Held in the Chapel of the Holy Patrons of Europe in the Basilica of St. Peter, Rome

Fr. John Okoro Egbulefu CCE, Rome 15th August 2026

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ!

@1 We, members of the Church of Christ on earthly pilgrimage to heaven, have gathered to celebrate the joyful Feast of the glorious Assumption of Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.

@2 We begin the liturgical first half of the Feast with the entrance hymn for the Holy Mass of the day in commemoration of her Assumption into heaven as her highly and solemnly festive entry into heaven: “Rejoice all of you in the Lord who are celebrating to the honour of the Virgin Mary, concerning the assumption of whom the Angels exult, and are together praising the Son of God” (Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore Mariae Virginis, de cuius Assumptione gaudent Angeli, et collaudant Filium Dei).

@3 We introduce into the intellectual second half of the celebration with four reflections, the first two of which are ruminations on the curious events - namely her death and her resurrection here on earth - that preceded this spectacular happening of our Mother’s angelically assisted elevation, upliftment, conveyance and journey to heaven. The third reflection brings out from latency to evidence the logical, and Theo-logical reasons that ground the legitimacy of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. The fourth reflection is a putting of us her children into the shoes of our Mother Mary to feel with her how she felt when the Angels sent by God came to collect her for such a journey without precedence and when she was airborne and in the skies during so long a journey to a most far distant place.

@3a) The Assumption into Heaven of Mary the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ who gave her to us as our Mother and gave us to her as her children was preceded by her death here on earth called the dormitio Mariae, i.e. her passing on to the land of the dead through sleep. She died differently both from how Her Son, Jesus, died, and from how St Joseph died to whom she was betrothed before her conception of the child Jesus in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. The three of them, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, died differently from one another. In fact, there are only three ways of dying as of passing on, and changing address, of the human soul from the surface of the earth as the world of the living to (underneath the earth as) the underworld as the world of the dead: be it i) dying by being killed (cf. Latin verb: interficio/interficere/interfeci/interfectum, meaning ‘to kill’), and that is the way Jesus died by being killed, be it ii) dying by passing on to the land of the dead by ceasing to breathe any more when sleeping (cf. dormeo/dormire/dormivi/dormitum, meaning ‘to sleep’, hence ‘Dormitio’ stands for sleep), and that is the way the Blessed Virgin Mary died, by passing over from the earth to heaven, changing her address from earthly city to heavenly City, be it iii) dying out of old age and general weakness of the mortal body containing immortal soul and spirit, whereby when the limit of the days given to the mortal body arrives the body collapses and the immortal soul and spirit contained by the body have no more container and hence, they fly back to God from whom they came and by whom they were put into the body at creation (collapsus, and this is the way Joseph presumably died. It goes beyond doubt that the Blessed Virgin Mary died, our Mother is died, for there were eye-witnesses to her death. Tradition has it that after Jesus had died and was risen from the dead and had ascended into heaven, John the beloved Apostle whom the Lord Jesus, when He was about to die on the Cross, gave to Mary as her son and to whom He gave Mary as his (namely John’s spiritual mother, whereby the two were to take care of one another (cf. Jn 19:25-27), retired to an ancient City in today’s Turkey, called Ephesus to live there with her in his house, and that after a good number of years John noticed that the end of Mary’s stay on earth had begun to show its signs and so sent word to fellow believers in Christ in the neighbouring regions of the earth to come to Ephesus to bid farewell to the Mother of Christ the Redeemer and Saviour, and that “in the presence of the Christian community at Ephesus and others from far and near, the Blessed Virgin Mother breathed her last”.

@3b) But about her burial and resurrection there is no reliable information. No where is known to be her tomb. No witness exists about her and her resurrection, her coming from the land of the dead back to the land of the living.

What comes across is that after her death there was this theological discussion about how someone like Mary in whom the eternal Word lived like in a temple and who had been intensively sanctified by the Holy Spirit that dwelt in her as He effected - and permanently sustained - the Union of the divine Word with the human flesh, should see corruption, since God would not allow His holy one to see corruption.

@3c) And so the idea arose that since on the one hand her holy body could not have been consigned to decay or corruption nor to cremation, and yet could not be found anywhere, and on the other hand Christ has requested His Father to let those whom the Father had given to Him on earth to be with Him where He is in glory (“Father I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may always see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” Jn 17:24), and Mary is the first of such people whom the Father gave to His Son on earth, but the Father has always heard the request of His Son (cf. “Father I thank you for hearing my prayer. I knew indeed that you always hear me, but I speak for the sake of all these who stand around me, so that they may believe it is you who sent me” Jn 11:42), it follows that Christ who has ascended into heaven to prepare a dwelling place for his followers (“Trust in God still, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house: if there not, I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me, so that where I am you may be too. You know the way to the place where I am going. …. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me” Jn 14: 1-4.6), must have prepared a seat of eternal glory for his holy Mother up there in heaven and sent from there Angels to come to carry her alive from here on earth to himself in heaven.

