Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin Mary

See also: Virgin Mary, Immaculate Conception of Mary.

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Traditional representation of the Assumption of Mary

The Dormition and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary refer to two successive moments of her end of earthly life on earth.

Her Dormition marks her actual end of earthly life. It is characterized by sleep rather than death, hence the term "dormition" (from Latin "dormire" meaning "to sleep"). The term "passing" is also used. This event affirms that Mary did not experience the corruption of the tomb. It is especially celebrated in the Orthodox tradition.

Her Assumption is the affirmation that after her earthly life ended, the Virgin Mary was taken up body and Soul into Heaven. This belief is mainly spread within the Roman Catholic Church, where it is considered a dogma of faith since its proclamation by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950. - on the Vatican website.

The circumstances of the Virgin Mary's end of life are not reported in the Gospels but come from a well-established tradition.

In Tradition

Until the mid-4th century, there was no text about the Virgin Mary's end of life. The first source is that of Saint Epiphanius (310–403), who wrote: "We do not know either the death of Mary, nor if she died. […] I do not say that she remained immortal, but I also do not decide that she is mortal". This Father, noted Msgr. Laurentin, very knowledgeable of all the traditions of the Holy Land, could not say more clearly that he ignores everything concerning Mary's end. He speaks neither of Dormition nor Assumption but considers that the Holy Spirit has Hidden this mystery from us so as not to strike the mind by the "greatness of the wonder".

Apocryphal accounts of Mary's passage to heaven (Transitus Mariæ) mainly flourished in the mid-5th century, the time of the Council of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), where Mary was proclaimed "Theotokos" (Mother of God). Although regarded as apocryphal, these accounts continued to exert significant influence: St. Germain of Constantinople (+733) and especially St. John Damascene (circa 676–753) refer to them.

Some accounts have her dying in Ephesus (Anne-Catherine Emmerich), others in Jerusalem (Mary of Agreda), but the most widespread tradition places it in Jerusalem. The body is placed in a tomb from which Mary resurrects before being taken up to Heaven. Her funeral was followed by the apostles who had gathered for the occasion from the lands where they had been dispersed.

In the writings of Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta's account respects, with notable differences, the three successive events of Tradition:

1. the Dormition,
2. the Assumption,
3. the Glorification.

The dates

Jesus specifies in a dictation that his Mother lived twenty-one years after the Ascension. Her dormition therefore took place in 51 AD. Mary was then 70 years old. This precision from Maria Valtorta is also found in the visions of Mary of Agreda. By correlating the details of Mary of Agreda and Maria Valtorta, Jean-François Lavère dates the dormition to the evening of Saturday, August 12. Only John is present and he does not want to believe that death can touch Mary. "You are wrong, John. My Son died! And I shall die as well. I shall not suffer the disease, the agony, the pang of death. But as far as dying is concerned, I shall die."

The body, watched over by John, remains so until the morning of Tuesday, August 15, 21, when the Angels come to take Mary's body and carry it away. Awakened by the sound of the Angels, John wakes and runs to the terrace where he sees Mary's assumption and her glorified body coming back to life upon the meeting of Jesus descending in his glory.

The circumstances

These events take place at Gethsemane where Mary has been living with John since the Ascension. John, the only witness to her death, receives Mary's long spiritual testament then prays by reciting, at her request, the psalms and scripture passages concerning her. Meanwhile, "full of joy" she dies "contemplating God and feeling His embrace". John, overcome, remains prostrate but convinced that Mary's body will not experience corruption. He surrounds the body with flowers and olive branches and keeps vigil for a few days, persuaded of her resurrection.

John, collapsed from fatigue after three days without sleep, does not see angelic creatures removing Mary's body and taking it inertly to Heaven. A void miraculously opened in the roof of the little house at Gethsemane. He has time to see the wonder and attend Mary's resurrection and that of Jesus.

The place

No earthly traces remain of the place of the Assumption:

"The house, from which I was abducted to Heaven, was one of the countless generosities of Lazarus, for Jesus and His Mother. The little house of Gethsemane, near the place of His Ascension. It is useless to look for its remains. In the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, it was devastated, and its ruins were scattered in the course of ages."

There are also no tomb remains:

"Mary came to Me, to God, to Heaven, without experiencing the sepulchre with its horror of lugubrious rottenness. It is one of the most refulgent miracles of God. Not the only one, really, if we remember Enoch and Elijah who, being dear to the Lord, were abducted from the Earth, without experiencing death, and translated elsewhere, to a place known only to God and to the celestial inhabitants of Heaven. They were just, but always nothing as compared with My Mother, inferior, in holiness, only to God. That is why there are no relics of the body or of the sepulchre of Mary. Because Mary had no sepulchre, and Her body was brought to Heaven"

"Was I dead?"

Mary, in a commentary, clarifies the circumstances of her death which connects her to the "passing from Earth to Heaven" as it had been designed for Man exempt from original sin and which she benefits from by her Immaculate Conception and her life free of all sin:

"Did I die? Yes, if you call death the separation of the choice part of the spirit from the body. No, if by death you understand the separation of the vivifying soul from the body, the corruption of the flesh no longer vivified by the soul, and before that, the lugubrious sepulchre, and before all these things, the pangs of death. How did I die, or better, how did I pass from the Earth to Heaven, first with My immortal part, then with the perishable one? As it was fair for Her Who did not become acquainted with the stain of sin."

