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John, a witness to the Assumption

Friday, August 14, 2026Spirituality

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But suppose John had seen this woman, so central to his account, receive the gift of everlasting life in its fullness. Would it be surprising if "everlasting life" were a vivid, vibrant, and recurring theme in his Gospel?

Michael
Pakaluk

The latest date scholars give to Mary's Assumption, if they have faith and believe in the Assumption, is the early 60s AD. The earliest date at which scholars place the writing of John's Gospel is around 70.
If John and Mary lived together, in Jerusalem and then Ephesus, as tradition testifies, John likely witnessed Mary's Assumption. True, he might have been out of town on some apostolic mission. But it seems unlikely, in God's providence, that he would have been absent.
So then, if John is indeed the author of John's Gospel, as tradition holds and I believe, then it is natural to ask whether his Gospel shows signs of having been written by someone who was an eyewitness to the Assumption.
To investigate this question, one needs to grasp the theological significance of the Assumption. Pope Pius XII explains this well in his encyclical defining the doctrine, "Munificentissimus Deus," "The Most Bountiful God," (1950).

The fundamental principle is that even those redeemed by Christ must still pay the penalty for sin by suffering death and corruption. "Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul" (n. 4).
But what if a human being had never sinned, or shared in original sin, rescued from any stain of sin from the first moment of his conception? This was Mary's privilege.
"Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body" (n. 5).
As St. John Paul II put it, Mary was the first human being to attain the fullness of everlasting life, which is promised to us all.
That Mary had a special standing in John's account is clear. Mary opens John's account of Jesus's signs at Cana with a simple observation: "They have no wine" (John 2:3). She closes it at the foot of the cross, where John alone records that Jesus gave her into his care: "and from that hour the disciple took her into his own household" (19:26-27). No other evangelist frames his Gospel this way, with Mary present at the first sign and received into John's own house at the last. It looks like the signature of someone whose Gospel was shaped by an ongoing, lived relationship with her.
But suppose John had seen this woman, so central to his account, receive the gift of everlasting life in its fullness. Would it be surprising if "everlasting life" were a vivid, vibrant, and recurring theme in his Gospel? He had seen it. He knows it is real. And he wants to convey that fact.
But so it proves to be. The phrase "everlasting life" ("zoe aionios") is used by John a total of 17 times, almost twice as often as the other three Gospels combined. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that those who believe in him shall have -- not salvation, not freedom from sin, but "everlasting life" (3:16). Those who eat this bread that he gives enjoy "everlasting life" (6:47-51). He is the Good Shepherd who gives those who believe in him "everlasting life" so that they never perish (10:28). We hear this phrase and take it for granted, because we don't recognize that it is a special focus of John.
And then John returns again and again, across his Gospel, to the human body at the edge of transformation. At Cana, water is made into wine. At the pool, the eyes of a man born blind are as if created anew through clay and spittle. At the tomb of Lazarus, it is a body four days dead, already decaying, by a word summoned to a recreated life. And at the end, Thomas is invited to probe the wounds of the risen Lord with his finger.
No other evangelist dwells on the body this way, at the place where death and renewed life meet. John does not simply report these events, as the synoptics mainly do for the signs they recount. He lingers over these details involving the body, suggesting that they mattered to him for reasons beyond the narrative itself. This is the pattern one would expect from someone who had seen the body of someone he loved -- not decay, not merely rise again to die once more, but be taken up into glory. He had seen the goal and could not keep from returning to it, again and again.
"Mary entered into glory because she welcomed the Son of God in her virginal womb and in her heart," John Paul II commented. "By looking at her, the Christian learns" -- as John did -- "to discover the value of his own body and to guard it as a temple of God, in expectation of the resurrection."

- Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book is "Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew's Gospel.'' You may follow him on Substack at MichaelJosephPakaluk.Substack.com.