There’s something about Mary: Linda Duckenfield revisits ‘the most important woman in the New Testament’

‘I want to make some different “assumptions”.’

by Linda Duckenfield 11th October 2024

As a child, I took several trips to France with my intrepid dad. These coincided with a festival my young ears heard as ‘Kanzoo’, and there were funfairs and happiness everywhere. It was a long time before I knew that it was ‘Quinze-Août’, 15 August – and even longer before I knew that this commemorated the assumption of the virgin Mary, one of the most important ‘Marian’ festivals for Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Later I learned that the assumption was when Mary was believed to have been taken up bodily to heaven, like Jesus before her.