Notable points

• Mary's Assumption is not a unique event in the Bible. Jesus recalls it: it was the case with Enoch. The letter to the Hebrews mentions it. He is attributed an apocryphal book that Jude quotes in his letter. Elijah was also taken up to Heaven in a chariot of Fire under Elisha's eyes. Jesus also emphasizes: "They were just, but still nothing compared to my Mother, inferior in holiness only to God".

• Mary died of love, and she explains it:

  "We were speaking [with John] of Jesus, of the Father, of the Kingdom of Heaven. To speak of Love and of the Kingdom of Love, is to become lit with the living fire, consuming the bonds of matter to let the spirit free for its mystic flights. And if the fire is contained within the limits fixed by God to preserve creatures on the Earth, at His service, it is possible to live and burn, finding in the ardour not the consumption, but the completion of life. But when God removes the limits and gives freedom to the divine Fire to assail and attract the spirit to Itself without any measure, then the spirit, replying in turn without measure to the Love, detaches itself from matter and flies where the Love urges and invites it. And it is the end of the exile and the return to the Fatherland."

  This phenomenon is attested by the mystical experiences of Padre Pio and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. They separately recount, but in nearly identical terms, that the intensity of love was such that they almost died from it. St. Alphonsus Liguori also attests that Mary died of love.

• Jesus elaborates on the tripartite nature of Man as body, Soul and spirit, mentioned by St Paul and referenced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In the body there is the Soul and in the Soul there is the Spirit. If the Soul separates from the body, it is death, but if the Spirit escapes from the Soul, it is Ecstasy.
• This assertion on the tripartite composition of Man (body, Soul, spirit) is developed by Maria Valtorta before the visions, already in her Autobiography. More specifically, the distinction between death and Ecstasy, developed on May 1, 1946, is taken up later by Azariah. These assertions belong to the theological deepening of the work of Maria Valtorta which helps explain mysticism understood as the realm of life in God. They help understand, for example, that an immortal Soul can be dead or that the "Kingdom of God" is within us. This logically explains the visions and the revelations: "The more a creature loves and serves God with all its strength and power, the more the nobler part of its spirit increases its capacity to know, to contemplate and penetrate the eternal truths."

References in "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

• The Dormition of Mary commented on by Jesus.
• The Apostle John is sure of Mary's Assumption.
• By her co-redemption, she already crossed death.
• The Dormition of Mary (the Blessed passing of Mary).
• Her Assumption and coronation.
• Mary's comments on her Blessed passage.

References in other works of Maria Valtorta

In the Notebooks

• Our [Jesus and Mary] spirits were always united by love […] until the Assumption, which was eternal union of the most pureMother with her Divine Son.
• Mary's death was another rapture. Prayer enveloped Her in its bands of love, obstructing all human sensibility on her part, and Love came to meet Her for the second time to clasp to Himself the Bride desired since before time existed. [...] Mary, who fell asleep on God's Heart, now lives in Heaven with her glorified flesh.
• The Dormition of Mary meditated upon on the occasion of the glorious mysteries.
• When her final sunset came, like a weary lily bending under the stars at night and closing her eyes of whiteness, Mary lay back on her couch and closed her eyes upon the world to recollect Herself in a final earthly contemplation of her God. Bending over her rest, Mary's angel anxiously waited for the impetus of ecstasy to separate that spirit from the earth forever, while from the Heavens there descended the gentle command of God: 'Come, O All‑Beautiful One' [...]
• Among the many who had loved me, only one was with me at my death. But that pause between earthly and heavenly life which was my Dormition was not solitary. The angels watched over my sleep as so many mothers watch over a cradle. And when I was born to Heaven, like mothers they took me to carry my weakness up to the breeze which abolished humanity in its laws of weight and made me similar in my body to my beloved Son in glory.
• "I [Maria Valtorta] was comforted by the contemplation of the Assumption of the Virgin that I have already described to you. […] The first time I had this vision, I was so absorbed by my contemplation of the Angels on the terrace that I did not carefully observe the details…"
• The extraordinary Holy Year was celebrated for the nineteenth centennial of my Passion [1933]. Infinite Wisdom would love there to be a celebration of this other centennial as well‑of the glorious Assumption of my Mother into Heaven‑and to have this celebration give a special character to the next Holy Year [it was in the Holy Year 1950 that the Dogma of the Assumption was promulgated].
• Man, imperfect in believing in the resurrection of the flesh and in risen flesh's sharing in the joy of the blessed spirit; man, who, because he is unable to believe in this truth or at least is in doubt about it, who is not yet convinced by the Resurrection of Christ because he says, "He was God and so..."; in the face of the established truth of the Assumption of Mary in body and soul into. Heaven, can no longer doubt. His mind has a means which power fully leads him to believe in the resurrection of the flesh and its sharing in the eternal joy of the spirit.

References in fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• Ascension of Enoch.
• Ascension of Elijah.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians."       
• The Dogma of the Assumption was promulgated by Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus of November 1, 1950.
• "The Virgin Immaculate, preserved from every stain of original sin, at the end of her earthly life, was taken up body and Soul into glory in Heaven, and was exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe."

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Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).