Reflections:
- Now that Mary has been assumed into heaven body and soul, and thus we promote devotion to her, how does this contrast now with the Mediatorship of Christ? Here is what Dunlan and Cunningham has to say (1953): "'For there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ" (1 Tim. 2:5). The purpose of mediation is to unite two extremes, not to separate them. The mediator between God and men raises man's offering to God, and distributes God's gift to men. In the proper sense only Christ does this, but that he does not prohibit Christ from generously associating others with himself in the work of mediation. The close union of Mary to Christ, which is the consequence of her divine motherhood, results in her perfect share in his universal mediation. This has long been taught by the Church's ordinary magesterium, and in 1921 the feast of the mediatrix of All Graces was approved for the Universal Church." (Thomas Donlan, O.P. and Francis L.B. Cunningham, O.P. Christ and His Sacraments).
- Here is what Catholic Answers have to say, "The Church has never formally defined whether she died or not, and the integrity of the doctrine of the Assumption would not be impaired if she did not in fact die, but the almost universal consensus is that she did die. Pope Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus (1950), defined that Mary, "after the completion of her earthly life" (note the silence regarding her death), "was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven." The possibility of a bodily assumption before the Second Coming is suggested by Matthew 27:52–53: "[T]he tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many." Did all these Old Testament saints die and have to be buried all over again? There is no record of that, but it is recorded by early Church writers that they were assumed into heaven, or at least into that temporary state of rest and happiness often called "paradise," where the righteous people from the Old Testament era waited until Christ’s resurrection (cf. Luke 16:22, 23:43; Heb. 11:1–40; 1 Pet. 4:6), after which they were brought into the eternal bliss of heaven. "
- The Cathechism of the Catholic Church 2nd Edition par. 966 has this to say: ""Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death."
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