APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF PIUS XII (PART ONE OF TWO)

 

  THE BODILY ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY INTO HEAVEN IS DEFINED AS A DOGMA OF FAITH

It is vry important to spreat this writing with the true Catholic faihful.

1. The most munificent God, who can do everything and whose providential plans are made with wisdom and love, compensates in his inscrutable designs, both in the lives of peoples and in that of individuals, the pains and joys so that, for diverse paths and in diverse ways, everything cooperates for the good of those who love him (cf. Rom. 8, 28).

2. Our Pontificate, in the same way as the present age, is oppressed by great cares, concerns and anguish, by the current most serious calamities and the aberration of truth and virtue; but it is of great consolation to see that, while the Catholic faith manifests itself more and more actively in public, devotion to the Virgin Mother of God is inflamed more and more every day and almost everywhere it is an encouragement and auspices of a better and more life. holy, from which it results that, while the Blessed Virgin most lovingly fulfills the functions of mother towards those redeemed by the blood of Christ, the minds and hearts of the children are stimulated to a more loving contemplation of their privileges.

3. Indeed, God, who from all eternity looks at the Virgin Mary with particular and full complacency, "when the fullness of time came" (Gal 4, 4) executed the plans of his providence in such a way that they shine in the in perfect harmony the privileges and prerogatives that he had so liberally granted him. And if this extreme liberality and full harmony of grace has always been recognized and has been increasingly penetrated by the Church in the course of the centuries, in our time the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mother has been brought to greater light. of God, Mary.

4. This privilege shone with new brilliance since our predecessor Pius IX, of immortal memory, solemnly defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the august Mother of God.

These two privileges are indeed closely linked to each other. Christ, with his death, defeated death and sin; and over the one and over the other, everyone who has been supernaturally regenerated by baptism also reports victory by virtue of Christ. But by general law, God does not want to grant the just the full effect of this victory over death, until the end of time has come. That is also why the bodies of the just dissolve after death, and only on the last day will each one again be united with his own glorious soul.

5. But God wanted the blessed Virgin Mary to be exempt from this general law. She, by singular privilege, defeated sin with her immaculate conception; that is why she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave nor did she have to wait for the redemption of her body until the end of the world.

6. Therefore, when it was solemnly defined that the Virgin Mother of God, Mary, was immune from the hereditary stain of her conception, the faithful were filled with a more lively hope that as soon as possible it would be defined by the supreme magisterium of the Church the dogma of the bodily Assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary.

7. Indeed, it was seen that not only the individual faithful, but also the representatives of nations or ecclesiastical provinces, and even not a few fathers of the Vatican Council, strongly requested this definition from the Apostolic See.

8. Afterwards, these petitions and votes not only did not decrease, but increased day by day in number and insistence. Indeed, to this end prayer crusades were promoted; many eminent theologians intensified their studies on this subject, already in private, already in the public ecclesiastical athenaeums and in the other schools destined to the teaching of the sacred disciplines; Marian congresses, both national and international, were held in many parts of the Catholic world. All these studies and investigations highlighted that the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven was also contained in the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and generally followed petitions in which this Apostolic See was instantly asked for this truth to be solemnly defined.

9. In this pious competition, the faithful were admirably united with their pastors, who, in truly impressive numbers, addressed similar petitions to this chair of Saint Peter. For this reason, when we were elevated to the throne of the Supreme Pontificate, many thousands of such supplications had already been presented to this Apostolic See from all parts of the earth and by all kinds of people: for our beloved sons, the Cardinals of the Sacred College, for venerable brother archbishops and bishops of the dioceses and parishes.

 10. For this reason, while we raised ardent prayers to God to infuse our minds with the light of the Holy Spirit to decide such an important cause, we gave special orders that more rigorous studies be initiated on this matter, and meanwhile carefully collected and pondered all the requests that, from the time of our predecessor Pius IX, of happy memory, up to the present day, had been sent to this Apostolic See regarding the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven (1).

