The question comes to mind after I saw the above illustration shared on Twitter. The illustration, needless, to say, entirely ignores the Reformed tradition's reverence for the Blessed Virgin. (And, we might add, it is hardly a convincing depiction of Roman Catholic teaching.) Leaving that aside, the idea that the Assumption is somehow necessary in order to have a rich and reverent understanding of the Blessed Virgin is, at the very least, odd.
It is odd because the participation of the Blessed Virgin in redemption does not in any way require the Assumption for that participation to be profoundly and deepy glorious, what the Apostle proclaims as "the riches of the glory of this mystery". The Blessed Virgin participates in the hope of the Lord's Ascension, "that where he is, thither we might also ascend and reign with him in glory" (the 1662 proper preface for Ascension Day, and the seven days after). She is a "partaker of thy heavenly kingdom" (Prayer for the Church Militant), an "heir, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom" (post-communion Prayer of Thanksgiving). She is now "in joy and felicity", and will have a body "like unto his glorious body" (the Burial Office).
This is the glory in which the Blessed Virgin shares. In doing so, we might even suggest that she is here more fully a sign of the Church triumphant and glorified (the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet") than in the dogma of the Assumption. The Assumption, after all, was defined by Munificentissimus Deus by as "something unique among men", "this unique triumph". By contrast, the Blessed Virgin's participation in the heavenly glory is not set apart from us, for it is that into which "all thy whole Church" is called and in which "the blessed company of all faithful people" share after death.
In her death, then, as much as in her life, Augustine's words regarding the Blessed Virgin are to be heeded:
it means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. It means more for her, an altogether greater blessing, to have been Christ's disciple than to have been Christ's mother.
As Augustine implies, this is not in any way to detract from the Blessed Virgin or to deny her honour: for this is the "altogether greater blessing", to share in the Church's hope, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory". This "hope of glory" stands in stark contrast to the Assumption because - to use words from the response of the Church of Ireland bishops to Munificentissimus Deus - the dogma proclaimed in 1950 rests "on no scriptural authority or historical evidence, and not even on any support from the writings of the most ancient fathers". The glory in which the Blessed Virgin shares, however, the glory which is the hope of the whole Church of which she is a member, rests on the sure foundation of the apostolic witness and the creedal confession.
It is not the uncertainties of pious legend or the pretensions of - to use Austen Farrer's phrase regarding the dogmatic proclamation of the Assumption - "an infallible fact-factory going full blast" which assures us of the Blessed Virgin participating in "thy heavenly kingdom", but the hope of the Church proclaimed in the teaching of Scripture and seen in the witness of the Primitive Church. In affirming that the Blessed Virgin shares in the hope of the whole Church, rather than speculatively creating for her a "unique triumph" apart from us, Mary's participation in heavenly glory is given an infinitely surer foundation.
This "sure and certain hope" is the basis for the Church's praise and thanksgiving regarding the Blessed Virgin. We see this in Lancelot Andrewes' Preces Privatae, in which, after commemoration of the Blessed Virgin with "all saints", he prays "let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ God": it is the Church's shared hope of the vision glorious in which the Blessed Virgin participates with all the faithful departed. Likewise Cosin (who was robust in his rejection of the Assumption) in his Private Devotions, after rejoicing "chiefly in the glorious and most blessed Virgin Mary" and "the holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs", commemorates with her and them "all other thy happy servants, our fathers and brethren, who have departed this life with the seal of Faith, and do now rest in the sleep of peace", all of whom are gathered up in the hope of glory:
Both Andrewes and Cosin demonstrate how a Reformed Catholicism, having no place for nor need of the Assumption, rejoices in the Blessed Virgin's participation in the hope of the whole Church. Sunday past, then, was the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, not the unnecessary feast of the Assumption. Those of us who observed and celebrated the Sunday of Trinity-tide were not adhering to a 'low' view of the Blessed Virgin. We were not failing to honour her. No, we were rejoicing with her amidst "the whole company of heaven", in the vision glorious of "the life of the world to come".
(The stained glass window is the Annunciation Window in Belfast Cathedral.)
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