"Thus above All mothers shone The mother of The Blessed One."* Hymns translated from the Parisian Breviary. By the author of 'The Cathedral.' 18mo London: Rivingtons, 1842. THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION. 'If nothing delights me, nothing also terrifies me more, than to speak of the glory of the Virgin Mary."-[St. Bernard Sermon iv. de Assumption. In honouring the saints of God, we honour Jesus Christ, the head of the saints, who, in crowning their good works, according to the language of St. Augustine, only crowns his own mercies. This remark is specially applicable to the honour we pay to the ever blessed mother of Jesus Christ. We venerate her, because she is His mother-because He honoured and obeyed her throughout his life on earth-and because He adorned her with so many graces and excellences, as made her deserving of honour. The principle of St. Paul— "honour to whom honour is due”—(Rom. x11.) is fairly applicable to her. The honour we pay to the mother, necessarily redounds to the Son; and far from being offended with us for venerating her, He would be displeased with us, were we to withhold from her the honour which is her due. He is the great Sun of Justice, and the Sun of the religious world--the only source of the supernatural light of faith, and of the genial warmth of grace. She is the moon -pulchra ut luna-which, though it contain no light nor heat of itself, yet has more reflected light than any of the planets. And, to continue the allegory, as the moon sheds her light over the world during the night; so, also, she sheds on us her mild radiance during the night of this life, and especially during the darkness of tribulation. The church of Christ has ever cherished a most tender devotion towards the Blessed Virgin. In endeavoring to instil this sentiment into the minds and hearts of her children, she has given additional evidence that she is truly the spouse of Jesus Christ, and she alone has accomplished the prophecy made by the Virgin herself, that "all generations should call her blessed." St. Epiphanius speaks of a sect called Colliridians, who carried their feeling of veneration for her to the most unwarrantable length of offering her divine honours, thus grossly insulting both her and her Divine Son. The Church immediately condemned this idolatry, and excluded the Colliridians from communion as heretics.-Perhaps the fact that such a heresy sprang up at so early a period, might be cited as an evidence of the tender devotion cherished by christians of that day for the mother of God. Such a heresy would be impossible among protestants of the present day. When, in the beginning of the fifth century, Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, denied that Mary was Theotocos, or the mother of God, there was a burst of general indignation throughout the entire christian. world. The third general council of the Church was assembled at Ephesus in 431, in a church dedicated to God under the name and invocation of Mary: the new doctrine was examined and condemned, and so great was the popular feeling on the occasion, that when the decree of the council was made known, the vaults of the church were made to re-echo, and even the streets of the city to resound with acclamations in honour of the Theotocos! This devotional feeling was chiefly manifested on the feasts instituted by the church to commemorate the life and virtues of the Virgin. Of these, the greatest and most solemn was the festival of the Assumption. This commemorated the happy termination of her earthly career, and the glorious consummation of her bliss, by her entrance into the glory prepared for her by her divine Son. While on this day the faithful poured out their hearts in thanksgiving to God for the privileges bestowed on Mary, they were, at the same time, powerfully stimulated to imitate her many virtues, by a view of the brightness of her crown. And while in spirit they accompanied her in her triumphant entry into heaven, and listened to the angelic exclamation, which greeted her "who is she that cometh up from the desert filled with delights, and leaning on the arm of her beloved?" they did not forget to invoke with humble confidence her intercession in behalf of those who were yet sorrowfully journeying through the wilderness of life, and to enter into the pathetic sentiments of that beautiful anthem, the Salve Regina. Ancient writers are not fully agreed as to the place of the Virgin's death. Some of the Fathers went so far in their reverence for memory, as to deny that she died at all, and to assert that God, to crown his other favors, bestowed on her the gift of immortality, and transferred her to eternal life, without permitting her to taste death. Of this number is St. Epiphanius. But this opinion seems wholly inadmissible, for it is not to be supposed that she receivel a privilege which was denied to her divine Son. Many think that she died at Ephesus. The chief grounds for this opinion are, 1st, the fact that John, the beloved disciple and the divinely appointed protector of the Virgin, closed his earthly career at Ephesus; and, 2nd, the supposed testimony to the fact of the council of Ephesus in 431, the fathers of which, in a letter to the clergy and people of Constantinople, state that Nestorius had been condemned in the city of Ephesus, and mention as its peculiar patrons, "John, the Theologian, and the holy Virgin Mary, the mother of God."