Saint Mary in August: Assumption, Dormition, and the Anglican Way

Last Saturday, the fifteenth of August, much of the Christian world kept a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Rome and the Western churches call it the Assumption. The Christian East calls it the Dormition, or the "falling asleep." Many Anglicans kept it simply as the feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, and some of us kept it not at all.

That range of practice exists inside our own parish, and it is worth understanding rather than quietly avoiding. What follows is an attempt to set out both traditions honestly before suggesting where they might meet.

What Is Actually Being Commemorated

Scripture tells us nothing about the end of Mary's earthly life. The last we see of her is in the upper room at Pentecost. From roughly the fifth century onward, accounts began to circulate describing the Apostles gathered at her deathbed and her body taken up to heaven. The feast was established across the Eastern Empire around the year 600 and spread west from there.

The Eastern tradition holds that Mary truly died, and that her body was afterward raised and taken to glory. The Roman Catholic Church defined the Assumption as binding dogma in 1950, carefully declining to settle whether she died first, and saying instead that at the end of her earthly course she was taken up body and soul. It is that 1950 definition, more than the ancient feast itself, that has sharpened Anglican disagreement.

The Case for Keeping the Feast

Those in our parish formed by the Ango-Catholic tradition make roughly this argument.

First, the belief is genuinely ancient and remarkably widespread. The whole Church, East and West, arrived at it long before the divisions of the sixteenth century. Nowhere in the ancient world did any city claim to possess Mary's body, at a time when relics of the apostles and martyrs were treasured, catalogued, and fought over. That silence is itself telling.

Second, the doctrine is Christological before it is Marian. What is said of Mary is said because of her Son. She is the Theotokos, the God-bearer, a title the Council of Ephesus defended in 431 in order to protect the truth that the child she carried was one Person, fully God and fully man. If her flesh gave flesh to the Word, it is fitting that it should not have known corruption.

Third, the feast is an image of our own hope. What the Creed promises to all the faithful, the resurrection of the body, is shown fulfilled in one member of the Church already. She is not an exception to the Gospel but its first fruits.

The Case for Reticence

Those formed by the Reformed tradition answer, and they answer from the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

The heart of the objection is Article VI: Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, and nothing is to be required of any man to be believed as an article of the Faith unless it can be read in Scripture or proved by it. The Assumption cannot. The earliest written accounts appear some four hundred years after the event they describe, and their character is legendary rather than historical. Antiquity and near-universal acceptance are not nothing, but they are not the same as revelation.

It is worth being precise here: the Thirty-Nine Articles nowhere condemn the Assumption by name. Article XXII rejects the invocation of saints and related devotions as lacking scriptural warrant, but the feast itself is not the target. The reformed objection is therefore not that the doctrine is false, but that it cannot be required, and that a Church which requires it has confused pious opinion with the deposit of faith. The English reformers acted accordingly: they retained the Marian feasts that commemorate events recorded in the Gospels (the Purification and the Annunciation for example) and quietly dropped the fifteenth of August.

Where the Two Meet

More is shared here than the argument suggests. Both traditions confess Mary as Theotokos, and both understand that this title guards the doctrine of the Incarnation. Both can say with the Gospel that all generations shall call her blessed, and both can pray the Magnificat, as we do during Evening Prayer, without reservation. Both confess the resurrection of the body. Neither tradition believes Mary saves anyone.

The disagreement, narrowly stated, is this: whether a belief that is ancient, fitting, and possibly true may be made a test of communion. Anglicanism has an old answer to that kind of question. It is not that we split the difference, but that we distinguish between what must be believed and what may be believed. There is an Anglican saying about such disagreements:  “All may, none must, some should.”  Perhaps it is a bit too pithy, but it can apply here.

Three practical suggestions follow from that distinction.

  1. Keep the feast, under a scriptural title. Most modern Anglican calendars appoint the fifteenth of August as a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary without naming a doctrine. This is not evasion. It honors the person Scripture actually gives us, the young woman of Nazareth who said yes to God, and leaves the manner of her ending where Scripture leaves it, which is in silence.
  2. Let it be held as pious opinion, freely. Those who believe the Assumption should hold it as the Church long held it before 1950: as a devout and fitting belief, not as a hurdle placed before their neighbor's salvation. Those who cannot affirm it should grant that it may be true, and should not treat a brother's devotion as superstition.
  3. Read the day forward, not backward. Whatever happened to Mary, the point of the feast is what is promised to us. In the early 2000’s the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), released a statement on Mary, finding that both communions could see this teaching as consonant with Scripture's pattern of grace even while continuing to disagree about whether it can be imposed. That is a workable model for a parish as well as for a communion.