11. But since it was a matter of such importance and seriousness, we thought it appropriate to directly and officially ask all the venerable brothers in the Episcopate to openly expose their thoughts to us. For this reason, on May 1, 1946, we addressed the letter Deiparae Virginis Mariae, in which we asked: "If you, venerable brothers, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, believe that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith and if with your clergy and your people you wish it".

 12. And those whom "the Holy Spirit has appointed as bishops to govern the Church of God" (Acts 20, 28) have given an almost unanimous affirmative answer to both questions. This "singular consent of the Catholic Episcopate and of the faithful" (2), believing the bodily Assumption into heaven of the Mother of God to be definable as a dogma of faith, presenting us with the concordant teaching of the ordinary magisterium of the Church and the concordant faith of the people Christian, supported and directed by him, manifested by himself in a certain and infallible way that such a privilege is a truth revealed by God and contained in that divine deposit that Christ entrusted to his Bride so that she would faithfully guard it and infallibly declare it (3). The magisterium of the Church, certainly not by purely human industry, but by the assistance of the Spirit of Truth (cf. Jn 14, 26), and for this reason infallibly, he fulfills his mandate to keep the revealed truths pure and integral perennially and transmits them without contamination, without additions, without decreases. "Indeed, as the Vatican Council teaches, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that, through his revelation, they might manifest a new doctrine, but rather so that, with his assistance, they would inviolably guard and faithfully express the revelation transmitted by the Apostles, that is, the deposit of faith" (4). For this reason, from the universal consent of the ordinary magisterium of the Church a certain and sure argument can be deduced to affirm that the bodily Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary into heaven -which, as for the heavenly glorification of the virgin body of the august Mother of God, it could not be known by any human faculty with its natural forces alone- it is a truth revealed by God, and for this reason all the faithful of the Church must believe it firmly and fidelity. Because, as the Vatican Council itself teaches,"All those things that are contained in the word of God, written or transmitted orally, and that the Church, either with solemn judgment or with her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes to belief as revealed by divine faith, must be believed by divine and catholic faith." God" (De fide catholica, chap. 3).

13. Of this common faith of the Church, various testimonies, indications and vestiges have been had since antiquity, throughout the course of the centuries; and such faith manifested itself more and more clearly.

14. The faithful, guided and instructed by their shepherds, also learned from Sacred Scripture that the Virgin Mary, during her earthly pilgrimage, led a life full of worries, anguish and pain; and what the holy old Simeon had predicted came true: that a sharp sword would pierce his heart at the foot of the cross of her divine Son, our Redeemer. Likewise, they did not find

difficulty in admitting that Mary died in the same way as her only Son. But this did not prevent them from believing and openly professing that she was not subjected to the corruption of her sepulcher, her sacred body, and that she was not reduced to putrefaction and ashes in the august tabernacle of the Divine Word. Thus, illuminated by divine grace and driven by love for the Mother of God and our most sweet Mother, they have contemplated with ever clearer light the marvelous harmony of the privileges that the most provident God granted to the Partner soul of our Redeemer and that they reached such a high peak that no created being, except for the human nature of Jesus Christ, had ever reached.

 15. This same faith is clearly attested by those innumerable temples dedicated to God in honor of the Virgin Mary assumed into heaven and the sacred images in them exposed to the veneration of the faithful, which place before the eyes of all this singular triumph of the blessed Virgin. In addition, cities, dioceses and regions were placed under the special patronage of the Virgin assumed into heaven; In the same way, with the approval of the Church, religious institutes arose, which take their name from such a privilege.

It must not be forgotten that, in the Marian rosary, whose recitation is highly recommended by this Apostolic See, a mystery is proposed for pious meditation which, as everyone knows, deals with the Assumption of the most blessed Virgin.

