"Dormitio" or Mary’s Easter

The Grand Master, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, is on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, where he was invited by Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel of the Basilica of the Dormition to celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary at the very site in Jerusalem that commemorates this event. Here below you can read his homily.
 

Assumption of Mary

August 15 is consecrated in the Church to the veneration of the Easter of Mary, the Lord’s Mother. Following an ancient historical-liturgical tradition, the feast is also known as the Transit of the Virgin, or the Dormitio of Mary, or more commonly, her Assumption into Heaven.

In this most venerable of Basilicas, the community of German Benedictines of the Beuron Congregation has brought splendor to the truth of the Marian theological and spiritual tradition, which found its first and great advocate in Jerusalem in Patriarch Sophronius (634–638). In his Anacreontics (which are, the elegies on the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation), he celebrated the mystical greatness of this woman, the Holy One of Zion and affirmed that he had seen the stone where tradition indicated the place where Mary died. Today, to this sacred place, which we consider the last earthly dwelling of the Mother of Jesus, we come as pilgrims.

I am deeply grateful to Abbot Nikodemus for the invitation he extended to me a year ago to celebrate this solemn Liturgy here in Jerusalem, and I likewise thank the entire Benedictine Community for their kind hospitality.

Today we ask ourselves the question: what do we mean when we speak of Mary’s Easter?

At the moment of Mary's death, an ancient and devout tradition states that the Apostles gathered here - in a place not far from the Cenacle - where Jesus Himself came to be with her to receive her final breath. It was reverently believed, in a beautiful reflection of faith, that He who had been born of her wished to gather her last breath of life. Then Mary was buried. According to tradition, the Church did not cease to pray to the Son to raise her again; so an Angel came, opened the tomb, and the body of Mary was gloriously assumed into heaven.

We cannot fail to see, in this pious tradition, the striking analogy with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord, who would have reserved for his own Mother what we might therefore rightly call Mary’s Easter.

The Church’s immemorial theological Tradition, as declared by Pope Pius XII in 1950 on the occasion of the proclamation of the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, holds that in her glorious transit from this world, Mary’s body did not undergo corruption, but was assumed into heaven amid the joyful chorus of Angels, Patriarchs, Martyrs, and Saints. She who had been preserved from sin in view of the merits of Christ was assumed into heaven, body and soul.

Mary, in fact, had been called to collaborate in the mystery of divine Redemption, and for this reason, it was supremely fitting that her body should not experience the decay of corruption. Thus, we may affirm that Mary’s Easter follows the Easter of the Lord Jesus, and that her Assumption into Heaven is the gateway that opens from the end of her historical time into eternity in the glory of God.

Therefore, when we speak of the Dormitio of Mary, we mean that She crossed the final threshold of life not with the doubt or fear of death- common to all human beings- but in the abandonment of her immense faith in God. It was that same faith which had accompanied her from her first “Yes” to the Angel Gabriel, enabling the Incarnation of God among us, through all the subsequent events of her life: from Herod’s persecution because of the newborn Jesus, to the long and silent hidden years in Nazareth, through the public life and the mystery of the death and resurrection of her Son.

We may be certain that Mary always carried within her heart both the life and death of Jesus.

Faith is central to the entire life of Mary: it was the same faith as that of Israel, which was nourished by the Promises made to the Patriarchs and Prophets, and shared by the anawim - the humble and poor who placed their trust in the Most High and awaited the coming of the Christ: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk 6:20). Mary, Daughter of Zion, was the first among the anawim, since in her the Son of God took on human nature (Lumen Gentium 55).

Mary is the burning bush in whose womb the theophany of the Eternal took form; she is the Ark of the New Covenant, the Sanctuary, the Temple in which the glory of God assumed human form.

Israel’s faith thus finds its highest and fullest expression in Mary. For this reason, from the earliest times, the Church - as we proclaim in the Preface of today’s Solemnity - has declared that God, in preserving her from original sin, “did not allow her to see the corruption of the sepulchre, she who begot the Lord of life”.

Today, let us ask ourselves: What does the Assumption of Mary into heaven offer to our journey, and to our lives? In what way does it concern us? Is it merely a “doctrine”, or does it mean something more?

To answer this question, I would like to recall Benedict XVI’s reflection. In a homily for this Solemnity, he spoke of the threefold meaning of Mary’s Assumption:

1. Through Mary, we see that in God there is space for humanity. God is not enclosed in himself, nor is he indifferent to humankind - notwithstanding how many may think is the case, seeing the moral degradation of humanity itself.
2. Like the Holy Ark, Mary brings the presence of God to humanity. This is profoundly beautiful, especially if we recall the words of Saint Irenaeus of Lyon: “The glory of God is the living human being”.
3. In humanity, there can be space for God. To which he added: the Assumption of Mary does not mean she was taken to some distant galaxy, but rather that she entered into union with God, who is the ultimate goal of our existence.

In our world, which is so often shrouded in sorrow, whether that be the tragedies of war, the poverty endured by millions, or the struggles of those battling illness and haunted by death, it is of the utmost importance that, like Mary, we open ourselves to faith and fling wide the doors of our being to hope, so that God may enter into us and not be shut out from our lives, nor from our history.

Here in the Holy Land, we are experiencing days of deep sorrow, marked by the hatred and resentment that blind the minds and hearts of those who draw upon them to justify their political, social, and religious actions. It is because of this hatred and resentment that people are killed, lives destroyed, and human dignity annihilated through acts of unspeakable violence. We now know that such hatred continually breeds and renews war, and that it spares neither sacred places, hospitals, children, nor the elderly, while disrupting economies to build and deploy ever more sophisticated and deadly weapons.

Hatred is the absence of God, and it finds a place when God is pushed to the margins of our lives, our societies, and our history. In this God-excluding void, the feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven invites us to look upwards and sow a seed of new hope, so that no one may resign themselves to resentment and violence.

May Mary, the chosen daughter of this Holy Land, open the hearts and minds of all those who bear responsibility for their peoples and nations. May she intercede with her Son,  who, just as at Cana in Galilee, will not refuse his loving intervention for the needs of a suffering world. May the stones sealing the tombs where it seems humanity has buried its conscience be rolled away, as on the day of Christ’s Resurrection, the prelude to Mary’s own.

It is therefore with the trust and joy of Christ’s Easter, and today, of Mary’s, that we wish to look forward in faith, from Jerusalem and towards the world.

Fernando Cardinale Filoni
Grand Master

(August 15, 2025)