August 15 - The Assumption of Mary is the Catholic religious belief that the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, did not die like everyone else but entered directly into the glory of God. Before being a dogma, the Assumption of Mary was a belief based on patristic tradition. In fact, no text in the New Testament evokes the end of Mary.
In the West, Gregory of Tours was the first to mention it, at the end of the 6th century. In 1638, King Louis XIII wanted an heir to consecrate France to the Virgin Mary under the title of her Assumption and asked his subjects to make a procession in each parish every 15 August in order to have a son. As Louis XIV was born the following year, the feast celebrated by the Vow of Louis XIII took on particular importance in France. In 1854, the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception led to numerous petitions to Rome to officially define the dogma of the Assumption. From 1854 to 1945, eight million faithful wrote to this effect. To this must be added the petitions of 1,332 bishops and 83,000 priests and religious men and women.
On November 1, 1950, the Assumption of Mary was defined as a dogma of faith by Pope Pius XII's Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus:
"By the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority, We pronounce, declare, and define as a dogma divinely revealed that the Immaculate Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was raised body and soul to heavenly glory". (Dogmatic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, § 44).
Subsequently, the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council of 1964 stated:
"Finally, the Immaculate Virgin, preserved from every stain of original sin, at the end of her earthly life, was raised to the glory of heaven in soul and body and was exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe in order to resemble more perfectly her Son, Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death". (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium on the Church, § 59).
