary on the Son Rise Morning Show in our 2025 Anniversary series on Monday, November 3--I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to discuss this anniversary and its importance. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.
An excellent book on this dogma, in my opinion, is Matthew Levering's Mary's Bodily Assumption, which I purchased, read, and reviewed in 2019. One of reasons I appreciated the book was Levering's citation of Saint John Henry Newman's explanation of this teaching (101 years before it was infallibly defined!), when he referred to Newman's "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son" and "The Fitness of the Glories of Mary" from the Discourses to Mixed Congregations published in 1849.
As Pope Pius IX had done before he infallibly defined the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, Pope Pius XII had requested input from the bishops throughout the world. He wrote an encyclical in 1946, Deiparae Virginis Mariae (ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XIION THE POSSIBILITY OF DEFINING THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AS A DOGMA OF FAITH TO THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, AND OTHER ORDINARIES AT PEACE AND IN COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE)!
When he had received their affirmative response to his request to let him know " . . . if you, Venerable Brethren, with your learning and prudence consider that the bodily Assumption of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith, and whether in addition to your own wishes this is desired by your clergy and people," he proceeded with the proclamation of the dogma in the Apostolic Constitution defining the Dogma of the Assumption.
Also like his predecessor in 1854, Pius XII offered examples of the Fathers of the Church to support this definition, especially Saint John Damascene,
an outstanding herald of this traditional truth, [who] spoke out with powerful eloquence when he compared the bodily Assumption of the loving Mother of God with her other prerogatives and privileges. "It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father. It was fitting that God's Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God." (Encomium in Dormitionem Dei Genetricis Semperque Virginis Mariae, Hom. II, n. 14)
And he also surveyed the "scholastic" theologians and Doctors of the Church, including Saints Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Bernardine of Siena, and others, before concluding:
For which reason, 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.
Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.
There's a film available from 1950 of the proclamation, with the procession of the Salus Populi Romani from Ara Coeli Church to St. Peters on the evening of October 31, and Pope Pius XII's Latin definition of the dogma the next day via British Pathé! The proclamation was the highlight of the Holy Year of 1950, according to narrator.
In that second discourse, Doctor Newman (by the time Anna or Matt and I talk Monday morning) states:
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. All the works of God are in a beautiful harmony; they are carried on to the end as they begin. This is the difficulty which men of the world find in believing miracles at all; they think these break the order and consistency of God's visible word, not knowing that they do but subserve a higher order of things, and introduce a supernatural perfection. But at least, my brethren, when one miracle is wrought, it may be expected to draw others after it for the completion of what is begun. Miracles must be wrought for some great end; and if the course of things fell back again into a natural order before its termination, how could we but feel a disappointment? and if we were told that this certainly was to be, how could we but judge the information improbable and difficult to believe? Now this applies to the history of our Lady. I say, it would be a greater miracle if, her life being what it was, her death was like that of other men, than if it were such as to correspond to her life. Who can conceive, my brethren, that God should so repay the debt, which He condescended to owe to His Mother, for the elements of His human body, as to allow the flesh and blood from which it was taken to moulder in the grave? Do the sons of men thus deal with their mothers? do they not nourish and sustain them in their feebleness, and keep them in life while they are able? Or who can conceive that that virginal frame, which never sinned, was to undergo the death of a sinner? 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.
As I concluded my 2019 book review:
The late, great Monsignor William Carr always told us at the Newman Center that Mary's Assumption was the great sign for us of the victory over Death that Jesus Christ has won for us. As she represents the Church in Heaven, she represents our hope for eternal life with the Holy Trinity. Levering echoes this: "Each August 15, then, the Church liturgically celebrates the wondrous truth that, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, Mary has become the first to receive the promise that we are to be "heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ . . . (Romans 8:17)"
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Assumed into Heaven, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
Image Credit (Public Domain) The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Titian (1515–1518), the main altarpiece of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.
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