The Past is Already Written

Today, Catholics and many other Christians celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This significant feast day recalls the spiritual and physical departure of the mother of Jesus Christ from the earth, when both her soul and her body were taken into the presence of God.

Venerable Pope Pius XII confirmed this belief about the Virgin Mary as the perennial teaching of the Church when he defined it formally as a dogma of Catholic faith in 1950, invoking papal infallibility to proclaim, “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.”

His Apostolic Constitution, “Munificentissimus Deus” (Most Bountiful God), which defined the dogma, contained the Pontiff's accounts of many longstanding traditions by which the Church has celebrated the Assumption throughout its history.

The constitution also cited testimonies from the early Church fathers on the subject and described the history of theological reflection on many Biblical passages, which are seen as indicating that Mary was assumed into heaven following her death.

Although the bodily assumption of Mary is not explicitly recorded in Scripture, Catholic tradition identifies her with the “woman clothed with the sun” who is described in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation.

The passage calls that woman's appearance “a great sign, which appeared in heaven, indicating that she is the mother of the Jewish Messiah and has the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

Accordingly, Catholic iconography of the Western tradition often depicts the Virgin Mary's assumption into heaven in this manner.

Eastern Christians have also traditionally held Mary's assumption into heaven as an essential component of their faith.

Pius XII cited several early Byzantine liturgical texts, as well as the eighth-century Arab Christian theologian St. John of Damascus, in his own authoritative definition of her assumption.

“It was fitting,” St. John of Damascus wrote in a sermon on the assumption, “that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death and that she, who had carried the creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles.”

In Eastern Christian tradition, the same feast is celebrated on the same calendar date, although typically known as the Dormition ("falling asleep") of Mary.

Eastern Catholic celebration of the Dormition is preceded by a two-week period of fasting, which is similar to Lent.

Pius XII, in “Munificentissimus Deus,” mentioned this same fasting period as belonging to the traditional patrimony of Western Christians as well.

Anne, Princess Royal (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise; born 15 August 1950), is a member of the British royal family.

She is the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the sister of King Charles III.

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Anne, Princess Royal (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise; born 15 August 1950), is a member of the British royal family.

She is the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the sister of King Charles III.

Born third in the line of succession to the British throne, she is 19th in line as of 2026. She has held the title of Princess Royal since 1987.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan priest, missionary and martyr, is celebrated throughout the Church today.

The saint died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during World War II and is remembered as a “Martyr of Charity” for dying in place of another prisoner who had a wife and children.

St. Maximilian is also celebrated for his missionary work, his evangelistic use of modern means of communication, and for his lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception.

All these aspects of St. Maximilian's life converged in his founding of the Militia Immaculata.

The worldwide organization continues St. Maximilian Kolbe's mission of bringing individuals and societies into the Catholic Church through dedication to the Virgin Mary.

St. Maximilian, according to several biographies, was personally called by the Virgin Mary, both to his holy life and to his eventual martyrdom.

As an impulsive and badly-behaved child, he prayed to her for guidance and later described how she miraculously appeared to him holding two crowns: one was white, representing purity, the other red, for martyrdom.

When he was asked to choose between these two destinies, the troublesome child and future saint said he wanted both.

Radically changed by the incident, he entered the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscans in 1907 at age 13.

At age 20, he made his solemn vows as a Franciscan, earning a doctorate in philosophy the next year.

Soon after, however, he developed chronic tuberculosis, which eventually destroyed one of his lungs and weakened the other.

On 16 October 1917, in response to anti-Catholic demonstrations by Italian Freemasons, Friar Maximilian led six other Franciscans in Rome to form the association they called the Militia Immaculata.

The group's founding coincided almost exactly with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the Marian apparitions at Fatima in Portugal.

As a Franciscan priest, Fr. Maximilian returned to work in Poland during the 1920s.

There, he promoted the Catholic faith through newspapers and magazines, which eventually reached an extraordinary circulation, published from a monastery so large it was called the “City of the Immaculata.”

In 1930, he moved to Japan and had established a Japanese Catholic press by 1936, along with a similarly ambitious monastery.

That year, however, he returned to Poland for the last time. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Fr. Kolbe was arrested.

Briefly freed during 1940, he published one last issue of the Knight of the Immaculata before his final arrest and transportation to Auschwitz in 1941.

At the beginning of August that year, 10 prisoners were sentenced to death by starvation in punishment for another inmate's escape.

Moved by one man's lamentation for his wife and children, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to die in his place.

Survivors of the camp testified that the starving prisoners could be heard praying and singing hymns, led by the priest who had volunteered for an agonizing death.

After two weeks, on the night before the Church's Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the camp officials decided to hasten Fr. Kolbe's death, injecting him with carbolic acid.

Maximilian Kolbe's body was cremated by the camp officials on the Feast of the Assumption.

He had stated years earlier:

“I would like to be reduced to ashes for the cause of the Immaculata, and may this dust be carried over the whole world, so that nothing would remain.”

He was beatified by Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1971, was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982, and was declared "the patron of our difficult century."

The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners.

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"To harbor no envy, no anger, no resentment against an offender is still not to have charity for him. It is possible, without any charity, to avoid rendering evil for evil.

But to render, spontaneously, good for evil - such belongs to a perfect spiritual love."

- Saint Maximus

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St. Maximus is also known as "the Theologian" and as "Maximus Confessor."

He was born in Constantinople around the year 580 and died in exile on 13 August 662.

He worked with Pope Martin I against the Monothelist heresy and attended the Lateran Council of 649.

He was one of the chief doctors of the theology of the Incarnation and of ascetic mysticism.

He was also remarkable as a witness to the respect for the papacy held by the Greek Church in his day.

This great man came from a noble family of Constantinople. He became first secretary to Emperor Heraclius, who greatly valued him.

However, despite the favor of the emperor, Maximus resigned to the world and gave himself up to contemplation in a monastery at Chrysopolis, opposite Constantinople.

He became abbot there but seems to have left this retreat on account of its insecurity from hostile attacks.

Falsely accused of treason due to his defense of the orthodox faith, he was arrested and forcibly returned to Constantinople, where he spent several miserable years in prison.

At age 82, he received his final sentence. He was anathematized. With him were St. Martin and St. Sophronius.

The prefect was ordered to beat them, to cut out their tongues and lop off their right hands, to exhibit them thus mutilated in every quarter of the city, and to send them to perpetual exile and imprisonment.

A long letter of Roman Anastasius tells us of their sufferings on the journey to Colchis, where they were imprisoned in different forts.

He tells us that St. Maxirmus foresaw in a vision the day of his death and that miraculous lights appeared nightly at his tomb.

The monk Anastasius had died in the preceding month. The Roman lived on until 666.

St. Maximus died for orthodoxy and obedience to Rome.

He has always been considered one of the chief theological writers of the Greek Church and has obtained the honorable title of the Theologian.