"Celebrated every year on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary commemorates the death of Mary and Her bodily assumption into Heaven, before Her body began to decay – a foretaste of our own bodily resurrection at the end of time. Because it signifies the Blessed Virgin’s passing into eternal life, it is the most important of all Marian Feasts as well as being a Holy Day of Obligation.

The Feast of the Assumption is one of the oldest Holy days in the Church, with accounts of celebrations going back to the sixth century. Christians in the East, both Catholic and Orthodox refer to it as the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, or 'the falling asleep of the Mother of God.' 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 it 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..."

--Parish Bulletin, Aug. 15, 2021