Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God
August is truly an Orthodox Marian month:
preparation for the feast begins with a fast from the first day of this blessed month; we celebrate the feast on the 15th, and the Church goes on celebrating it until the 23rd, when we take leave of the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God and her being taken up in the body.
It is worth noting that the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God is the last great feast of the year: it falls on 15 August, in the last month of the Church’s liturgical year.
And the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God (8 September) is the first great feast of the first month of the liturgical year in the Orthodox Church, which is September.
It is as if the Orthodox Church wanted to say that the Mother of God, who carried in her womb the Ruler of all, carries in her womb the whole cycle of our liturgical feasts, from beginning to end.
How could it be otherwise, since she is the mother who holds us close: whenever we look at her icon, she looks us in the face to say: “Let us rejoice together in the Lord Jesus Christ; he is the only Saviour. My God and your God, my Saviour and your Saviour.”
According to Orthodox tradition, the falling asleep of Mary, the Mother of God, is like that of any other believer. “Falling asleep” carries the image of sleep, because it is a passage, a transition from one life to another, so to speak; this is what the name of the feast indicates. Mary died as all people die, under compulsion and as a result of our human condition; her death was not “voluntary” like that of her incarnate Son, but a necessity of fallen human nature, which is inseparably bound up with the corruption of this world.
The bodily taking-up of the Mother of God is also an image, just as Christ’s Ascension into heaven is an image of our own hoped-for ascent to where he is.
Joy is the mark that hangs over the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, even though it is a falling asleep, because the heart of the feast is her passing into heaven. For one who is taken up into heaven we must rejoice and be glad, because it confirms that all of us believers can pass into the glory of the Kingdom of Christ Jesus, to whom be glory, might and honour, with his Father and his Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Fr. Boutros al-Zein
