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The Assumption of the Feast Day August 15 From the Acts of Pope Pius XII The universal Church through the ages has always shown faith in the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This truth rests upon sacred Scripture; it is deeply rooted in the souls of the faithful and is clearly consonant with other revealed truths. With almost perfect unanimity, the hierarchy of the whole world asked that this truth be defined as a dogma of the divine and Catholic faith. And so Pope Pius XII, consenting to the desires of the whole Church, decided solemnly to proclaim this privilege of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Therefore, on the first day of November in the year of the great Jubilee, 1950, at Rome in the court of St. Peter’s basilica, amidst a great crowd including many cardinals of the holy Roman Church and bishops even from distant places and a great multitude of the faithful, to the applause of the whole Catholic world, he proclaimed the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven by his infallible pronouncement in these worlds: "After frequently praying to God and invoking the light of the Spirit of truth, to the glory of almighty God who enriched the Virgin Mary with special favor, to the honor of her Son, the immortal King of ages and victor over death and sin, to the increase of the glory of His august Mother, to the joy and exultation of the whole Church, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and by Our own authority, We declare and define as a revealed dogma that the immaculate Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, when she had finished the course of her earthly life, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven." (From the Second Nocturn of Matins of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) |