The Reformers did not object to honoring Mary; they objected to honoring her at the expense of her Son. The Anglo-Catholic tradition has never held that she is honored apart from Him. On the fifteenth of August we may keep different silences and say different prayers, and still kneel together at the same altar the following Sunday.

Mary herself said only one thing to the Church that has come down to us as instruction, and it settles the matter as well as any article can: Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

--- Fr. Chris Fish+

All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee

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Services & Events

Sunday, 9:00 AM and 11:15 AM services, for online participation go to
https://www.facebook.com/saintsofscotland or to 
https://www.youtube.com/@StAndrewandStMargaret/streams

Nursery during both services

Sunday School, on recess for the summer, returns in September
 
Monday, August 24, Saint Bartholomew, 12 noon & 7:00 PM Services

Wednesday at Noon – Holy Communion and anointing for healing, for online participation go to https://www.facebook.com/saintsofscotland or to 
https://www.youtube.com/@StAndrewandStMargaret/streams

LAST CHANCE: This Wednesday, 7:30 to 9:00 PM in the church undercroft,  Fr. Bragg will offer a relaxed, informal course of Wednesday evening classes on the Hymnal that will run through August 26.  Each meeting is a stand-alone session on specific hymns, focusing on the circumstances of their writing as well as their theological and devotional content.  Every hymn has a story behind it, and many of them are fascinating. (Online participation possible by using links above.)
 
Saturday, August 29, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. in the undercroft. Women's brunch honoring the MaRiH Crisis Pregnancy Center: Enjoy some end-of-summer fun and fellowship while helping local women and their babies. Please bring an item from MaRiH Center's critical needs list. Brunch is potluck; please consider bringing a dish to share. RSVP to margot.anderson@proton.me.  
 
Sunday, Sept 20, Annual Parish Picnic at Fort Hunt Park, following combined 10:00 AM service.  Pork Barrel BBQ in Del Ray will provide pulled pork, coleslaw, mac and cheese, baked beans and potato salad. The Parish will provide hamburgers and hot dogs. A sign-up sheet for appetizers/side dishes and desserts is posted on the bulletin board in the undercroft. 
 
MaRiH Crisis Pregnancy Center: Critical Needs
& More
 
Below are 2 updated lists: the critical needs list and the needs list. The all volunteer staff of the MaRiH Center are very thankful for the support that our parish continues to provide.

Critical Needs:
Diapers, sizes 5 and 6
Spring/Summer clothing (Boys & Girls), size 0-3 months, size 2T 
Baby Wipes
Baby Blankets
Baby formula: Similac Advance Formula
Bibs: toddler
Car seat: infant
Other needs:
Diapers, newborn, 1, 2, 3, 4
Spring/Summer Clothing, 3-6 month, 9-12 month, 18-24 month, 
Bibs, infant
Maternity clothes (Spring/Summer). (Fall/Winter)
Wash cloths
Hooded towels
Diaper rash ointment, Baby shampoo
Baby bottles
Baby formula: All other Similac & Enfamil types. Also accept Alimentum & Nutramigen. No other brands are accepted. Please make sure dates have not expired.
There are two options for helping the Center with these needs:
Option 1 
Amazon has all the specific items needed. You can order the specific item(s) and have them delivered directly to the Center.  

The MaRiH Center
3230B Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-4521
703-370-4774

Option 2 
Go to your local store, purchase the items requested and drop them off at church on Sunday. We will deliver them to the MaRiH Center.
 
 
Food Bank 
 
The food bank continues to need our assistance to feed the hungry. Summer means less food donations are available to the Food Bank often with more requests for help.

Please help this month with a food donation if you are able. Those we help feed are very thankful for the food we provide to them each month. Please also buy low sugar cereals (and not the kid's types that have lots of sugar). Also lower sodium products are better and more healthy.

Current needs include the following:
canned meats (chicken, corned beef, spam)
tuna (cans or foil packages)
peanut butter. jelly
canned vegetables (corn, green beans - (regular and low sodium)
individual fruit cups (low sugar)
canned fruit (low sugar)
canola or vegetable oil (48 oz)
boxed cereal (low sugar) and instant or old fashioned oatmeal (18 oz or 42 oz)
pasta (regular and gluten-free):
instant potatoes
single serving fruit juice
macaroni & cheese
soups: Chunky or Progresso, chicken noodle soup; chicken broth, cream of mushroom. tomato
coffee, cooking oil, flour, sugar
.
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