the Catholic Church was teaching as a dogma yet another belief that could not be proven from Scripture alone. (Of course, the Catholic Church has never held that everything divinely revealed must be provable from the Bible all by itself — that’s unbiblical, the Protestant principle of sola scriptura, not a Catholic principle.) Other Christians complained that it marked a devastating blow to ecumenism, setting up another obstacle to reunion between Rome and other Christian bodies. Many outside the Church just missed the point. But most Catholics did not, and as a result, the dogma has been cherished by the faithful ever since. Dark time of the proclamation Think first of the historical context in which the pope published the truth of Mary’s Assumption. Just five years prior to the proclamation, World War II finally came to an end, after the loss of more than 20 million lives and the horrors of the Holocaust. Literature at the time shows that many people in the 1940s were losing their faith in God’s love in the midst of all this misery, and turning to secular ideologies instead for human hope and salvation, especially to Communism. Then on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated their first A-bomb, thus marking the end of America’s monopoly on atomic weapons, and plunging the world into the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. For the first time in human history, humanity faced the real possibility of wars of mutual, and even global, extinction. Then the first armed conflict of the Cold War began on June 22, 1950, when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. In short, it was a time of war-weariness, profound fear, and rising hopelessness: a turning away from God, and to the false promises of secularism and Communism instead. What humanity needed most was a renewed proclamation of the love of God, the dignity of human life, and a fresh sign of ultimate hope — and Pope Pius knew that God’s dealings with the Virgin Mother of His incarnate Son could provide the antidote. The Holy Father therefore reached into the treasury of the Church’s Tradition, and held aloft the radiant truth of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, body and soul. He stated, “While the illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals that follows from these teachings threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and to ruin the lives of men, in this magnificent way all may see clearly to what a lofty goal our bodies and souls are destined.” The light of hope The dogma of the Assumption, the pope reasoned, is not only a unique privilege given to Mary. (Even the saints after their death have to await the Final Judgment and the Last Day to receive their glorified and resurrected bodies.) It is also a sign of hope for all the faithful: a loud and triumphant proclamation of the full truth of Easter. We sometimes say that the Easter faith, in a nutshell, is that “Christ is risen.” If our hearts live in union with Him, we, too, shall rise again to a glorified life, body and soul, just like His. As St. Paul once promised: “He shall change our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Phil 3:21). That is precisely what the Assumption of Mary proclaims: Christ is risen — and He is now bringing all faithful hearts with Him to glory. And the sign of this hope to all the Church is that the person who was closest to Christ’s own loving Heart has already been raised to glory before us. Hope for our time In many ways our time is not unlike the era of the proclamation of this dogma: Today, conflicts rage in various parts of the globe, and others could ignite at any moment, while the nations of the world are rapidly rearming for war. Many turn for aid, not to faith and prayer, but to the false gods of secularism and material comforts. No one summed it up better than Pope Benedict XVI in his general audience in Rome on August 16, 2006: By contemplating Mary in heavenly glory, ... we live with our gaze fixed on eternal goods; we will one day share in this same glory. ... We may be sure of it: from on high, Mary follows our footsteps with gentle concern, dispels the gloom in moments of darkness and distress, reassures us with her motherly hand. Supported by awareness of this, let us continue confidently on our path of Christian commitment wherever Providence may lead us. Let us forge ahead in our lives under Mary’s guidance. Dr. Robert Stackpole is the emeritus director of the John Paul II Institute for Divine Mercy and the author of Mary, Who She is and Why She Matters (B67-MBK), a Marian Press title available now at ShopMercy.org. The Assumption of Mary proclaims: Christ is risen — and He is now bringing all faithful hearts with Him to glory. And the sign of this hope to all the Church is that the person who was closest to Christ’s own loving Heart has already been raised to glory before us. Marian Helper • Fall 2025 • Marian.org 17
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