Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
On the fifteenth of August the Church celebrates the dogma defined by Pius XII in 1950 but believed from antiquity: that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. The first of the redeemed to share fully in the resurrection of her Son, she is the eschatological icon of the Church — what every member of Christ's Body will one day become. The feast is the oldest Marian solemnity in the Roman Calendar, kept in Jerusalem from at least the fifth century. In many countries it is a holy day of obligation and the great festival of the Catholic summer.