In her book on the devotions that the Christian faithful have to our Blessed Mother, author Marina Warner has this to say regarding an ancient tradition practiced in honor of Mary’s Assumption: “As early as the 10th century, the intimate association between the aromas of herbs and flowers and the victory of Mary over death was celebrated in the ritual of the feast of the Assumption. Medicinal herbs and plants were brought to church on that day. Periwinkle, verbena, thyme, and many other ingredients of the herbalist's art were laid on the altar, to be incensed and blessed. Then they were bound into a sheaf and kept all year to ward off illness and disaster and death. But the ceremony was abolished in England at the Reformation, and is extinct everywhere now except in some towns of northern Italy.”
As a convert to the Catholic faith, one of the things I love about our faith is our devotion to Mary, how Mary always brings us closer to her son. Perhaps we Catholics have such a deep devotion to Mary because she is not only Jesus’ mother, but the mother of our Church and our mother as well. Mary, the young woman who sang a song of hope and joy in the Magnificat in response to the greeting she receives from her cousin Elizabeth, is the mother who listens to our prayers, who unites our prayers to hers, who presents those prayers to her son with a mother’s love and compassion. Like the ritual described by author Marina Warner from England in the 10th century, we honor Mary in so many different ways: through the praying of the rosary, through the different feasts and solemnities that celebrate Mary throughout the liturgical year, through the flowers and lit candles we present to her on special occasions.
When we look back at when the Assumption was declared as a dogma of our faith in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, it came in the midst of the tumultuous 20th century. The world had experienced the Russian revolution, the Spanish Civil War, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the start of the Korean War, and the development of nuclear weapons. By declaring the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into heaven body and soul, Pope Pius XII was responding to the requests of the faithful to declare as dogma a long-held belief in our faith, but at the same time he reaffirmed the dignity of the human body and the sacredness of our human journey. The real meaning of the Assumption is not found solely in the literal action of what occurred in that event, but also in the divine mystery that the Assumption of Mary represents in our faith. We take our world of smart phones and computers and advanced technology for granted, but when the dogma of the Assumption was declared in 1950, space exploration and man landing on the moon was still an unrealized dream. It is noteworthy that preeminent Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung considered the Assumption to be the most important religious declaration of the twentieth century. Jung made this comment in the sense that the solemnity of Mary’s assumption into heaven is a declaration of the divine mystery of God, a declaration of our ultimate human destiny, that goes beyond our technological and scientific advances and our existence here on earth. Yes, there is a theology and a tradition in what we celebrate today, to be sure, but at the heart of our celebration today is the love and honor we bestow upon our Blessed Mother and for the way she accompanies us with so much love and tenderness on our journey of faith.
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