Mary’s own last days and bodily fate become fodder for ecclesial and spiritual reflection. The Bible does not mention her ultimate end, despite the fact that it is almost indisputable that parts of the New Testament were written after the sun had set on the twilight of her earthly life. The Orthodox call this event the “dormition” (or falling asleep) of Mary. Catholic theologians remain allowably divided as to opinions of whether or not Mary experienced death.
Thought to be too holy and incorruptible to suffer the wages of sin that are death, some claim Mary merely rested in the divine presence once her earthly pilgrimage had ended before the Assumption. Others think she did die and subsequently was gifted with the Resurrection of the Body to which all the saved are destined.
After Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Munificentissimus Deus, all Catholics are, however, obliged to believe with divine and Catholic faith that she was assumed bodily into heaven – either after or in place of a natural death. The event is often pictured in art with Mary giving a cloth girdle to St. Thomas as she rises to physically memorialize the event.
In his closing speech to the third session of Vatican II, Paul VI explored Mary’s role as Mater Ecclesiae, the Mother of the Church. The last section of Lumen Gentium also calls her the “Mother of the members of Christ,” and “a preeminent and singular member of the church, its type and excellent exemplar in faith and charity.”
In addition to an ecclesiological reality, Mary, then, serves as an eschatological icon of the church itself. She is the beginning and the end of the church.
Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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