Today, we celebrate the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This solemnity recalls the spiritual and physical departure of the mother of Jesus Christ from the earth when both her soul and her body were taken into the presence of God.

Venerable Pope Pius XII confirmed this belief about the Virgin Mary when he defined it formally as a dogma of Catholic faith in 1950, invoking papal infallibility to proclaim,

“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.”

His Apostolic Constitution “Munificentissimus Deus” (Most Bountiful God), which defined the dogma, contained the Pontiff’s accounts of many longstanding traditions by which the Church has celebrated the Assumption throughout its history.

In one of the sermons of Saint John of Damascus, he said,

“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, and that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles.”