Where Did Mary's Body Go?
The question
The Bible never describes Mary being taken to heaven, so where does the Assumption come from?
Scripture · Revelation 12:1
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
A short answer
It's true — there's no chapter where we watch Mary ascend. So the Assumption rests on Scripture's logic and the Church's unbroken memory rather than a single verse. The Assumption means that at the end of her earthly life, Mary was taken body and soul into heaven. Not on her own power, like Jesus' Ascension, but received by God.
Why believe it? Start with what we already hold about her. If she was preserved from original sin (the Immaculate Conception), then the curse that brings bodily decay — "you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19) — doesn't have the same grip. Bodily corruption is sin's aftermath; Mary was uniquely free of sin's stain. It fits that her body wouldn't see decay. Revelation 12 then shows a woman crowned and glorified in heaven, an image the Church has long connected to Mary and the Church together.
There's also the telling silence of history: no city ever claimed to have Mary's body or her relics, which is astonishing given how the early Church treasured the bones of even minor martyrs. The Catechism teaches that she "was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven" as a sharing in her Son's Resurrection and "an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians" (CCC 966). In other words, where she's gone, the rest of us are headed too. She's the first proof of the promise.