† But neither reason is conclusive.The second reason rests upon a very uncertain explanation of an obscure passage, and the first upon facts which are, the least, very doubtful. Tho' it is admitted, that St. John passed the last of the years of his life at Ephesus, yet it is by no means certain that he fixed his abode there, before the death of the Virgin, which, according to the most probable opinion, occurred about 12 years after our Lord's ascension, or about the year 46. St. Paul seems to have Lad special charge of Ephesus, as long as he lived. We find him appointing Timothy bishop of that city about the year 64, and about a year later, or shortly before his martyrdom under Nero, he wrote his second epistle to Timothy, in which, without making the most distant allusion to the beloved disciple's being at Ephesus, he requests Timothy to pay him a visit in Rome, where he was confined in prison. Had St. John been in Ephesus at that time, is it not prob • Canticles c. 8, v 5. to say † Labb Concill, Tom 3. "In qua Joannes Theologus, et Deipara Virg. Sancta Maria.". Some critics have expounded these words to mean that the tombs,or at least churches erected over the tombs of John and the blessed Virgin were at Ephesus; but the words may mean on ly that both were held in special veneration by the city, and that churches were erected in Lonor of both, which we know to have been the case. able that St. Paul would have alluded to the fact, and perhaps advised his own disciple to seek counsel at his hands? It is, then, not certain that St. John took up his abode at Ephesus, until after the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul, about the year 66: and it does not even appear that he did so until after his return from Rome, on the occasion of his miraculous preservation from death, when by order of Domitian he was cast into the cauldron of boiling oil at the Porta Latina. This happened sometime after the year 80. These reasons have induced many to think, that St. John remained in the vicinity Jerusalem, until after the death of the blessed Virgin, and this being once admitted, the argument above alleged to prove that she died at Ephesus, would prove, if it proved any thing, that she died at Jerusalem. The famous church bearing her name at Ephesus, is an evidence of the early devotion of the Ephesians to her memory, but it is no proof that she died in that city, otherwise we might prove by a similar argument, that she died in a hundred different cities, in which churches were erected in her honour at an early period of the church. The more common, and we think the more probable, opinion is, that after our Lord's ascension, she continued to live in the house of John on Mt. Sion-that she died in Jerusalem, and was buried at the foot of Mt. Olivet, in the valley of Jehosaphat, near the garden of Gethsemani. On that spot her tomb was exhibited for centuries, and there it may yet be seen. This is the opinion of Andrew of Crete, who lived towards the close of the seventh century,* and of St. Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, in the eighth century. It is also the opinion of the Armenian,‡ and of the Muscovite christians. About the year 740, St. Willibald visited Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, and he saw an empty tomb of the Virgin at the foot of Mt. Olivet. The venerable Bede places her tomb on the same spot: as also Adamnan, an Irish monk, who visited Palestine, towards the close of the seventh century.¶ In speaking of the death and subsequent translation to heaven of the blessed Virgin, the ancient fathers and writers on martyrology employ different terms, which, however, imply almost the same thing. The repose or sleep of the Virgin-the passage or transit of the Virgin, and her assumption, all refer to the same event, viewed under somewhat different aspects. The last epithet, however, which is now common in the Catholic church, seems the most appropriate: for it expresses the act of her translation to heaven, by the agency of some power extrinsic to herself; whereas the second, common in the Greek Church, might imply a translation effected by herself, and the first implies no translation at all, but only the fact of her death, under the scriptural image of repose `or sleep. There can be no doubt, that immediately after the death of the Virgin, her soul was transferred to bliss eternal. All admit this. No christian can for a moment doubt this proposition. The lofty dignity-the surpassing excellence -and the unspeakable purity of that soul, compel the belief, that it is not only in the realms of bliss, but that it occupies the very highest seat of glory Oratio in Dormitione B. Maria. † Orat. in Dormit. Deiparæ. Concil Armenum A. D. 1342 apud Martene Vet. Script. Tom. viii. p. 351. See his Testimony in Mabillon Itinerarium Sect. 3. We might also add here the authority of Hypolytos Thebanus, whose work-a sort of chronicle of the life of Christ and his Apostles-is published by Schelestrate, from an old Vatican MS. (No. 573.) This old writer says that the B. Virgin lived eleven years after the Ascension of Christ, in the house of John the beloved disciple at Jerusalem, which house was a place of common resort for the early Christians, and is hence called by him quaintly enough, the MATER ECCLESIARUM-"the Mother of the Churches."-See Schelestrate Antiquitates, Vol I. p. 510, which could be awarded to a mere creature. The exaltation of her soul, and the glories which encircle it, are the chief subjects commemorated in the Feast of the Assumption. And if only the soul of the Virgin had been assumed into heaven, and the festival had been instituded only to commemorate that assumption, it would have had a full and adequate object. But a very ancient, pious, and venerable tradition, common to the Greek and Latin churches, and held also by the ancient Oriental sectaries, asserts also the bodily assumption of the Mother of God. And we will endeavour to show, 1st, that the fact for which that tradition vouches, is reasonable in itself, and such as, from the nature of things, we would naturally be inclined to look for and to admit : and 2ndly, that the historic evidence which sustains the fact is very respectable, and such as itself would render it highly probable, if not wholly certain. We must however remark here, that, though a belief in the bodily assumption of the Virgin is common among Catholics, and is evidently sanctioned by the public service of the Church, yet it constitutes no article of Catholic faith: still its rejection by a Catholic could not be excused from the imputation of imprudence and temerity.