THE FEAST OF THE DORMITION OF THE THEOTOKOS:
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
By
Emmanuel A. Loukakis*
- Μηνί τῷ αὐτῷ ιε. Κατά οὖν τὴν πεντεκαιδεκάτην τοῦ μηνός τελεῖται ἡ μνήμη τῆς σεβασμίας Μεταστάσεως τῆς ἀχράντου Δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας […]. Τελεῖται δέ ἡ τοιαύτη σύναξις ἐν τῷ σεβασμίῳ αὐτῆς οἴκῳ τῷ ὄντι ἐν Βλαχέρναις καὶ ἐν ταῖς κατά τόπον αὐτῆς ἁγίαις ἐκκλησίαις, τῆς λιτῆς ἔωθεν ἐν τῷ μαρτυρίῳ τῆς ἁγίας Εὐφημίας παραγινομένης, τῷ ὄντι ἐν τῇ εἰρημένῃ συνάξει.
- Août 15. LE TRÉPAS DE NOTRE-DAME LA THÉOTOKOS ET TOUJOURS VIERGE MARIE […]. Cette synaxe a lieu à son sanctuaire dans les Blachernes et dans les saintes èglises à Elle dèdièes en tout lieu. A l’ aurore, la procession se rend à Sainte-Euph èmie dans le Pètrion et de là elle va à la synaxe mentionèe.
Le Typicon De La Grande Eglise, Tome 1, Le Cycle Des Douze Mois, Ed. Juan Mateos S.J., Pontif. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, Roma, 1962, 368.
The Dormition. 1546. Portable icon by Theophanes the Cretan. Monastery of Stavronikita, Holy Mountain.
I. THE EVER VIRGIN MARY AND HER FEASTS
This is how, according to the Typicon (the book which regulates the services, the Ordo) of the church of Hagia Sophia, the feast of the Dormition was to be celebrated in Constantinople, in the tenth century. A comparison of the prescription of this service in this Typicon with that of contemporary ones used in the Orthodox Church shows that all the Biblical readings and the majority of the hymns which we sing today date back to the above, or even, earlier centuries.
Actually, the liturgical year of the Church, as shown from Byzantine ecclesiastical worship includes many feasts devoted to the commemoration of Mary, the Mother of God. They were instituted in early Byzantine times. The following are the ones of most importance: Her Nativity on September 8, i.e. at the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, since it started at those times (and still continues today) on September 1. There follows the feast of her presentation to the Temple in Jerusalem, (by her parents Joachim and Anna when she was 3 years old) on November 21. A little later, on February 2, we have the presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Temple – His “meeting” with Symeon (Lk. 2: 22-40) – which is also considered as a Mariological feast. Then, comes the Annunciation (Lk. 1: 26-38), on March 25 – nine months before Christmas. Finally, the feast of her Dormition, or Assumption (in Greek Κοίμησις), on August 15. Each of these feasts is preceded by a preparatory period that lasts usually for one week or so and ends with its “leave-taking”, some days later. They remind us of the various moments in the life of Mary, but they are not mere reminiscences. Indeed, they reveal what human life is at its perfection for Mary to us is the Mother of God and, thus, the best, the ultimate, the ideal person of mankind. The Church recognizes in the person of the blessed Theotokos, the ever Virgin, that creature who – alone within all God’s creation, material and spiritual – attained to the fullness of purpose for which the creation exists, to the fullest possible unity with God, to the fullest realization of the possibilities of life. For as Patristic tradition unanimously affirms – having as its central axis the unique phrase of St. John of Damascus – the Holy Virgin did not bear “a common man, but the true God” (οὐ γάρ Ἄνθρωπον ψιλόν ἐγέννησεν... ἀλλά Θεόν ἀληθινόν). The same, who from all eternity is born of the Father “in these last days”, was born of the Virgin “without any change” (De Fide Orthodoxa III 12).
This constitutes the mystery of the divine motherhood of the Virgin Mary. For indeed Motherhood is a personal relation, a relation between persons. Now, the Son of Mary was in very truth a divine person. Thus, the name Θεοτόκος is an inevitable sequel to the name Θεάνθρωπος, the God-man. She did not simply “lend” her biological functions to God the Word because a mother does not “lend” her body to her child, but she builds up his existence with her flesh and her blood just as she forms the “soul” of her child with her nursing, speech, caressing, affection.
