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The feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been celebrated since the early centuries of the Church, first in the East and then in the West. In the East this event is still referred to as the Dormition, to acknowledge the belief that Our Lady first suffered bodily death, though without decay. This view corresponds with a very old tradition that tells how St. Thomas was the only Apostle still away evangelizing when Our Lady passed, and upon his late return he asked to see her body. The tomb was opened to reveal that her body had been assumed with her soul. In the year of Our Lord 1950 Pope Venerable Pius XII proclaimed: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” Belief in the Assumption is thus required of all Catholics, though the matter of Our Lady’s bodily death before the Assumption is still left purposely unresolved, so neither school of thought on the matter is to be condemned. There are many traditional blessings offered today throughout Christendom, but the most popular by far is the blessing of herbs and fruits.
THE Assumption of the most holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
At Rome, on the Appian way, St. Tharsicius, acolyte. The Pagans accosted him as he was carrying the sacrament of Christ’s Body, and began to inquire what it was. But he judged it an unworthy thing to cast pearls before swine. They therefore beat him with sticks and stones until he expired. The sacrilegious searchers examined his body, but found no vestige of the sacrament of Christ, either in his hands or in his clothes. The Christians took up the body of the martyr, and buried it reverently in the cemetery of Callistus.
At Tagasta, in Africa, St. Alipius, bishop, who was the disciple of blessed Augustine, and the companion of his conversion, his colleague in the pastoral charge, his valiant fellow-soldier in combating heretics, and finally his partner in the glory of heaven.
At Soissons, in France, St. Arnulf, bishop and confessor.
At Alba, in Hungary, St. Stephen, king of the Hungarians, whose feast is celebrated on the 2d of September.
At Rome, St. Stanislaus Kostka, a native of Poland, confessor, of the Society of Jesus, who being made perfect in a short space, fulfilled a long time by the angelical innocence of his life. He was inscribed on the list of the saints by the Sovereign Pontiff, Benedict XIII.
℣. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
℟. Thanks be to God.