The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the solemnity celebrating the truth that Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven. Preserved from the corruption of the tomb, she shares already and completely in the resurrection of her Son and shines forth as a sign of sure hope and comfort for the pilgrim People of God, an image of what the whole Church is destined to become.

Belief in Mary's glorious Assumption is ancient, celebrated in the Christian East as the Dormition, or falling asleep, of the Mother of God, and kept in the West for well over a thousand years. On 1 November 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined it as a dogma of the Catholic faith. The greatest of the Marian feasts, it is a holy day of obligation observed each year on 15 August.