 16. But in a more splendid and universal way, this faith of the holy shepherds and of the Christian faithful is manifested by the fact that since ancient times a solemn liturgical feast has been celebrated in the East and in the West, of which the Holy Fathers and doctors they never ceased to shed light because, as is well known, the sacred liturgy "being also a profession of heavenly truths, submitted to the supreme magisterium of the Church, can hear arguments and testimonies of no small value to determine some particular point of the Christian doctrine" (5).

17. In the liturgical books that contain the feast, either of the Dormition or of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, there are somewhat consistent expressions when saying that when the Virgin Mother of God passed from this exile, to her sacred In her body, by order of divine Providence, things happened to her corresponding to her dignity as Mother of the Incarnate Word and to the other privileges that had been granted to her.

This is affirmed, for example, in that "Sacramentary" that our predecessor Adriano I, of immortal memory, sent to the Emperor Charlemagne. In it one reads, in fact: "Deserving of veneration is for Us, O Lord!, the festival of this day in which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but could not be humiliated by the bonds of death That who engendered your Son, Our Lord, incarnated in her" (6).

18. What is indicated here with the usual sobriety in the Roman liturgy, in the books of the other ancient liturgies, both Eastern and Western, is expressed more diffusely and with greater clarity. The "Gallican Sacramentary", for example, defines this privilege of Mary, "inexplicable mystery, all the more admirable the more singular it is among men". And in the Byzantine liturgy the bodily Assumption of Mary is repeatedly associated not only with her dignity as Mother of God, but also with her other privileges, especially with her virginal maternity, pre-established by a singular design of Providence. divine:"To you, God, King of the universe, he granted you things that are above nature; for just as in childbirth he kept you a virgin, so in the tomb he kept your body incorrupt, and with the divine translation he glorified it" (7) .

19. The fact that the Apostolic See, heir to the office entrusted to the Prince of the Apostles of confirming the faith of the brothers (cf. Lk 22, 32), and with its authority makes this feast more and more solemn, effectively stimulates the faithful to appreciate more and more the greatness of this mystery. Thus the feast of the Assumption, from the honorable position it had from the beginning among the other Marian celebrations, immediately reached the most solemn of the entire liturgical cycle. Our predecessor Saint Sergius I, prescribing the litany or seasonal procession for the four Marian feasts, lists next to the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, and the Dormition of Mary (Liber Pontificalis). Later Saint Leo IV wanted to add to the festival, which was already celebrated under the title of the Assumption of the blessed Mother of God, a greater solemnity prescribing his vigil and his octave; and in such a circumstance he wanted to personally participate in the celebration in the midst of a large crowd of faithful (Liber Pontificalis). In addition to the fact that in the past this festival was preceded by the obligation to fast, it appears clear from what our predecessor Saint Nicholas I testifies, where he speaks of the main fasts"that the holy Roman Church received from antiquity and still observes" (8).

 20. But since the liturgy does not create faith, but presupposes it, and the practices of worship derive from it like fruits of the tree, the Holy Fathers and the great doctors, in the homilies and in the speeches addressed to the people on the occasion of This feast, they did not receive the doctrine from it as from the first source, but they spoke of it as something known and accepted by the faithful; they clarified it better; they specified and deepened its meaning and object, declaring especially what the liturgical books had often only fleetingly indicated; that is to say, that the object of the feast was not only the incorruption of the dead body of the blessed Virgin Mary, but also her triumph over death and her heavenly glorification in the likeness of hers Only Begotten of hers.

21. Thus Saint John Damascene, who stands out among all as a distinguished witness of this tradition, considering the bodily Assumption of the Mother of God in light of her other privileges, exclaims with vigorous eloquence:"It was necessary that She who had preserved her virginity unharmed in childbirth should also preserve her body without any corruption after death. It was necessary that She who had carried the Creator made child in her womb, dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was necessary that the Wife of the Father dwells in the celestial thalamus. It was necessary that She who had seen her Son on the cross, receiving in her heart that sword of pain from which she had been immune when giving birth, contemplated him seated at the right hand of the Father. It was necessary that the Mother of God possess what corresponds to the Son and that she be honored by all creatures as Mother and servant of God" (9).

