With August 15 soon approaching, it is a fitting moment to explore the Church’s teaching on the Assumption – and its particular significance for our times. Mary of the Assumption is the primary patroness of the Diocese of Saginaw, along with our secondary patroness, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Normally a holy day of obligation, it is not so this year since the solemnity falls on a Saturday.
In 1950, people throughout the world were looking up at the sky for all the wrong reasons. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was continuing to escalate, and the possibility of nuclear missiles flying overhead was very real.
Five years earlier, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, the United States had dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within the first few months of the bombings, the horrific effects had killed up to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and up to 80,000 in Nagasaki.
The end of World War II came quickly, with the Japanese surrendering on August 15 – the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In his radio broadcast, Emperor Hirohito referred to "a new and most cruel bomb" as the reason for Japan's surrender: “Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation but would lead also to the total extinction of human civilization.”
A year later, the United States began its first series of nuclear tests over Bikini Atoll. The initial test took place in July of 1946 and was code-named “Operation Crossroads.” Then, in 1949, the first Soviet atomic test took place, code-named “First Lightning.” By 1950, much of the globe was therefore living in fear that “the end” was near. But on November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII gave the world another reason to “look up” in order to behold our “true end.”
On that day, the Holy Father solemnly declared as a divinely revealed dogma that “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed [taken up by God] body and soul into heavenly glory. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.” Mary of the Assumption is the icon of what God intends the Church to be – and also the icon of every human being’s ultimate destiny…namely, to live with our souls and glorified bodies for all eternity in that heavenly realm which another pope once called “the country of pure love.”
It is significant that Pope Pius XII left it an open question as to whether Mary actually died before she was taken up into heaven. It is also important to note that the dogma of the Assumption of Mary is a rare instance of a pope teaching infallibly “from his chair” (ex cathedra). Infallibility simply means that the Church’s official, definitive teaching on faith or morals is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit – a gift from on high that is based on Christ’s promise that the “gates of hell” would never prevail against the Church (cf. Mt 16:18). As an infallible dogma, all Catholics are required to accept the teaching on Mary’s assumption into heaven “with the obedience of faith.”
How beautiful – and fitting – that it was Pope Pius XII who proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption! He had a tender devotion to the Mother of God from his earliest years, and he was consecrated as a bishop on May 13, 1917 – the very first day of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. As pope, he went on to consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, imploring Mary’s assistance as he saw the horrors of the Second World War.
The old Beatles song, “Let it Be,” certainly contains a deep truth; when we find ourselves in times of trouble, Mother Mary does come to us. During World War I, the Lord permitted Mary’s presence to be felt during her 1917 appearance to three little children in Fatima, Portugal, where she asked the world to pray the Rosary and do penance so that the war would finally end. She also warned the visionaries of the evils that would come out of Russia – a prophecy of motherly concern that occurred before the communist Russian Revolution actually happened! She also asked that Russia be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart.
Just a few years ago, the Diocese of Saginaw took part in a solemn act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 2022, when an estimated 600 members of the faithful joined Bishop Robert Gruss for Mass at the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption and to join Pope Francis from afar in consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Bishop Gruss began his homily by stating, “I am offering this Mass today for the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia and for the conversion of Vladimir Putin.”
The Fatima apparitions ended on October 13, 1917, with the miracle Our Lady had promised to the three children as a sign that her messages were truly from God. That day, an estimated 70,000 people witnessed the sun dance in the sky – a miracle that even the anti-Catholic newspapers in Portugal had to report. This enormous crowd saw the sun spin in the sky and change colors. The sun then seemed to begin to fall toward the earth. Many of those present thought it was the end of the world, but the sun returned to its place in the sky. It had been raining all day, but after witnessing “the miracle of the sun,” everyone suddenly found themselves completely dry.
In a way, the “miracle of the sun” is a delightful visual pun. How typical of our heavenly Mother to want us to look up…and to focus on the Son who is the source of all miracles! There is an old saying that contains a lot of wisdom: “We tend to become what we behold.” The more we gaze at and contemplate Jesus, the Light of the World, the more we allow him to form us…to become more Christ-like! This is an essential aspect of Christian prayer. Similarly, the more we behold the greatest disciple of Jesus – his Mother Mary – the more we will grow in our own discipleship. In a sense, when Pope Pius XII declared the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, he was simply echoing the words of Jesus from the Cross: “Behold your mother!” (cf. Jn 19:27). And on the very day he proclaimed the dogma, Nov. 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII himself witnessed the sun dance: “I have seen the ‘Miracle of the Sun.’ This is the pure truth,” the pope wrote. He also witnessed this miracle twice in the days leading up to his proclamation of the dogma, and once more in the week that followed.
World War I finally came to a close on November 11, 1918 – a year after the apparitions of Mary in Fatima. At the time, it was called “the war to end all wars.” Of course, Adolf Hitler had other plans, and World War II soon broke out in 1939. At the culmination of the Second World War, Mary’s presence was again experienced in an amazing way at Hiroshima by a community of Jesuit priests serving – most fittingly – at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption. An August 9, 2015, article published by the Catholic News Agency, “The Miracle of Hiroshima,” tells of this remarkable occurrence:
“Four Jesuits were nearby the hypocenter of the attack on Hiroshima, but they survived the catastrophe, and the radiation that killed thousands in the months following had no effect on them. The Jesuit priests Hugo Lassalle, Hubert Schiffer, Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and Hubert Cieslik were at the rectory of the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, one of the few buildings that resisted the bomb blast. The doctors who took care of them afterwards warned them that the radiation they received would produce serious lesions, as well as illness and premature death. The diagnosis never materialized. No disorders ever developed, and in 1976 Father Schiffer attended the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia and told his story. He confirmed that the other Jesuits were still alive and without any ailments. They were examined by dozens of doctors some 200 times over the course of the following years, without any trace of the radiation being found in their bodies. The four religious never doubted that they had been blessed with protection by God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. ‘We were living the message of Fatima and we prayed the Rosary every day,’ they explained.”
Our Lady’s presence was also felt in Nagasaki, as related in an August 9, 2015, article which appeared in The Catholic Herald on “The Priests who Survived the Atomic Bomb”: “…In a strange parallel to what happened at Hiroshima, the Franciscan Friary established by St Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki before the war was likewise unaffected by the bomb which fell there. St Maximilian, who was well-known for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin, had decided to go against the advice he had been given to build his friary in a certain location. When the bomb was dropped, the friary was protected from the force of the bomb by an intervening mountain. So both at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can see Mary’s protective hand at work.”
In our own times, with the Russian attack on Ukraine now lasting longer than both of the 20th century World Wars, we would do well to keep our eyes looking up…not to visualize deadly missiles of unthinkable destruction flying toward us, but to behold the mother that Christ gave us as his last precious gift before he died. Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant, having carried Christ in her womb. Taken up into heavenly glory, she is also the Queen of heaven and earth – a feast the Church celebrates on August 22, the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But she is not a distant queen. She has warm motherly care about every little detail of our lives – from our anxiety about a certain family member to “that grocery list” we just can’t seem to find. But she is most concerned about our life of prayer, our relationship with the Lord and, ultimately, our receiving salvation through her divine Son.
In desiring to behold the beauty of Mary of the Assumption, we can find a marvelous “icon” of her in Sacred Scripture: “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple…. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 11:19-12:1). May the Mother whose loving, Immaculate Heart is beating right now in her glorified body in heaven continue to intercede for our world, for our diocese, and for all of us who are her greatly beloved children. As Pope Leo XIV has observed: “God’s love is so great that Jesus does not even keep for himself his mother, giving Mary as our mother at the hour of the cross.”