Assumption

 Into

 Heaven  

     Speaking more poetically, St. John Damascene (d. 749), who is called the Doctor of the Assumption, writes, "On this day the sacred and life-filled ark of the living God, she who conceived her Creator in her womb, rests in the Temple of the Lord that is not made with hands.  David, her ancestor, leaps, and with him the angels lead the dance."
     Documentation testifies that the feast was celebrated first in the Eastern Church in the second half of the sixth century.  Pope Sergius I (687-701) ordered its observance in Rome.  At first it was kept as a memorial of Mary's death, her falling asleep (Koimesis), and it gradually came to be a commemoration of her Assumption as such.
     An apocryphal work of the fourth century, the Transitus Mariae (The Passing of Mary), which appeared in several languages and in many versions, no doubt had some effect in spreading belief in the Assumption.  But the Church's faith in this teaching is not based on it.  As one Anglican scholar put it, "The belief was never founded on that story.  The story was founded on the belief, and testifies to the fact of the belief." 
     Over the centuries Christian art has given varied expression to belief in Mary's Assumption.  We can divide the progress of these expressions into three principal "moments": Mary's falling asleep (her death), her rising to heaven (the Assumption), and finally her coronation.  Each of these moments gave rise to some ancillary episodes so that at length we can enumerate the following stages: 

1.  The Angel Gabriel comes to  Mary and announces that in three days she will die.  He presents her with a palm, symbol of the victory over sin and death that she shares with her Son.	2.  In answer to her earnest prayer, all the              Apostles arrive to bid their farewell.
3.  Mary dies, and Christ comes     to take her soul to heaven.	4.  In solemn procession, the Apostles bear  Mary's body to her grave.
5.  On the third day, her body is taken from the tomb by angels who carry it to heaven.  Later versions picture Mary rising by herself (like her Son at His Ascension) but still accompanied by hosts of angels.	6.  Mary is crowned as Queen of Heaven and Earth, a final completion, as it were, of her Assumption.  This has been depicted in four different ways: Often she is crowned by her Son alone; sometimes by one or two angels; on occasion by the Father alone; frequently by all Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity together.  The first and last of these proved to be the most popular versions.

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