Aug 15 Tip: Learn about the Catholic "Feast of the Assumption"

Learn about the Catholic "Dogma of the Assumption" and its significance in Jungian psychology

(The August 15 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace)

http://catholicism.about.com/od/holydaysandholidays/p/Assumption.htm

The Feast of the Assumption is a very old feast of the Church, celebrated universally by the sixth century. The feast was originally celebrated in the East, where it is known as the Feast of theDormition, a word which means "the falling asleep." The earliest printed reference to the belief that Mary's body was assumed into Heaven dates from the fourth century, in a document entitled "The Falling Asleep of the Holy Mother of God." The document is written in the voice of the Apostle John, to whom Christ on the Cross had entrusted the care of His mother, and recounts the death, laying in the tomb, and assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Tradition variously places Mary's death at Jerusalem or at Ephesus, where John was living.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life is a defined dogma of the Catholic Church. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, exercising papal infallibility, declared in "Munificentissimus Deus" that it is a dogma of the Church "that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." As a dogma, the Assumption is a required belief of all Catholics; anyone who publicly dissents from the dogma, Pope Pius declared, "has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith."

The great psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung felt that the pronouncement of the Assumption as Church dogma was the most significant spiritual development of the 2oth Century because, in one sense, in signified the return of the Divine Feminine to the Godhead in Western religion.