The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Solemnity

Feast Day

August 15

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary celebrates the dogma, defined by Pope Pius XII in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus on November 1, 1950, that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. The dogma is a defined truth of Catholic faith, and the proximate definition reads: We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory (Munificentissimus Deus 44).

The feast itself is among the oldest of Marian celebrations. The fifth-century Eastern liturgy already kept on August 15 a feast called the Dormition (the Falling-Asleep) of the Mother of God; the Emperor Maurice (582-602) extended its observance throughout the Byzantine Empire. In the West the feast spread from the seventh century, originally also under the title Dormition, then increasingly the Assumption. By the time of Saint John of Damascus (d. 749) the substance of the doctrine, that Mary was bodily taken up into heaven at her dormition, was firmly held in both East and West.

The dogma rests, in the words of Pius XII, on the universal and constant ordinary magisterium of the Church, on the saints and Doctors who have unanimously held it (Saints Andrew of Crete, John Damascene, Anthony of Padua, Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and many others), and on the convergent witness of the sacred liturgy of East and West. Munificentissimus Deus, the only definition of a dogma issued by the extraordinary papal magisterium since Pope Pius IX's Ineffabilis Deus (1854) on the Immaculate Conception, came after Pope Pius XII consulted the world's Catholic bishops in 1946 (Deiparae Virginis Mariae); their virtually unanimous response confirmed the universal episcopal teaching.

In the United States, the Assumption is normally a Holyday of Obligation. By Decree of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy on December 13, 1991, when the Solemnity falls on a Saturday or a Monday, the obligation to attend Mass is abrogated (USCCB Liturgical Calendar 2026, Note 6c). In 2026 August 15 falls on a Saturday, so the obligation does not bind the faithful in the United States.