II. THE FEAST OF THE DORMITION
(a). On the origins of the Feast
The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, which the Christian world (both the Roman-Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox) celebrates on August 15, is the greatest of those Mariological feasts that the Orthodox Church devoted in honor of the Mother of the Lord. Maybe, it is also the oldest of all. We have the first witness about it from the fifth century around the time that the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus was convened (431). The Virgin Mary was proclaimed “God bearer” (Θεοτόκos). Thus, the reason for developing the honor to her person was given. We should not forget, however, that at this time there had already developed in the Christian world feasts which commemorated all these facts through which God through Jesus Christ was manifested to the world (cf. Tit. 2:11), i.e. Christmas and Epiphany. They were stationed on the days of the winter solstice of the Roman calendar, January 6 and December 25. The closeness of Mary with Christ led to an increasing popularity in the East, of those traditions which reported specific data of her life, as well as her bodily glorification after her death. So, side by side with the Christological feasts the Church established the Mariological feasts in order to exalt her person and role to the mystery of the Incarnation and Divine Economy. Thus, the boundless expressions of Marian piety and devotion in the Byzantine liturgy are nothing other than an illustration of the doctrine of hypostatic (personal) union in Christ of divinity and humanity.
It seems that the feast of the Dormition was established initially on August 13 and a little later was transferred to the 15. It had a general Mariological character, without a special reference to the death of Mary. It was called “day of the Theotokos Maria”. As the centre of the celebration is mentioned in the beginning a Kathisma i.e. a church, devoted to her name, which was outside of Jerusalem three miles along the road that led to Bethlehem. The connection of this feast to the death of Theotokos took place in the famous church of Panagia, in Gethsemane, the oratorium of Mavrikios, where her tomb was. This church soon acquired the character of the greatest Mariological sanctuary and its radiance was the reason that its feast on August 15 soon became widespread in the whole Christian world. Thus, during the sixth and seventh centuries it prevailed in the East and West alike as the feast of the Assumption, of the death of Theotokos. Later, it was exalted with the preparatory fasting – which starts on August 1 – and extended until 23, when is celebrated its “leave-taking” or even to the end of August.
(b). Theological Comments
This feast reveals the Virgin Mary as the first fruit of Christ’s
Resurrection. On August 15, as the summer has almost come to its end, nature has fulfilled itself and everything seems to have reached its perfection. In the midst of this beautiful world, we celebrate in a joyful way the death of Mary and affirm in our hymns that she has not been abandoned by death. For so great was her love, so great was the power of the light she had in herself and of her life with God, that she was taken out of death by Christ, her Son. And in this, her Assumption, the resurrection of all of us began.
Orthodox theology discerns here two separate though undividable facts for the faith of the Church: First, the death and burial and, second, the Resurrection and Ascension of the Theotokos. As a human being she died and was buried; but as the Mother of God, the Mother of life and, hence, the Mother of our Church she was raised and ascended to heaven. Thus, there is an intimacy between the Virgin and the Church. This makes the Church give her the title of “New Eve”, through whom mankind is led to heaven. This theme had appeared in the Christian theological literature since the second century and was always contrasted with that of the “old Eve” (Gen. 3), through whom mankind inherited death. She who gives birth to the Eternal God, she who gives human life to the Ever Living One, is herself immortalized. This body was not the earthly flesh of Panagia, but the immortalized and spiritually changed body as precisely St. Paul says: “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed…For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:51, 53). It is with this magnificent meaning that the Theotokos is the Source of life, (ἡ πηγή τῆς ζωῆς), as a troparion from the Vesper’s service of the feast calls her. After the risen Lord, she is the first person to pass through death that has been rendered powerless. This is why the Canon (a series of hymns) read at the burial service of every believer is addressed to her motherly protection. “In your falling-asleep, you have not forsaken the world”, the Church sings. For in her the world has already become a new creation. The Assumption closes the gates of death. The seal of the Theotokos is placed on the void; it is sealed from on high by the God-man, and from below by the first resurrected creature.
In the Orthodox Church there is no other so joyful feast after Pascha than the feast of the Dormition. Both death and tomb become a climax towards heaven and a triumphal victory to everyone of us. This is shown, among other ways, in the musical tone in which the sticheras (hymns chanted together with verses from the Psalms) of the Vesper’s service are written and sung. As in the service of Resurrection, on Easter Sunday, so here it is the first tone in the Byzantine music, which expresses in a musical way par excellence, the primacy of victory, the triumph and joy of resurrection. In the same perspective, the Doxastikon (a hymn which begins with “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”) which, antiphonically, is sung in all the eight tones of Byzantine music and ends up again in the first denotes the passage and the transfiguration of the world into a new creation within the never-ending light of the eighth day – the Kingdom of God – which we await. This hymn is in fact very peculiar within our ecclesiastical hymnody. It draws its content from the apocryphal tradition: The Apostles arrive carried upon clouds, to bury the body of Theotokos. The funeral procession is also accompanied by Christ and the angels. However, the whole plot of this hymn is excellent. Both, the angels and the people, sing marvelous hymns and full of theology praises to the Theotokos. We will come up to this theme again, below.
