Thursday 15 August 2013

Absolute freedom for all eternity? That's quite an Assumption.

The ancient Christian tradition that the mother of Jesus, not a deity but a human woman, did not actually die but merely fell asleep (the Dormition of the Eastern Church) and was taken body and soul into a state of beatific union with God (the Assumption of the Western Church) has been passed down the generations since the time of the people who actually knew her.

Dormition by Theophanes the Greek

Most of the world-wide Christian community generally holds to some version of this idea because it is rooted in belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ and in the Christian understanding of free will.

That is to say that, for one who freely loves God totally, and who is as close to God as Jesus' mother was, death is a non-event.

Uniquely, Our Lady was redeemed by Christ from unfreeness (sin) before she was even conceived (the Immaculate Conception). Thus she was totally free to reply Fiat in loving response to the God who so loved her that He offered her His Own Word to be her Son. Mary lived the whole of her life on earth in such closeness to Jesus, the Son of her creator and her Son too, as we cannot even begin to imagine.

By the grace of God, Mary was so utterly free that death could not hold her physically, any more than it could hold her Son.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.



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