Did our Lady actually die before being assumed into heaven?
A viewer named Bob notes that Robert said all must die due to Adam's sin, including Christ and Mary, and asks whether we actually know that our Lady died before being assumed, since Elijah was taken up without dying, so perhaps the same happened with Mary.
Answer
The 1950 definition of the Assumption does not settle it, so we have to leave it there. But if you compare Pius XII's 1950 encyclical on the Assumption with the 1854 and 1870 statements on the Immaculate Conception, you get the impression that Mary did indeed die and was raised afterward. It is possible she did not die, but we cannot say dogmatically that she did, because that would require divine revelation we do not have; if we had it, no one would be asking. So at the least it is an open question, and at the most it is implied by both popes that she died. Either way, it does not lessen the fact that both Mary and Jesus, in their human nature, are subject to the death that came from Adam, which is precisely why Jesus could die on the cross. And note that it is not the blood per se that saves, but the death; the blood is a figure of death, because when the blood drains out, death follows, and it is that death, the sacrifice, that saves us. Jesus had to be susceptible to death, which comes from the curse of Adam and nowhere else.