Replies

I visited the spot in Jerusalem from which Mary was supposedly taken to heaven. Thus, the mention of an Ephesus home was confusing.

I found the following article at a Roman Catholic site, NewAdvent.org:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm

Regarding the day, year, and manner of Our Lady's death, nothing certain is known. The earliest known literary reference to the Assumption is found in the Greek work De Obitu S. Dominae. Catholic faith, however, has always derived our knowledge of the mystery from Apostolic Tradition. Epiphanius (d. 403) acknowledged that he knew nothing definite about it (Haer., lxxix, 11). The dates assigned for it vary between three and fifteen years after Christ's Ascension. Two cities claim to be the place of her departure: Jerusalem and Ephesus. Common consent favours Jerusalem, where her tomb is shown; but some argue in favour of Ephesus. The first six centuries did not know of the tomb of Mary at Jerusalem.

The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis, falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite. If we consult genuine writings in the East, it is mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, St. Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West, St. Gregory of Tours (De gloria mart., I, iv) mentions it first. The sermons of St. Jerome and St. Augustine for this feast, however, are spurious. St. John of Damascus (P. G., I, 96) thus formulates the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem:

St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.
Today, the belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is universal in the East and in the West; according to Benedict XIV (De Festis B.V.M., I, viii, 18) it is a probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous.

Six years ago, I was at this site of "the Virgin Mary's last home" outside of Ephesus. The most memorable part of that visit was that it was the only time in my life that I ever got "car-sick".

We were on a Turkish bus "for tourists" that appeared to be clean and well-maintained. Little did we know that this bus turned out to have virtually no shocks left for our winding ascent up the steep mountain as that isn't something you can discern by looking at the bus while it is stationary. We sat in the back of the bus as it careened around every turn of this serpentine road up the mountain, and with each sharp curve, the bus leaned over the side to give us a nauseating horizontal view of the valley below. Two curl-horned mountain goats literally lept over the front of the moving bus never missing a step on their vertical descent down the mountain, as I was praying to God that the last one wasn't going to come flying through the bus' front window. This seemingly endless ride was also punctuated with right and left hand grabs for any bus fixture that might keep us from slamming face-first into the side windows. I can't even tell you how long the ride was --30 or 50 minutes, maybe hours -- but I can say that my one continuous thought at the time was that these were going to be my last minutes on earth and that I was most likely to be "seeing the Virgin Mary face-to-face" in the immediate future rather than "just seeing her house"!

When we finally arrived at the site, we were greeted by a silent, sullen-faced Turkish guard brandishing an ouzi who was none to happy to see me "acting strangely" -- in fact, I was attempting to find a place to sit down before I fell down and there was no such place to be found. When -- with some water and time -- I finally recovered enough to look around and take in the site, I really felt that my sacrifical journey had been a complete waste of time. I am an Orthodox Christian and my home church is "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary", so the Virgin Mary does have special significance to me, but this place absolutely did not. The house was pretty much a garden variety one-room shrine filled with modern carpets and candles, but with no special feeling of either mystery or God's Love to me. In fact, as far as I was concerned, you could have plopped down this little stone building anywhere and said that it was anything you wanted it to be, and it would have had the same aura & feeling -- like a bland Christian Disneyland without the entertainment value, unless you consider that bus ride to be "entertaining" (needless to say, I did not!).

If anyone goes to Turkey and thinks about visiting this site, I would NOT recommend it. But if anyone has been there and has a far better spiritual experience than I did, then more power to you!