“Heaven receives thy soul with joy. The heavenly powers greet thee with sacred canticles and with joyous praise, saying: “Who is this most pure creature ascending, shining as the dawn, beautiful as the moon, conspicuous as the sun? How sweet and lovely thou art, the lily of the field, the rose among thorns; therefore the young maidens loved thee. We are drawn after the odour of thy ointments. The King introduced thee into His chamber. There Powers protect thee, Principalities praise thee, Thrones proclaim thee, Cherubim are hushed in joy, and Seraphim magnify the true Mother by nature and by grace of their very Lord. Thou wert not taken into heaven as Elias was, nor didst thou penetrate to the third heaven with Paul, but thou didst reach the royal throne itself of thy Son, seeing it with thy own eyes, standing by it in joy and unspeakable familiarity.”
First Homily on the Dormition: St John of Damascus
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear brothers and sisters,
Greetings for the glorious feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, wherein the Saviour’s victory over death and the opening of the gates of paradise is realised in the translation of the Theotokos from death to life, and from earth to heaven.
It is our summer Pascha, in which we celebrate the rising and ascension of the Mother of God, who follows in the wake of her beloved Son, the first-fruit of the dead, called forth from her sleep by the Giver of Life, who trampled down death by death, bestowing life upon those who dwell in the graves, beginning with His own beloved mother.
When we contemplate the holy icons of her Dormition, the voice and tradition of the Church prompts us to appreciate that this wondrous event was one in which heaven and earth were united as the Mother of God, the Second Eve, was laid in the tomb and subsequently translated from earth to heaven.
We can easily forget how the heavens rejoiced, as the All-Pure Virgin was translated to glory, untouched by corruption, and exalted above the angelic ranks, as she who is “more honourable than the cherubim, and truly more glorious than the seraphim.”
Rather than seeing the feast only from an earthly perspective, focussing upon Gethsemane and the apostles, we must raise our minds to contemplate the glory of the Dormition and Assumption of the Mother of God from the perspective of the dwellers of heaven, appreciating that the angelic hosts and the saints of the Old Covenant eagerly awaited the arrival of the Theotokos.
We see Gethsemane, the Mother of God upon her deathbed, the apostles assembled by the angels and brought to Jerusalem from the “ends of the earth”.
We see them bidding farewell to the Mother of the Lord, forewarned of her Dormition three days earlier by the Archangel Gabriel; we reflect upon their hymns and prayers as they carry the Mother of God on the funeral bier to her sepulchre, and though knowing that the Lord received her all-pure soul, we easily fail to appreciate the joyful anticipation of those abiding in the heavens, and of the celestial attendants and celebration around her falling asleep.
St Jacob of Serug reminds us that the apostles were not the only assembly to gather around her deathbed and to perform the entombment of the Mother of God – as we see in the holy icons – as angelic hosts descend to participate in the rites in which the Theotokos was laid in her sepulchre, before being received, body and soul, into heaven, glorified by her Son and Lord.
St Jacob describes the joyful and expectant citizens of heaven, as the Dormition united the earthly and heavenly realms; a door from mortality to immortality; a concelebrated union of apostles and angels in the burial of the All-Pure Virgin, translated from temporality to eternal blessedness and glory:
“The ranks and companies and host of the sons of light; the tumult of the watchers and the fiery assemblies of flame; the fiery Seraphim, with their dense wings of flame, with legions and their heavenly battalions; the mighty Cherubim, who were yoked to his chariot; they trembled with wonder while singing praises with their hosannas.
The followers of Gabriel, assemblies more fiery than flame, were variously changed in their natures.
The followers of Michael, full of motion in their descent, were keeping the feast, exulting and rejoicing this day with their alleluias.
Heaven and the air were filled with the praise of the heavenly ones, who went forth and descended to the place of earth.”
In the first canon for the feast, St Cosmas of Maiuma goes so far as to write not simply of the angelic presence at the burial of the Mother of God, but seeing her entombment primarily celebrated by the angels, rather than the apostles:
“The choir of angels buried thy body, which had received God, gazing upon it with fear, and exclaiming with a loud voice: O Theotokos who ascendest to thy Son in the heavenly mansions, thou ever savest thine inheritance!”
Writing in the late second century, Melito of Sardis, narrated the descent of the Lord to the Tomb of the Virgin in Gethsemane, and the rolling away of the stone by the Great Taxiarch, the Archangel Michael, before the Saviour called His mother forth from her sepulchre:
“He ordered the archangel Michael to bring the soul of St. Mary. And, behold, the archangel Michael rolled back the stone from the door of the tomb; and the Lord said: Arise, my beloved and my nearest; thou who hast not put an corruption by intercourse with man, suffer not destruction of the body in the sepulchre. And immediately Mary rose from the tomb, and blessed the Lord, and falling forward at the feet of the Lord, adored Him, saying: I cannot render sufficient thanks to Thee, O Lord, for Thy boundless benefits which Thou hast deigned to bestow upon me Thine handmaiden. May Thy name, O Redeemer of the world, God of Israel, be blessed for ever.”
Furthermore, looking beyond the earthly and temporal, we may contemplate not only the angelic hosts rejoicing, but also the righteous-dead of the Old Testament, delivered from Hades by the Victorious Saviour in the harrowing of hell.
