Her most holy soul went immediately to Heaven (St. Francis de Sales)

   Some will wonder at this and say: How is it that Our Lord, who loved His Holy Mother so tenderly and so deeply, did not grant her the privilege of not dying? Since death is the penalty for sin and she had never committed any, why did He permit her to die?

   O mortal, how different are your thoughts from those of the saints, how distant are your judgments from those of the Divine Majesty: Do you not know that death is no longer ignominious but precious, since Our Lord and Master allowed Himself to be attached by it on the tree of the Cross? It would not have been an advantage or a privilege for the Holy Virgin not to die, for she had desired death since she saw it in the arms and in the very heart of her most sacred Son…. 

   When the hour came for the most glorious Virgin to leave this life, love made the separation of her soul from her body, death being only this separation. Her most holy soul went immediately to Heaven. For what, I ask, could have penetrated it, since she was all pure and had never contracted the least stain of sin?

--St. Francis de Sales,

Sermon on the Assumption of 

the Blessed Virgin Mary

Image source: Maurice Denis, Monument Jamot, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris (1920), https://www.theartstory.org/artist/denis-maurice/artworks/