When I was three years old, I asked my pregnant mother whether Jesus could come into me as my baby brother had come into her. It was my inept way of saying that I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart as my personal lord and savior, an idea to which my Evangelical church had already introduced me. . . . . Continue Reading »
By clarifying what God has done in the person of Mary, the Church teaches the faithful that human flesh is capable of remarkable feats of holiness. Continue Reading »
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a solemn feast day and a holy day of obligation that we celebrate each year on August 15th, is the Church’s most ancient Marian feast. Christians living in Jerusalem celebrated the “dormition of Mary” (Mary’s going to sleep) from at least the third century—gathering in Palestine to remember the Mother of God, and to honor her as queen of heaven and earth. Continue Reading »
I love the Feast of the Assumption. The readings for the day include a dragon ready to devour the son of the sun-clothed Queen of Heaven. And then there is the magnificat, the Virgin Mary’s hymn of thanksgiving and praise: “My soul doth magnify the Lord; and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.” … Continue Reading »
As a small contribution to ecumenical understanding, on this sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the doctrine of the Assumption in Munificentissimus Deus, here is a section from my book Discovering Mary explaining what the pope said in defining it. It is, let me stress, only a “just . . . . Continue Reading »
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