Assumption

Growing up Catholic, I learned lots of doctrines that weren’t in the Bible, but were added to the Church by tradition. One example is the Assumption of Mary, the idea that Jesus’s mother went up to heaven bodily instead of dying, just like Jesus did. That’s not written down anywhere in sacred scripture, but it’s a cool idea.

For Catholics, Mary was a perfect human being. She had to be, to be Jesus’s mother. And since she was human and not God, she is someone WE can relate to completely. So when she went up to heaven in her body, she gives us all hope that we too will also get to go to heaven, take a seat near the God we love, and that we will also have glorified bodies after we die.

While I don’t actually believe the Assumption of Mary, it’s not actually much different from the deep meanings that we can draw from Jesus’s Ascension. In fact, being willing to hear a different idea, and think about what meaning it seeks to convey, can give us greater insight into something that we do make an attempt to believe in, such as the Ascension (or even Christ’s literal resurrection, which is a stretch for many).

When hearing about different doctrines, looking for something we can learn from them is a great assumption to start with.

with love, Pr. Chelsea