22. These expressions of Saint John Damascene correspond faithfully to those of others who affirm the same doctrine. Indeed, no less clear and precise words are found in the speeches that, on the occasion of the feast, other previous or contemporary Fathers gave. Thus, to cite other examples, Saint German of Constantinople found that incorruption and Assumption into heaven of the

body of the Virgin Mother of God not only to her divine maternity, but also to the special sanctity of her own virginal body: "You, as it was written, appear "in beauty" and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, all domicile of God; so also for this reason it must be immune from being resolved into dust; rather it must be transformed, as a human, until it becomes incorruptible; and it must be alive, most glorious, unscathed and endowed with the fullness of life." (10). And another ancient writer says: "As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Savior and God, giver of life and immortality, and enlivened by Him, clothed in her body in eternal incorruptibility with Him, who raised her from the grave and carried her I get so that only He knows"(eleven).

23. As the liturgical feast spread and affirmed, the Church's pastors and sacred orators, in increasing numbers, believed it was their duty to specify openly and clearly the object of the feast and its close connection with other revealed truths.

24. Among the scholastic theologians there were those who, wanting to penetrate deeper into the revealed truths and show the agreement between theological reason and faith, highlighted that this privilege of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary agrees admirably with the truths that are known to us. taught by Holy Scripture.

25. Starting from this assumption, they presented, to illustrate this Marian privilege, various reasons contained almost in germ in this: that Jesus wanted the Assumption of Mary into heaven because of his filial piety towards her. They believed that the force of such arguments rests on the incomparable dignity of divine motherhood and on all those other endowments that follow from her: her distinguished sanctity, superior to that of all men and all angels; the intimate union of Mary with her Son, and that supreme love that the Son had towards his most worthy Mother.

 26. Frequently there are theologians and holy orators who, in the footsteps of the Holy Fathers (12) to illustrate their faith in the Assumption, use facts and sayings from Sacred Scripture with a certain freedom. Thus, to cite just a few testimonies among the most used, there are those that recall the words of the psalmist: "Come, oh Lord!, to your rest, you and the ark of your sanctification" (Ps 131, 8), and come in the "ark of the covenant", made of incorruptible wood and placed in the temple of the Lord, as an image of the most pure body of the Virgin Mary, preserved from all corruption of the sepulcher and elevated to such glory in heaven. To this end they describe the Queen who triumphantly enters the heavenly palace and sits at the right hand of the divine Redeemer (Ps 44, 10, 14-16), the same as the Bride of Songs, "who ascends through the desert like a column of smoke of the aromas of myrrh and incense" to be crowned (Cant 3, 6; cf. 4, 8; 6, 9). The one and the other are proposed as figures of that celestial Queen and Wife, who, together with her divine Husband, was elevated to the kingdom of heaven.

GRADES

 1. Petitiones de Assumptione corporea B. Virginis Mariae in coelum definienda ad S. Sedem delatae; 2 vol., Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1942.

2. Bull Ineffabilis Deus, Acta Pii IX, p. 1, vol. 1 p. 615.

3. Cf. Conc. Vat. De fide catholica, chap. 4.

 4. Conc. Watt. Const. De ecclesia Christi, chap. 4.

5. Encyclical Letter Mediator Dei, AAS, vol. 39, p. 541.

6. Sacramentarium Gregorianum.

 7. Menaei totius anni.

 8. "Responsa Nicolai Papae I ad consulta Bulgarorum".

 9. S. loan Damasc., Encomium in Dormitionem Dei Genitricis semperque Virginis Mariae, hom. II, 14; cf. etiam ibid., n. 3.

10. Saint Germ. Const., In Sanctae Dei Genitricis Dormitionem, sermon I.

 11. Encomium in Dormitionem Sanctissimae Dominae nostrae Deiparae semperque Virginis Mariae. S.