A Feast of Mystery and Praise - Homily on the Feast of Dormition (2024)

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN.

INTRODUCTION

Our life brims and overflows with a constant awareness of the interpenetration of the spiritual and material world but also of the created and uncreated world, and this is most true when we step into the church. We arise in the morning and pray, thanking God for a new day, and we use our hands to feed ourselves. We enter the church, and the created spiritual world is present in the form of angels and saints; and the uncreated grace of God transforms the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, through which, Christ tells us, the life of God comes to abide in us and animate us (John 6.35). 

Mysteries upon mysteries have been revealed to each of us through Christ because of our Baptism. However, many more mysteries remain unknown and incomprehensible, only being appropriated by faith. We learn to live with these mysteries, not being able to plumb their depths, but through experiencing them, we come to understand, in part, as through a glass darkly, which, in turn, fuels our zeal to draw closer to the Lord.

What are some of these mysteries? Cf. Is there really the forgiveness of sins, which can be found by going to Confession? Does God care for and love humanity? Can my suffering make sense? Does the degree of ascetic struggle during Lent make a difference in experiencing the joy of Pascha? The short answer is “yes,” but our ability to understand these mysteries, let alone to speak of them, only comes through maturity, but even then, many mysteries we will never understand.

Such are a few of the supposed enigmas, the mysteries in attempting to comprehend how the spiritual world interacts within the material world, and through the uncreated grace of God, and such are the circumstances surrounding our celebration today. We are bidden, and may we acquiesce and accept the invitation of the hymnographer St. Theophanes, who bids, “Come, all who love to keep the feasts…” (Tone 5, at Litya).

Would we not, having the opportunity to be in Jerusalem, would we not walk where Christ walked? Would we not kiss that rock on which the instrument of torture was erected for the death of our Lord, would we not venerate the rock on which they laid his precious body after His crucifixion, would we not submerse ourselves in the waters which baptized the creator of heaven and earth? How then should we honour her whose womb contained the uncontainable, her who became the lamp of the unapproachable light, her who became the Mother of the Creator of all?

“Come, all who love to keep the feasts…”

Narrative

Today, it is with great joy that we commemorate the Dormition of the Mother of God. Tradition informs us that the angel Gabriel appeared to the Theotokos three days before her repose in a manner much like at the Annunciation. This time, however, he informed her of her approaching departure from this life, and after hearing this news, she began to prepare herself. At the same time, the Lord drew all the Apostles together to be present for this event with her as well as the Apostle Paul and other hierarchs who were living at that time, miraculously bringing them to Jerusalem. At the hour of her death, a light illumined the whole room, the heavens opened, and the Lord descended along with the angels and saints to accept her soul into the Kingdom of Heaven (as depicted on her icon). Three days later, upon the arrival of the Apostle Thomas, he went to the tomb to move the stone and view that most holy body, but only found that it was not there because God had raised her body, transforming it into a glorified body, uniting it with her soul. What we are taught through this empty tomb is how she is the forerunner of all of humanity, she is the first human raised from the dead and united to her body to dwell in Heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is your victory? Christ ascended to where He had descended from, and His children, although they all experience death, are not held by the grave but, following the Mother of God, will tread the same path into the kingdom of Heaven to dwell eternally with Christ.

Obscurity and Authority in the Dormition Narrative

In light of the magnificence of this Feast, some may ask, “Why are these events not mentioned in the Gospels? Why do we hear nothing of the death of the Mother of God?” However, nothing is mentioned about the death of any of the Apostles, yet we still know them because of Tradition. St. Andrew of Crete, writing in the eighth century, asks the same question and then offers several answers. He says,

1. [because] She whom God took as his own fell asleep much later [than the events of the Gospels] – [because] she reached extreme old age when she departed this world; [therefore]
2. perhaps the times may not have favored a full account of these events; it was not appropriate for those sowing the seed of the news of God’s saving plan to speak in detail of these things at the same time they were writing the Gospels, since these events needed another, specific and very deliberate kind of treatment, not possible at that moment; [but also]
3. the inspired writers were only telling the story of God’s plan of salvation up to the end of the Word’s presence among us in flesh, and [therefore] did not [choose to] reveal anything that happened after Jesus was taken up from the earth.

Moving past the writing of the Gospels, we begin to hear only a few of the details of this story; there is no single text early within the Church’s history that offers all of the details of the final days of her life; instead, it is pieced together using the works of (the 1st cent.) St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Maximus the Confessor, (the 7thcent.) St. Modestus of Jerusalem, St. John of Damascus, (the 8thcent.) St. Andrew of Crete and St. Germanus of Constantinople, to mention only those in the first millennium who affirmed these events. Nonetheless, although the details may seem veiled, the event was never totally neglected. And what of this veiling, what of this supposed obscurity and hiddenness? A scant written account is not an affirmation or denial of its validity; only its acceptance by the Church affirms it, bringing it into Her Tradition. As St. Basil the Great says,

Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us “in a mystery” by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. (On the Holy Spirit)

The Dormition, A History

The earliest account was that of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, followed by a commentary of St. Maximos the Confessor regarding this writing, and then also by hymnographers who include this account and other details in the liturgical life of the Church.

