The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-08-15
THE ASSUMPTION OF THE
BLESSED VIRGIN.

Our Blessed Lord rose from the
dead by His own power, says Right
Reverend Bishop Macdonald. BY His
own power He went up into His rest.
l this He is without example. Lady
day in August commentaries the
resurrection and taking up into her
rest of the Virgin Mother who bore
Him, the ark that from the first was
holy to the Lord. Holding to the form
or sound words, as the Apostle en-
Joins, the Church speaks of the one
event as the Ascension, of the other
as the Assumption. In these two
words is implied all the difference
that divides the Creator from the
creature. Mary was taken up into
heaven, for this is precisely what AS
sumption means; not going up,
which is active, but taking up which
is passive on the part of the person
who is taken; which is done to the
person who is assumed, not by the
person who is assumed
Of all who ever lived on this earth,
two, and two only, there were in whom
was found no cause of death and no
germ of corruption: our Blessed
Lord and His Virgin Mother. In Him
the right to interruption was both in
herent by nature and acquired by
merit; i'll her it sprang from that
fullness of grace which freed her.
through His foreseen merits, from all
stain of sin, and was likewise by
merit acquired. He was the second
Adam, she the second Eve. And as
the first Adam and first Eve forfeited
their right to interruption by dis
obedience, the second Adam and sec
ond Eve by their obedience won a
right to interruption. Yet was it an
obedience even unto death. In sooth,
they both of them were mortal, He
having assumed, she having inherited,
a mortal nature. Adam and Eve were
at first immortal as matter of right,
which right was none the less liable
to forfeiture; they became mortal as
a matter of fact. Jesus and Mary
were mortal as matter of fact, but
by right Of sinlessness and by virtue
of obedience unto death they won in
corruption and immortality.
The doctrine of Mary's corporal as
sumption is thus the legitimate corol-
larry of the dogma of her sinless con-
ception. If others were taken up body
and soul into heaven after death, as
We believe that some were, it was by
an altogether exceptional privilege.
Inf
Mother of the Redeemer and the
Queen of Heaven, should have entry
into her kingdom, not by way of privi-
lege, but by way of right. And we
believe that, as became a queen, she
entered by the royal way.
Disobedienee closed to the first Eve
the gates of the earthly paradise, into
which her sinlessness through grace
had given her right to enter.
Obedience opened to the second Eve
the gates of the heavenly paradise,
into which she had won right to
enter by her sinlessness through
grace. And so, in obedience to the
decree of the Eternal King, she first
passed through the gates of death;
even as, in obedience to the decree of
an earthly king, she had passed in
life through the gates of her native
village. And as her passing through
the gates of Nazareth was but an in
cident of her journey to Bethlehem, so
was her passing through the gates of
death but an incident of that last
journey from earth to heaven.
Through those same gates One had
gone before her Who robbed death of
its sting and the grave of its victory.
Disease she knew not; physical pang
there was none Her agony she had
borne long aforetime at the foot of