Truth behind some festivals of Mary

  Mary

                         Catholics annually celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15. One of the several special feasts associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Feast of the Assumption calls upon Catholics world wide to recall the role of Mary in Salvation History and to attend a celebration of Holy Mass . For faithful Catholics the Feast of the Assumption is a day to connect in prayer to the life of Mary but also to recall that in her life, death and assumption into heaven we all can find hope for the resurrection of our own bodies into eternal life.

The Many Feasts of Mary 

                                 More than any other Christian Church, the Roman Catholic Church holds Mary in special regard and accords to her several special days of commemoration during its liturgical year. On Dec. 8 the Church celebrates the Immaculate Conception of Mary. On this day Catholics celebrate their belief that Mary entered the world free from what the Church calls the "stain of Original Sin". The Catholic Church holds that because Mary would become the Mother of Jesus she was allowed the special privilege of being born as an immaculate or thoroughly pure human being, free of all sin.
On Jan. 1, the Catholics do not gather together to celebrate a mass to begin the new year. The mass celebration on that day instead is centered on "The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God". On this day , attention is turned to the role Mary played in the life of Jesus from the time of his infancy, through his public ministry until his death of the cross. Catholics are called upon to both honor and take as a model the qualities of humility and obedience they believe Mary demonstrated throughout her life.
Mary's Birthday is celebrated by the Church on September 8 and the entire month of May is dedicated to Mary as well. More than any other human being associated with Jesus, Mary has survived in Catholic tradition as the first and best example of what it means to be a follower of Christ .
The Feast of the Assumption

                    Among the Feast Days and remembrances of Mary, one that has caused considerable conflict between Catholics and non-Catholics is the Feast of the Assumption. On August 15 Catholics will recall and celebrate their belief that Mary's death was very different than that suffered by all other human beings. It is the Church's belief that while Mary passed from this earthly life, she never suffered the natural corruption of the body to which we are all liable. Instead after her early life was finished she was, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, " taken up" body and soul into heavenly glory. In a sense this was Mary's heavenly birthday, the day in which she was received into heaven.
The Feast has two significant aspects for Catholics. First Mary's Assumption is a gift from God. She did not raise herself from the dead. She is not a female Jesus. She did not experience a resurrection in the same way that believers say Christ arose from the dead. She was not seen after burial walking among the living. The belief is that she ended her earthly existence but was then taken from this world into the next.
Secondly this feast is of special importance to human beings because it can be seen as an example of what awaits all faithful believers after death. Those who have lived the Christian lifestyle can expect that beyond death waits life. What was given to Mary after death awaits us all. Mary then becomes a sign of hope for those who have faith.

A Few Questions.
                   
                          For Catholics, the Assumption is simply another mystery of the Catholic faith. While they may not be able to apply the rules of science to the event they nonetheless accept it with the eyes of faith. Is it likely that Jesus would provide this special gift for the woman who bore him and cared for him and mourned him but remained faithful throughout? The answer for Catholics is resoundingly yes.
But for those outside the Catholic Church the Assumption can cause a whole raft of issues. To begin with, for those Christian faiths that rely totally on what is in the Bible, the Assumption lacks scriptural validity. You can look, but you won't find the Feast of the Assumption anywhere in anyone's Bible. In fact there is very little mention of Mary after her death in any Christian sources until around the year 500 A. D. For many Christian churches, Apostolic Tradition which Catholics depend upon, is simply not sufficient to validate such a major event.
Doubters are also troubled by what little they can find to read about the death of Mary. There are different schools of thought about where the actual physical burial of Mary took place with some insisting on Jerusalem while others holding on to Ephesus . There are differing opinions about when she died. Best guesses place the death of Mary sometime between 3 and 15 years after the death of her son Jesus, but there is no real consensus. If no one knows for sure when or where Mary was buried, it becomes increasingly more difficult to prove or for that matter disprove anything about Mary's death other than that she did at some time die.

The Infallibility of the Catholic Church.
                
                              This is where the doctrine of the infallibility of the Catholic Church comes into play. The Church promulgated the Assumption of Mary on Nov. 1, 1950. But at that time the Church did not say they thought this is what happened, or it was their best guess that the Assumption was a valid belief. The Catholic Church declared that the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was being infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII. This means that in the mind of the Church the Pope's statement on this dogma is preserved by the Holy Spirit from the possibility of error.
As difficult as the concept of the Assumption may be for non-Catholics to accept or even understand, papal infallibility is a concept that clearly separates the Catholic Church from other Christian Churches. The concept was approved by the First Vatican Council in 1870. While it is used with great forbearance, the doctrine of papal infallibility seems to put the Catholic hierarchy beyond question and give it an ascendancy which non-Catholics find in many ways repugnant or at least arrogant.
Every August 15, Catholics dutifully recall the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into heaven. They celebrate Mary's life and they see in her death and new life in heaven, hope for their own future eternal salvation. The rest of Christianity doubts the authority but ponders the possibilities.

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Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary fest , August 15

              August 15

                             Celebrated every year on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary commemorates the death of Mary and her bodily assumption into Heaven, before her body could begin to decay--a foretaste of our own bodily resurrection at the end of time. Because it signifies the Blessed Virgin's passing into eternal life, it is the most important of all Marian feasts and a Holy Day of Obligation.

Quick Facts:

• Date: August 15.

• Type of Feast: Solemnity; Holy Day of Obligation. (For more details, see Is Assumption a Holy Day of Obligation?

• Readings: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56 (full text here)

• Prayers: The Hail Mary

• Other Names for the Feast: The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary; The Assumption of Mary Into Heaven; The Dormition of the Theotokos; The Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary

History of the Assumption:

The Feast of the Assumption is a very old feast of the Church, celebrated universally by the sixth century. The feast was originally celebrated in the East, where it is known as the Feast of the Dormition, a word which means "the falling asleep." The earliest printed reference to the belief that Mary's body was assumed into Heaven dates from the fourth century, in a document entitled "The Falling Asleep of the Holy Mother of God." The document is written in the voice of the Apostle John, to whom Christ on the Cross had entrusted the care of His mother, and recounts the death, laying in the tomb, and assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Tradition variously places Mary's death at Jerusalem or at Ephesus, where John was living.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life is a defined dogma of the Catholic Church. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, exercising papal infallibility, declared in Munificentissimus Deus that it is a dogma of the Church "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." As a dogma, the Assumption is a required belief of all Catholics; anyone who publicly dissents from the dogma, Pope Pius declared, "has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith."

While the Eastern Orthodox believe in the Dormition, they object to the papal definition of the dogma, seeing it as unnecessary, since belief in Mary's bodily assumption, tradition holds, goes back to apostolic times.

Pope Pius XII, in the text explaining his definition of the dogma of the Assumption, refers repeatedly to the Blessed Virgin's death before her Assumption, and the consistent tradition in both the East and the West holds that Mary did die before she was assumed into Heaven. However, since the definition of the Assumption is silent on this question, Catholics can legitimately believe that Mary did not before the Assumption.

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