The Assumption recalls Mary's dies natalis, or the day that marks the moment of the end of her earthly life and the beginning of her transcendent, endless life next to her Son. And this dies natalis in the early Christian world was the day of the believer’s death, which was not considered the end of human existence but a rebirth. In fact, the liturgical memory of the saints always falls on the day of their death and not of their birth.
The Council of Ephesus convened by Theodosius II in 431, gave Mary the title of Theotokos (bearer – or mother – of God), surpassing the more cautious definition of Christotokos, or bearer of Christ, given by the Archbishop of Constantinople Nestorius.
The natural deduction arises from the Council's definition having carried God in her womb and therefore being exempt from all forms of sin, Mary could not be subject to the laws of nature. The remains of the Mother of God could not be corrupted by death. Her body had to be preserved: this is how she was assumed into heaven entirely, body and soul. The Arab theologian of Christian faith John Damascene, who lived between the second half of the seventh century and the first half of the eighth, states in fact: “It was appropriate for the one who had preserved her virginity intact in childbirth to keep her body intact from corruption after death” (Homily II in dormitionem B.V. Mariae, 14 [PG 96, 742]).
Devotion to the Virgin had certainly formed well before the Council of Ephesus and had been nourished by faith and popular devotion which was then given stability in the apocryphal writings between the fourth and fifth centuries. To make up for the silence of the Gospels, which say very little about Mary, a tradition was born in which legends and stories came together that spoke extensively of her life, starting from the Proto-Gospel of James in the second century.
If, as the Immaculate Conception, that is, conceived without sin, Mary had the role of being able to intercede between God and human beings, with her assumption she also became a mediator between God and human beings, as a natural extension of the work of the Son on earth who had become incarnate in her womb. Many discussions arose from here, for several centuries, that lasted until the Middle Ages. There was also a differentiation in those who described Mary's death as koimesis, that is, “dormition” in the East, and transitus with the consequent “assumption”, in the West. In the ninth century Pope Leo IV and the Byzantine Patriarch Nicholas I recognised the feast of the Assumption of Mary and a few centuries later, following the vision received by German mystic Elizabeth of Schönau (1129-1164), it increased and became a day of profound devotion.
Discussions continued to be heated. Only Saints Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure supported the Assumption. However, the adverse positions were destined to become weaker and weaker over time, because in the meantime popular devotion grew more and more and overwhelmed doubts and distinctions. Spiritual and literary writings multiplied, not to mention figurative arts: all testify to how the Assumption is accepted as a fact. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance represent the triumph of Marian devotion. In art, images of the Assumption multiplied and drew on the world of the pagan deities in classical epiphanies, while the scene of slumber was relegated to a lesser role. Everything was aimed at celebrating the glory of Mary. After the Counter-Reformation, the representation of the Virgin floating up to heaven surrounded by an angelic throng was definitively affirmed.
Centuries passed and profound and radical changes took place. Secularisation grew hand in hand with increasingly rapid social changes. However, devotion to the Virgin did not fade, rather it increased at the beginning of the twentieth century. And precisely during that century, the dogmas relating to the Immaculate Conception first - in 1854 with Pope Pius IX - and later to the Assumption, were the answer to a pressing request that came from the people. The apparitions of the Virgin at Lourdes in France, at Fatima in Portugal and at Guadalupe in Mexico gave her even greater impetus, against the backdrop of civil, world and post-war conflicts. In 1940 between Italy, Spain and Latin America, more than eight million signatures were collected asking the Pope for a formal declaration. Petitions, prayers, study congresses and theological studies had become one voice, they asked for what in the heart had become a certainty of faith: the proclamation of Mary Assumed into Heaven
On 1 November 1950, after having officially consulted the episcopate with the encyclical Deiparae Virginis (May 1, 1946), Pope Pius XII issued the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus on the glorification of Mary in which we read the solemn definition: “Consequently, while we sent up earnest prayers to God that he might grant to our mind the light of the Holy Spirit (...) 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.”
