Assumption of Mary

This was the only picture of the Assumption of Mary that I could tolerate. First, she looks about the right age for a woman who outlived her son by some decades, second, it's not full of fat angels, and third, she looks dead.

Looks dead you say? Well, yeah. You see there is this big discussion of did she die or not? In the Orthodox church there is a feast of the Falling Asleep of the Virgin. That answers it for me. Mary died. Now, Jesus in heaven had not forgotten his mother, so he brought her body up to heaven. I don't find that so hard to believe.

If you love your mother, and had the power to bring her to heaven with you, would you do it? Would you bring her body too, especially if you didn't the church would have made an idolatry of worshiping her body?

Can you imagine what a mess that would have been, if we had the body of the Virgin Mary to worship? We'd have forgotten all about Christ and just worshiped her. Heck, there is still the danger in some circles of Mary being the redeemer ahead of Christ. I don't buy that at all, and neither does the Church.

The picture came from this site Brigidmarlin.com and I encourage you to visit them.