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'The Roman Catholic Point of View'
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
In the liturgical tradition of the Eastern Church the idea of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin includes the following incidents: the death of the Virgin, her burial. her rising again, her assumption, and finally her enthronement in heaven as Queen of all being. According to the eastern manner of thinking it is the first event, that is to say the death of the Blessed Virgin, which occupies the central position in liturgical prayer and meditation. This death is called the falling asleep’ or ‘dormition', whence comes the name of the feast of 15th August, ‘The Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary'. In preparation for this feast there is a period of fasting called the Lent of the Dormition which begins on 1st August. The 14th is the Vigil and the whole festival ends on the 23rd. Originally the feast was observed locally, first in Palestine about the middle of the fifth century and later spreading throughout the Byzantine Empire between 588 and 602 during the reign of the Emperor Maurice. At Rome the feast was introduced by Theodore I (642-649).
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- Copyright © 1950 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The Assumption of Our Lady nnd Catholic Theology. By Victor Bennett and Raymond Winch. (London, S.P.C.K.; 5s.).
2 ‘Indeed there seemed little to object to in the infallibility of a pope, if he had no intention of exercising it.'
3 'This is not tantamount to saying that apocrypha or argument of devotion can u t r v e fo justify a definition, hut that rather than reject them a priori, the historian ‘ the Church” knows how to discover in them manifestations of a more solid and Profound value than profane history or literary criticism would be disposed to recognise in them.