"The Virgin Mary is exalted high above the choirs of angels."

                              "The Assumption of the Virgin" by El Greco 

 

"Let all the faithful rejoice and bless the Lord."

The above antiphon is from the office of Lauds for today's great feast, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Nothing is known for certain of the time or place or circumstances of the Virgin's death.  However, the tradition that Mary's body did not decay but that she was raised up, body and soul, into heaven is quite ancient.  By the 6th century, we find in St. Gregory of Tours the first written reference in the West to the Blessed Virgin's Assumption.  This belief, and the feast celebrating this belief, spread, at first mainly in France, but gradually throughout the Church.  Finally, in 1950 Pope Pius XII in the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith. This teaching was likewise declared by the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, which states that "the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things."

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

UPDATE: The Feast of the Assumption is not a holy day of obligation in the US this year.