This suspicion was hardened by the argument that since Christ is the Truth and therefore cannot say things that are not true, and has said to His servants and followers “If a man serves me, he must follow me, so that wherever I am, my servant will be there too, if anyone serves me, my Father will honour him” (Jn 12:26), but now Mary has served Christ and Christ has ascended into heaven, it follows that the Father will honour Mary by bringing her to be in heaven too where Christ is.

But since no one saw any of these events take place in reality, the event of the Father’s honouring Mary by bringing her to be in heaven too where Christ is, and the event of the angels carrying Mary body and soul from down here on earth to Christ up there in heaven, these conclusions remained for years in the swing between their logicality and the lack of objective evidence or of ocular witnesses to the suspected event that must have taken place.

That is why the facts of Mary’s Assumption into heaven and of her coronation in heaven could not be included in the Credo at the time the Credo was being formulated and could be therein included now since the middle of the 20th Century, For. it was only in 1917 when the Virgin Mary herself appeared in the sky, introducing herself thereby as the Immaculate Conception itself in person that an objective evidence for her being truly in heaven became palpable and undeniable. So it became possible for the teaching authority of the Church to solemnly define on 1st November 1950 Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven as dogma with the words: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: 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” (cf Pope Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus).

Mary ‘was assumed into heaven’ is the formulation of a certain action in the passive voice, and the action is this that she was in an ascending movement towards heaven whereby however she was not ascending by her own struggle or power, unlike Christ who ascended into heaven through the power that is within him, rather she, being a creature that has been redeemed by her Son, was taken up into heaven above the heavens by divine power, symbolized by the Angels as the carriers of her to heaven.

And like there are three persons in one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so there are in this definition of the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into heaven three preceding dogmas: the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the dogma of Mary’s Motherhood of God, and the dogma of Mary’s perpetual Virginity.

The apparition of Our Mother Mary in 1917 at Fatima is that in which she, through her speaking and saying that she was the Immaculate Conception, showed, by her speaking at all, that she is a living person.

A person is that spirit - intelligent living being - that speaks, can produce words that are intelligible to fellows fellow spirts, words that can be understood by fellow intelligent living beings, words that can create dialogue and conversation between the speaker and the addressees and, among the addressees themselves words that contains and communicate the intention and the Will of the speaker.

And by calling herself the Immaculate Conception, whereby like the Truth is that being which underlies and sustains the trueness of that which is true, so too the Immaculate Conception is that being that underlies and sustains the state of being immaculately conceived in which one who is immaculately, stainlessly, conceived has found oneself, Mary has said that she is that being that underlies and sustains that state of being immaculately conceived in which (that statusquo that) she who is immaculately, stainlessly, conceived has found herself. Thus, Mary is a highly and deeply mystical figure.

And such a permanent status in which she has found herself has further consequences for some other states in which she has found herself and for all the acts, actions and activities of hers that are closely connected with the cause or consequences, with the reasons and purposes, of that state of being immaculate, stainless, without impurity, all her life long.

Her permanent state of being immaculately conceived to be immaculate all her life long, has namely as consequences her permanent state of Motherhood, her permanent state of virginity, and her permanent state of obedience to God, according to which she is a mother all her life long, a Virgin all her life long, and obedient to God all her life long, respectively.

And this perennity of her state of virginity, and of her state of obedience to God and of her state of motherhood is connected with her immaculateness, as long as this stainlessness means freedom both from the three things that the world offers and from sin as not doing the will of God. For, on the one hand, there is in her nothing of those three things that the world offers, namely there is no sensual body, i.e. no concupiscence of the flesh, no lustful eye, i.e. no concupiscence of the eyes, and no pride of possessions, i.e. no pride of life, while, on the other hand, she does the Will of God and therefore remains (so) forever (“Nothing the world has to offer – the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possession – could ever come from the Father but only from the world; and the world, with all it craves for, is coming to an end – i.e. is transitory; but anyone who does the will of God remains forever” (1 Jan 2:16-17)

@3d) The Angels that were sent to collect and convey her to Heaven, must have told her of their mission to her, like she was when the Archangel Gabriel who, sent by God to her, came from heaven and announced to her the message that she would conceive and give birth to a baby boy whom she was to give the name Jesus (the Redeemer of His people), while the people would call Him Emmanuel (God-with-us, for if God we’re not with Israel, with people of God, the enemy of God would have swallowed Israel alive). Mary’s excitement must be naturally understandable when one comes to think of it that it was that child as Son of God who had come from heaven in her womb and had in-between been born by her who now has sent His ministers to come to collect and convey her from the earth as dark and miserable valley of tears to Him in Heaven to be with Him in Heaven as luminous and glorious Kingdom, City and House of God. And during that long journey to Heaven, as she was being carried up higher and higher to go to meet her Son her heart must have been filled with the joy and hope (gaudium et spes) of seeing Him soon. We can feel it with her and begin to desire and long for the grace to be allowed to make the experience of traveling from the earth on a direct flight to heaven as our Lord through His ascension and our Lady through her Assumption have made it ahead of us and have since then been drawing us upwards to heaven to come to be with them, while the Holy Spirit sent to us since Pentecost has been spurring us on from here below to keep going upwards to Heaven to live with Our Lord and Our Lady as Our Brother and Our Mother respectively and reign with them as Our King and Our Queen in the unity of the same Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father.