Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, Dormition, and Assumption

From Interrupting the Silence-

Today, August 15, is one of the great Marian feast days. The Eastern Orthodox call it the Feast of the Dormition while Roman Catholics call it the Feast of the Assumption. They deal with the same event but the interpretation is a bit different. The Rev. Patrick Comerford offers the following distinction:

The Orthodox Church teaches that Mary died a natural death, like any human being; that her soul was received by Christ upon death; and that her body was resurrected on the third day after her burial, at which time she was taken up, bodily only, into heaven, so that her tomb was found empty on the third day.

On the other hand, Roman Catholic teaching says Mary was “assumed” into heaven in bodily form. Some Roman Catholics agree with the Orthodox that this happened after her death, while others hold that she did not experience death. In his dogmatic definition of the Assumption in Munificentissimus Deus (1950), Pope Pius XII was not so dogmatic, for he appears to leave open the question of whether or not she actually underwent death and even alludes to the fact of her death at least five times.

Fr. Bosco Peters, blogging at Liturgy, offers some quotations from the Anglican – Roman Catholic dialog concerning Mary. 


https://interruptingthesilence.com/2011/08/15/the-feast-of-st-mary-the-virgin-dormition-and-assumption/

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