“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.”
– Pope Pius XII
Although the dogma was proclaimed only in 1950, the Assumption of Mary had been held as Church doctrine since the earliest times. Pope Sergius I celebrated the feast in the 8th Century and the records go back to the Liber Requiei Mariae written in the 4th Century.
The Praises of Mary
O how wondrous is the dignity of the glorious Virgin!
She merited to become the mother of Him
who is the strength and beauty of the angels
and the grandeur of all the saints.
Mary was the seat of our sanctification,
that is to say,
the dwelling place of the Son
who sacrificed Himself for us.
“And I shall glorify the place where my feet have stood.”
The feet of the Savior signify his human nature.
The place where the feet of the Savior stood
was the Blessed Mary,
who gave him his human nature.– St Anthony of Padua
Today the Lord glorifies that place,
since He has exalted Mary
above the choirs of the angels.
That is to say,
the Blessed Virgin,
who was the dwelling of the Savior,
has been assumed bodily into heaven.