REFORMERS ON THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

Courtesy of William Albrecht.

Jan Huss on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary

“..and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord.” Quoting Sirach 24

“Although the words of this epistle primarily relate to the uncreated Wisdom, they also secondarily relate to the glorious Virgin Mary.”

-In die Assumptionis B. Virginis early 1400s

Martin Luther

Today the festival of our dear lady, the mother of God, is observed to celebrate her death and departure above. There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith. It is enough to know that she lives in Christ. [Martin Luther, Weimar edition of 1522 Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption

Heinrich Bullinger

Elijah was transported body and soul in a chariot of fire; he was not buried in any Church bearing his name, but mounted up to heaven, so that . . . we might know what immortality and recompense God prepares for his faithful prophets and for his most outstanding and incomparable creatures. . . . It is for this reason, we believe, that the pure and immaculate embodiment of the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, that is to say her saintly body, was carried up to heaven by the angels.

De Origine Erroris 1568

The Feast of the Assumption of Mary continues to be observed in Lutheran/Heavily Protestant Churches in the official Feast Days of these locations and years:

Weissenburg 1528

Dessau 1532

Nordlingen 1538

Brandenburg 1540

Palatinate-Neuberg 1543

Scwabisch Hall 1543

Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach 1548

Hohenlohe 1553

Nuremberg 1543

7 thoughts on “REFORMERS ON THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

  1. In the Orthodox Church, we commemorate the Dormition; i.e., the falling asleep (dying), of the Theotokos.

    Tradition says that the Apostles gathered together one last time to venerate her before her burial. St Thomas was late. When he arrived, the Apostles had already buried her in a tomb. Thomas asked them to open the tomb so that he could venerate the Theotokos one last time as well. When they opened it, they all found that the tomb was empty and filled with the loveliest odour they had ever smelled.

    This feast is one of the 12 principle feasts of the Church. Mary’s dying is not insignificant. It means that she was subject to the consequences of ancestral sin, but she lived sinlessly and was entirely devoted to the Lord. This disproves the necessity of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Her assumption is as equally significant as her dormition. She was the first to experience the promised Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the Age-To-Come, as confessed in the Nicene Creed.

    Like

Leave a comment