Unlike the holy forefathers, patriarchs and prophets (whom we see looking down upon the Dormition from the heavens in some icons), the Mother of God is not simply with her Son by spiritual presence, but also physically, through her translation in both body and soul: a sign and promise to all of humanity of the resurrection, to be fulfilled at the end of the ages.
St Jacob contemplates the joy of the righteous departed, some of them forebears of the Mother of God, as they see her assumed, glorified and welcomed into the heavens where they dwell, awaiting the resurrection of their own bodies.
He calls them to rejoice in the translation (metastasis) of the Mother of God: for Adam and Eve to rejoice as their daughter is welcomed into the eternal rest where they dwell; to Noah and Abraham, as their daughter visits them in their dwelling-place; to Jacob, seeing that the daughter sprouted from his root has called him into life; to the twelve patriarchs because she had visited them; to Judah, for this daughter who has given life is his descendent; to Joseph and Moses, as the Virgin calls all mankind to life, and to Aaron, Eleazar the priest and all the tribes of the sons of Levi with their priesthood.
He calls upon David the renowned forefather of both the Mother of God and the Saviour to rejoice, because his daughter has placed a glorious crown upon his head; to Samuel with Jeremiah, because the Mother of God, the daughter of Judah, drops dew on their bones; to Ezekiel, for the fulfilment of prophecy; and to the prophet Isaiah, because the Mother of God whom he prophesied has visited him in the place of the departed righteous ones.
Through St Jacob‘s poetic reflections, we see the celestial welcome, as angels and the righteous-departed rejoice as the Mother of God, is borne to heaven.
St John of Damascus reflects upon the reaction of Adam and Eve, as first-father and first-mother, who, remembering their own disobedience, joyfully see their restoration in their daughter’s entrance into heaven in both body and soul.
Through the Saviour’s Life-Giving death and Resurrection, the anticipated resurrection of the dead becomes a reality before them, as her Dormition and entrance into heaven becomes the sign of the opening of the gates of paradise, which they themsleves had closed, and the Mother of God becomes the ladder from earth to heaven.
“Then Adam and Eve, our first parents, opened their lips to exclaim, “Thou blessed daughter of ours, who hast removed the penalty of our disobedience! Thou, inheriting from us a mortal body, hast won us immortality. Thou, taking thy being from us, hast given us back the being in grace. Thou hast conquered pain and loosened the bondage of death. Thou hast restored us to our former state. We had shut the door of paradise; thou didst find entrance to the tree of life. Through us sorrow came out of good; through thee good from sorrow. How canst thou who art all fair taste of death ? Thou art the gate of life and the ladder to heaven. Death is become the passage to immortality. O thou truly blessed one!”
Raised to her heavenly place with her Son at the throne of glory, the words of the Psalmist were fulfilled: “The Queen didst stand at my right-hand, arrayed in a vesture of inwoven gold, adorned with various colours.” (Ps 45:9)
What is this vestment of inwoven gold, with the images of coloured embroidery and jewels?
Her vesture, prophetically described by King David, is her life of holiness and purity, adorned by the virtues of the spiritual life: “…a vessel containing every grace, the fulness of all things good and beautiful, the tablet and living icon of every good and all uprightness…” (St Gregory Palamas)
As such, she shows how we must seek to live our lives in honest contemplation of eternity, beyond the grave and beyond the dread judgement, “when the books will be opened, and all hidden things revealed.”
As the Hodegetria, “Who Shows the Way”, the life of the Mother of God was such a life of dedicated holiness, humility and obedience, showing Christians the way to live, and through doing so in preparation for the age to come, her Dormition shows Christians the way to die.
Let us seek to follow the great and saving example of the Mother of God in our lives, weak and feeble though we are, honouring her and her Holy Dormition by seeking to clothe ourselves in sanctity and adorning ourselves with spiritual virtues in the manner in which we live and prepare for the age to come, and in the way we face the certainty of death.
May our lives bring joy and exultation to the heavenly powers, and to the Mother of God, herself, as the Mother of the Church and protectress of Christians.
Having been translated from her earthly tomb, she has no need of our flowers, sweet smelling herbs, candles and incense, but rather calls us to offer lives striving for grace, and for good and beautiful things and uprightness: lives which make the heavens rejoice; lives following the steep, ascending path from earth to heaven, obediently following in the footsteps of the Saviour, as “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
“If we purify our mind with the body, we shall possess her grace. She shuns all impurity and impure passions. She has a horror of intemperance, and a special hatred for fornication. She turns from its allurements as from the progeny of serpents . . . She looks upon all sin as death-inflicting rejoicing in all good. Contraries are cured by contraries.
She delights in fasting and continence and spiritual canticles, in purity, virginity, and wisdom. With these she is ever at peace, and takes them to her heart. She embraces peace and a meek spirit, and love, mercy, and humility as her children. In a word, she grieves over every sin, and is glad at all goodness as if it were her own.
If we turn away from our former sins in all earnestness and love goodness with all our hearts, and make it our constant companion, she will frequently visit her servants, bringing all blessings with her, Christ her Son, the King and Lord who reigns in our hearts.”
Second Homily on the Dormition: St John of Damascus
Wishing you a radiant joyful feast! Amen.