* 1. The tradition avers, that the blessed Virgin died, and was interred by by the Apostles and disciples of the Lord who were in the vicinity-that, on the third day thereafter, these visited the tomb in which her body was not found, but only her garments, which exhaled a most sweet odour-and that from this public fact, the opinion generally obtained among the early christians that her glorious body had been transferred to heaven with her soul. This is the substance of the tradition. We have nothing to do with the details-many of them absurd and fabulous-which some have attempted to graft on the original narration. Such are many of the circumstances detailed in an old work on the Assumption, falsely ascribed to Melito of Sardis, but probably written by an anonymous Greek writer of the sixth century, who was as injudicious as he was obscure. All that the church festival necessarily implies, is the simple fact, "that the body of the Virgin was taken up to heaven. Many reasons a priori would incline us to a belief in this anticipated resurrection of the Mother of God. St. Mathew tells us, that on the death of Christ, "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints that slept arose; And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the Holy City and appeared unto many.' It seems certain, then, that on the resurrection of Christ, who was "the first fruits of the dead," many arose in the body. And it is a highly probable opinion, held by St. Ignatius Martyr, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and many others, that these went up to heaven in their bodies, with our blessed Lord in his Ascension. If this opinion be admitted, may we not infer a fortiori, that the Virgin Mother of God was bodily assumed into heaven? If this privilege was bestowed on ordinary saints, and those too belonging to the old dispensation, would it be withheld from the brightest ornament of the New Testament-from the glorious Mother of God? She was by far the purest and most excellent of all God's creatures "Our tainted nature's solitary boast"§ She had never been sullied by any, even original, defilement-One of the brightest angels of the heavenly court had been sent on an embassy to her, and he had pronounced her "full of grace," and had declared her the chosen temple of • Ben. xiv. Defestis, p. 499. † Chap. xxvII. v. 52, 53. See Benedict xiv. de Festis p. 502, where, with his usual wise moderation, he says that this opinion "SUA NON CARET PROBABILITATE," § Wordsworth. God-"the Lord is with thee." Is it credible, then, that she would have been denied the privilege of anticipated resurrection, which had been awarded to others? Is it credible that her soul would have been transferred to heaven, without the pure and immaculate body which it had inhabited-the jewel without the casket which enclosed it? Again, that body had been the chosen temple of God made man; and she was the Mother of God. Christ ascended to heaven in the flesh-is it not natural to suppose that he wished to see his mother in heaven? Not the soul of the Virgin alone, but the soul united with the body, was the mother of Christ; therefore it is reasonable to believe that the Blessed Mother of God was transferred to heaven in the body. We will conclude this part of the argument in the language of M. Joly, an able defender of the bodily Assumption: "Who," says he, "will deny the power of God to effect such an assumption? Who will presume to question his will to effect it? Who will dare assert, that the Blessed Virgin, whom an angel sent by God himself saluted and declared "full of grace," was undeserving of this favour, especially after she had become the Mother of God ?" II. The reasons hitherto alleged, however they may prepare the mind for admitting the fact of the bodily assumption, are not of themselves sufficient to establish its existence. Like all other facts it must be established by evidence. Is the evidence usually adduced to prove it, sufficient to convince a reasonable mind? We think so, and we will endeavor to sustain our opinion, by exhibiting a brief summary of that evidence. We freely admit that there is not extant any direct testimony to the fact from any writer who lived during the first five centuries of the Church. We as freely admit, that the testimonies alleged by the learned Canisius§ from writers of that period, are taken from works which more enlightened critics believe to be either spurious, or of very doubtful authority. On the other hand, it is equally certain, that many authorities produced by Launojus and others from writers of those ages, against the fact of the Assumption, are wholly worthless. Truth requires these admissions on both sides; and a good cause can never suffer from the truth. How, then, we are asked, can we venture to assert a fact of which no mention is made for five centuries after it is said to have occurred? If we were certain that no mention had been made of it, by any writer of that period, the argument, though merely negative, and not conclusive, might yet have considerable force. But have we any such certainty? Have all the writings of the Fathers, or even half of them been preserved until our day? How many thousand volumes of them have been lost by conflagrations of libraries and cities, and by other casualties, during a period when it was so easy to destroy works, of which in many cases, but one copy, and in all, but few copies were in existence? How many, think you, of the works belonging to the period in question, perished in the Alexandrian Library, containing 600,000 valuable manuscripts, all of which were burnt in 632, by order of Caliph Omar? How many, or rather how few, of the 6000 volumes which the Great Origen is said to have written, have come down to our days? But there is another consideration which greatly weakens the force of the objection. Most, if not all the fathers, during that period, wrote on subjects in which a mention of, or even an allu sion to, the Virgin's Assumption, would have been wholly foreign. How few writers of the present day, even on religious and theological subjects, have occasion to refer to this topic? And what would be thought of the wight, who to prove that a belief in the bodily Assumption of the Virgin is recent in the Catholic Church of the present day, should allege the silence on the subject of Lib. v. c. 5, De Maria Deipara. |