In his work entitled, On the Divine Names, writing to Timothy, St. Dionysius speaks of his spiritual father, Hierotheos (whom the Orthodox Church commemorates on October fourth as a Saint and the first bishop of Athens). St. Dionysius characterizes him as a “Theologian” and “divine instructor” and that Hierotheos “was regarded as an inspired and divine Psalmist by all,” noting that he (Dionysius) and Hierotheos were there amongst the disciples at the death of the Theotokos. Each of them gathered there offered fitting praise in the form of a song or psalm at her repose, “as each was capable.” St. Dionysius saying that he even recalls Timothy repeating these to him in days past, so significant was this event for the nascent Church of Christ. The text itself reads as follows:

For, amongst our inspired hierarchs (when both we, as you know, and yourself, and many of our holy brethren, were gathered together to the depositing of the Life-springing and God-receptive body (i.e. burying of the Mother of God), and when there were present also James, the brother of God, and Peter, the foremost and most honoured pinnacle of the Theologians, when it was determined after the [burial], that every one of the hierarchs should celebrate, as each was capable, the Omnipotent Goodness of the supremely Divine Weakness [i.e. God in the flesh], [Hierotheos], after the Theologians, surpassed, as you know, all the other divine instructors, being wholly entranced, wholly raised from himself, and experiencing the pain of his fellowship with the things celebrated, and was regarded as an inspired and divine Psalmist by all, by whom he was heard and seen and known, and not known. And why should I say anything to thee [Timothy] concerning the things there divinely spoken? For, if I do not forget myself, many a time do I remember to have heard from thee certain portions of those inspired songs of praise; such was thy zeal, not cursorily, to pursue things Divine. (St. Dionysius, the Areopagite, The Divine Names, Ch 3, sec. 2)

By the sixth century, under the auspices of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, the Feast became established in the Church calendar. It was further attested to by a continued literary output, the various orations delivered by Fathers of the Church, such as Sts. Maximos the Confessor, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, and Gregory Palamas contributed to the literature on this topic.

A forerunner to liturgical commemoration

In his work entitled Mystagogy, Archbishop Alexander Golitzin (p.234) interprets the above passage from St. Dionysius as one that is not eucharistic but instead anticipates a liturgical commemoration. That is, it is an early form of what would come to be the Divine Service for the Dormition of the Mother of God that includes the hymning of her honor, which is inspired by God and causes the “experiencing [of] the pain of fellowship with the things celebrated,” that is as we listen to the hymns honoring the Mother of God and hear of the Divine condescension of Christ into the flesh, we commune with the mystery and contemplate what we hear and are transported into this mystery.

CONCLUSION

How should we approach such a mystery? Here we are today, at the end of a two-week fast and following on the heels of a lengthy Vigil last evening where we chanted the Lamentations, which communicate to us the nature and person of Christ our Lord and who His mother, the virgin Theotokos, is.

What the Church offers us [What the Orthodox Faith offers us], is the prayerful ascetic life combined with the Divine Services, wherein we disciple our bodies, our minds, and our souls so as to be attuned to prayer and to be led by the divine words and actions we hear and see in the services which raise us up to chant with the angels who sing the praises of God and who, in this festal season of the Dormition, sing the praises of the virgin Mother of God. In this manner, we will pray with our whole person, our whole being, presenting ourselves as an acceptable sacrifice to God.

Come, ye assembly of those who love the feasts of the Church! Come, let us form a choir!

Come, and with hymns let us crown the temple, the ark of the rest of God!

For today heaven expandeth its bosom, receiving her who gave birth to Him Who is invisible to all, and the earth receiveth the well-spring of Life, who imparteth blessing and is adorned with splendor.

The angels form a chorus with the apostles, gazing with awe upon her who gave birth to the Author of life, and who is translated from life to Life.

Let us all bow down before her, praying: O Mistress, forget not thy kinship with those who celebrate thy most holy dormition with faith! (Stichera, Tone 1 at Litya)

THROUGH THE PRAYERS OF THE THEOTOKOS, LORD HAVE MERCY ON US, AND SAVE US. AMEN.

St. Dionysius as the muse for St. Andrew of Crete: “O teacher initiated into the vision of the incomprehensible, O priest of the true tabernacle! Be a guide for one who longs to linger with you; lead my understanding directly to the meaning of what I seek, and let me grasp it in mystical contemplation. (Homily II, On the Dormition)