Religion: Assumption

Some Irish Catholics say: “On Lady’s Day there’s a cure in the waters.” Last week came Lady’s Day—the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Though the Church provides for no such celebration, indeed frowns upon it as superstitious, many a Catholic in Ireland and in Irish-settled districts of the U.S. took to the waters. Especially crowded were the sea beaches fringing New York City. On Staten Island, believers arose at dawn, thinking that the earlier the dip the more sure the cure. Method of seeking cures— for anything from headache to cancer—is to bathe thrice, praying the while. But the old and the obese content themselves with a few splashes. Less credulous Catholics have the full approval of the Church in offering novenas (nine-day prayers) in honor of the Virgin, and going on solemn Assumption processions through their parishes. The Assumption is one of six holy days of obligation for U.S. Catholics, on which mass must be attended as on Sunday, under pain of mortal sin. The underlying idea—that the body of Virgin Mary was taken up into Heaven—is universally believed by Catholics. Yet its origin is lost in antiquity. Some say that Mary died at 69, others at 72 or 75. Jerusalem and Ephesus both claimed to have been her death place. How she died is not recorded, but theologians argue (in terms which to them are as exact as mathematics) that because fleshly dissolution could not come to Christ’s Mother, she died of love. The Assumption into Heaven is supposed to have taken place from three to 40 days later. Theologians hold that her body & soul were reunited, her Jewish burial garments cast off and herself taken into Heaven, unlike Jesus Christ “who went up thither by His own power.” By an apocryphal tradition, the Apostles were miraculously assembled by God to see Mary’s empty tomb. But no record of such an event has been found. The Church recounts such traditions only to keep them alive, knowing well that no historian could make the Assumption seem more glowing and real than the imagination of the pious or the brush of a great painter. Celebration of the Assumption as a feast followed soon after belief in it grew up. In about the year 700 the date for it was fixed at Aug. 15. Popes have declared the Assumption is a probable opinion, but none has yet solemnly incorporated it in the Church’s articles of faith (despite 200 bishops having petitioned to this effect in 1870), as are the Virgin Mary’s other three “privileges” — perpetual virginity, freedom from sin during her lifetime, freedom from original sin (Immaculate Conception).