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Bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Selection of quotes

"If the Holy Virgin had died and was buried, her falling asleep would have been surrounded with honour, death would have found her pure, and her crown would have been a virginal one...Had she been martyred according to what is written: 'Thine own soul a sword shall pierce', then she would shine gloriously among the martyrs, and her holy body would have been declared blessed; for by her, did light come to the world."
Epiphanius,Panarion,78:23(A.D. 377), in PG 42:737

"The Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord's chosen ones..."
Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles,1:4(inter A.D. 575-593), in Jur,III:306

"As the most glorious Mother of Christ,our Savior and God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with him who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to himself in a way known only to him."
Modestus of Jerusalem,Encomium in dormitionnem Sanctissimae Dominae nostrae Deiparae semperque Virginis Mariae(PG 86-II,3306),(ante A.D. 634) from Munificentis simus Deus

"It was fitting ... that the most holy-body of Mary, God-bearing body, receptacle of God, divinised, incorruptible, illuminated by divine grace and full glory ... should be entrusted to the earth for a little while and raised up to heaven in glory, with her soul pleasing to God."
Theoteknos of Livias,Homily on the Assumption(ante A.D. 650), in Theo, 57 

"You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dewlling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissoultion into dust. Though still human, it is changed into the heavenly life of incorruptibility, truly living and glorious, undamaged and sharing in perfect life."
Germanus of Constantinople,Sermon I(PG 98,346),(ante A.D. 733),from Munificentis simus Deus

"It was fitting that the she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped when giving birth to him, should look upon him as he sits with the Father, It was fitting that God's Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God"
John of Damascene,Dormition of Mary(PG 96,741),(ante A.D. 749) from Munificentis simus Deus

" 'St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.' "
John of Damascene,PG(96:1)(A.D. 747-751)

"Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten Thy Son our Lord incarnate from herself.
"
Gregorian Sacramentary,Veneranda(ante A.D. 795), from Munificentis simus Deus


"An effable mystery all the more worthy of praise as the Virgin's Assumption is something unique among men
."
Gallican Sacramentary, from Munificentis simus Deus

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#mary

Fundamentals of Mariology- Biblical background - Gebirah/Queen Mother

"...Another important insight into Mariology comes from the episode of Solomon and Bathsheba in 1 Kings 2. In this passage, Bathsheba, mother of Solomon, is established as Queen Mother of ancient Israel and has a throne set up for her at the right hand of the king (1 Ki. 2:19). This signifies Bathsheba taking on the formal office of Queen Mother in the kingdom of Solomon, for in ancient royal houses where a king may have had dozens, even hundreds of wives (like Solomon), the Queen was not the wife of the king but his mother.

This office of Queen Mother is mentioned many other places in the Old Testament (1 Ki. 15:13, 2 Chr. 15:16), and every time a king of Judah or Israel is mentioned in the Book of Chronicles, the sacred author takes care to point out who his mother was.

The import of this is that the Davidic Kingdom of ancient Israel was ruled by a series of kings (sons of David) at whose right hand sat a Queen Mother. She was an important person in the royal house and was seen as an intercessor with the king (1 Ki. 2:13-18). In the New Testament, Christ is the true Son of David, the heir of the Kingdom of David, and even as the Davidic kingdom of old Israel had kings from the line of David and Queen Mothers in the royal household, so the Messianic kingdom is ruled by the Son of David who has the Queen Mother at his right hand.

This identification of the Virgin Mary as the Queen Mother is well established in the Church’s tradition and liturgy and is the reason why Psalm 45—”at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir” (v.9)—is read on the Feast of the Assumption.

Thus the Old Testament is replete with types of the Blessed Virgin, both as the New Eve whose Seed will destroy the serpent, as well as the Queen Mother who sits beside the throne of the Son of David. Both types shed light on the role of Mary in the New Covenant..."

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#mary

Similar mentions can be found in the Oxford volume: *The Jewish Religion: A Companion* (Louis Jacobs) under the entries "Jozue" and "ordination". Of course, this concerns the context in which the Church was established by Christ, and how the idea of apostolic succession can be understood as a refinement of the existing succession of the judges of Israel. This is at least how the first Christians would likely have understood the concept of the laying on of hands and the form of functioning of the "new Sanhedrin," that is, the new religious leaders with the power to issue binding decisions in the new Israel.

Alfred Edersheim, a Jewish convert (to Scottish Protestantism) in the 19th century, in his work "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah" (1883) described the characteristic elements of the "ordination" of Jewish judges (e.g. to the Sanhedrin) in the times of Jesus: On carefully selected individuals, the laying on of hands was performed by three ordainers, one of whom had to be ordained himself and able to demonstrate that he had succession from Moses himself. It's hard not to notice how similar this process is to the method by which the Church, from the very beginning, has taken care to preserve apostolic succession. Considering that Christianity grew out of Jewish culture (and its legal provisions), one can see here a consistency and logical continuation of the form of organization of the teaching office in the New Israel. The first Christians understood Christ's ordinances and the emerging New Testament as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, hence the adoption of certain aspects of succession.

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Human Being= human worth in 20th-century eugenic Ideologies

The president of the American Eugenics Society, Madison Grant, stated in his book *The Passing of the Great Race* (1916):

"Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”

He advocated the sterilisation and elimination of those deemed ‘unfit’ (the sick, the poor, the ‘mentally deficient’, and other races).The book had a major influence on American laws concerning compulsory sterilisation and later on Adolf Hitler :

“We are a link in the chain of creation and children of nature, and the same laws apply to us as to all living creatures. And in nature, the law of struggle has ruled from the very beginning. All creatures incapable of life, everything weak, is eliminated. It was only man, and above all the Church, that set itself the goal of artificially keeping alive the weak, the helpless, those incapable of life, and the worthless.”

‘"Er war mein Chef" , written down by Hitler’s secretary, Christy Schroeder, page 61

#eugenics

Eternal life in heaven is both a grace and a merit

Most Christians probably remember that eternal salvation cannot be achieved without sanctifying grace, and that this is freely given, because otherwise it would not be grace, but few remember that God willed eternal life to also be a reward for merits. Sanctifying grace enables a person to truly merit through their good deeds, and in this way to increase their reward in heaven.

This is why the Council of Trent reminds us: “One must show eternal life as a grace mercifully promised to the children of God through Jesus Christ and as a reward, which is to be faithfully granted from the promise of the same God for their good works and merits. This is that crown of victory, of which the Apostle said that it would be given to him by the just judge after the end of the fight and the race, and not only to him, but to all who love His coming.”

The Council of Trent even proclaimed a dogma that people in a state of grace truly merit the attainment of eternal life and the increase of glory in heaven: “Can. 32: If anyone says that the good works of the justified are the gifts of God in such a sense that they are not also good merits of the same justified person, or that the justified person, by good works performed with the help of the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ (of whom he is a living member), does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and its attainment (if he dies in a state of grace) and an increase of glory—let him be anathema.”

#grace

Christianity – The teacher of Civilization

"Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is-beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion."

*(Leo XIII defends here the principle of Christian social order and the role of Christianity in shaping civilization. He emphasizes that it was the Catholic faith — not secular liberalism — that was the true source of Europe’s progress. It civilized barbarous nations, halted the expansion of Islam, developed culture, science, education, and genuine liberty. The fragment is part of a broader argument against the radical separation of Church and State and against modern ideologies that seek to remove God from public life. )

🔗Immortale Dei – Leo XIII (1885

#civilisation