Regardless of whether one accepts or believes in the assumption (Scripture is silent regarding this) Mary is in Heaven. What we do know is that Mary is important because the Bible tells us so much about her. Therefore we should commemorate her, and since there is a historic record of the Church doing so, we should continue to do so. In doing so, we not only mark the Dormition, but we also celebrate the Annunciation and the Visitation.
If you are interested, here is how our Lutheran Congregation marked the Feast of St. Mary, Mother of our Lord this past August 15th; our Chanting is rusty since this is the very first sung liturgy since the first wave of Covid. BTW, I am serving as Deacon:
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Oh this is amazing! I’ve been seriously wanting to
visit your church based on your descriptions of your liturgical praxis, and of course that’s frustratingly difficult right now due to the virus, although not impossible, but your streaming your services with chant is brilliant. And you did a splendid job as Deacon.
Out of curiosity, are there any non-LCMS or predominantly Scandinavian LCMS parishes in existence that you would describe as Evangelical Catholic? I’ve been reading up on high church Lutheranism, and the Church of Sweden in particular stands out as having a particularly evangelical catholic tendency, although the Danish church has interesting liturgical quirks, for example, the ruffled collars worn by senior clergy instead of preaching tabs or the clerical collar* and there is a large amount of ancient iconography in churches in Denmark, such as the stunning round churches in Bornholm, and also in certain areas of Sweden, including but not limited to the historically Danish region of Scania. And the service books I have from the predominantly Swedish Augustana Synod have a very high church feel to them (as well as the 1959 Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal, which I believe was the first to feature the Litany of Peace, which is in your exquisite Lutheran Service Book, and I believe you indicated you use that litany at Compline on Christmas Eve), and unfortunately the Augustana Synod got swallowed up into the ELCA which would have spoiled everything liturgically by now (the Green Book hymnal is tolerable, although not as good as the vintage hymnals of the denominations that had merged together, but the new ELCA hymnal from 2006 I can’t even stand to read due to liberalism (unlike the 2009 PCUSA hymnal), and I haven’t seen what the NALC is doing, but I would fear traditional services being of the low church variety and scarce, because one unpleasant aspect of the breakup of the mainline denominations is a tendency for the conservative parishes to be more low church and into praise and worship music, with notable exceptions, for example, the majority of Continuing Anglican churches. There is also the ELC, which is of predominantly Norwegian descent, which has remained independent, but I have no idea what their worship is like, and the Church of Norway was part of the Swedish church for a long time; the main liturgical attractions are the surviving Stave Churches, and I visited one (which had been restored following an arson attack by a Neo Nazi) while in Bergen in 2001, and it was amazingly beautiful.
*Would I look, in a North American context, silly, if I wore preaching tabs instead of my clerical collar? I have been contemplating such a change; there is a Hungarian Reformed Church in Los Angeles which is associated with a small conservative group in my former denomination called Faithful and Welcoming (which is ever shrinking due to departures from the denomination and a lack of conservative seminary graduates receiving standing in the denomination, which is equivalent to colloquy in WELS and I believe other Lutheran denominations), where the pastor wears beautiful green preaching tabs of a rounded design.