From all which we have referred to so far the sacramental character of the death and resurrection of the Theotokos is obvious. The Orthodox Church knows to honor and respect this fact which – in contrast to the Resurrection of Christ – did not become the object of the preaching of the Apostles. In fact, there is here a mystery which is not addressed to the ears of anyone, but it is revealed to the inner conscience of the believers of the Church. In the Ascension of Mary the prophesy of David is being fulfilled, which we many times sing in this service: “Arise, o Lord and go to thy resting place, thou and the ark of thy might” (Psalm 132, 8). The Church now contemplates her in the state of perfection. She is seen as inseparably united with her Son, who “sitteth on the right hand of God the Father” (Mk. 16:19). For her the final consummation of life has already come – in anticipation. “Thou art passed over into life, who art the Mother of Life”, acknowledges the Church. Thus, the Mother of God, being risen from the dead and carried to the heavenly beatitude is placed beyond the common resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment beyond the Second Coming of Christ which will inaugurate the new aeon, the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the feast of the Dormition is the second Pascha of the Church since we celebrate before the end of the world the mystical beginning of our eschatological perfection. “The laws of nature were bypassed in you, for your birth-giving left you a virgin and your death became the herald of your life. Hence all generations bless you, o Mother of God” (ninth Ode of the Matins’ service). Since the deification of man takes place “in Christ”, she is also – in a sense just as real as man’s participation “in Christ” – the mother of the whole body of the Church. The Θεοτόκος is truly the common mother of all living, of the whole Christian race born or reborn in the Spirit and truth. For the mystery of Mary is precisely the mystery of the Church. Mater Ecclesia and Virgo Mater, both are birth-givers of the New Life.
We should not feel strange, however, because on the feast of the Dormition, the Virgin birth of Christ is strongly emphasized. This virginity is not a negation, not a mere absence; it is the fullness and the wholeness of love itself. It is the totality of her self-giving to God, and thus the very expression, the very quality of her love. For love is the thirst and hunger for wholeness, totality, fulfillment – for virginity in the ultimate meaning of this word. At the end the Church will be presented to Christ as a “chaste virgin” (2 Cor. 11:2). The question which the Fathers in their debates with heretics tried to answer was this: How is it possible for Christ to be the Savior of mankind if His hypostasis (person) “subsists” according to the laws of nature? If Christ as a person “subsists” not in freedom but according to the necessity of nature, then, He too, finally, that is definitively, fails to escape the tragic aspect of human person: death. His resurrection from the dead shows that He was initially God and, in this perspective, was not born according to the laws of human nature (cf. Mt. 1: 18-25, Lk. 1: 26-38, Jn. 1: 13). Thus, the meaning of the virgin birth of Jesus is the negative expression of this existential concern of patristic theology.
III. THE ICON OF THE DORMITION
The Dormition. Russian icon, XVIth century.
All this is reflected on the icon of the feast, which in its classical type shows the Mother of God lying on her death-bed amidst the Apostles and the glorified Christ accepting in His hands her soul symbolized as a white-robbed infant with a halo around its head. It is the all-lighted soul, which Christ accepts in His holy hands. The 12 Apostles have surrounded the bed looking with awe. It is easy in some icons to recognize the two leaders, Peter and Paul on either side of the bed. Other icons depict at the top that is in heaven the moment of the mysterious arrival of the Apostles, being gathered in Jerusalem “from every corner of the world and carried upon clouds by order of God” (Doxastikon of the feast). A crowd of Angels is also depicted, the six-winged Seraphim and the many-eyed Cherubim. We also see three bishops standing behind the Apostles. They are: James, the brother of the Lord and the first bishop of Jerusalem, and some disciples of the Apostles: Timothy, Ierotheus, (the first bishop of Athens), or St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who came together – according to tradition – with the Apostle Paul. Furthermore, in the icon a group of women is shown. They represent the faithful of Jerusalem, who, in conjunction with the Apostles and the bishops form the Church within which the mystery of the Assumption of the Mother of God is being realized.
Finally, at the bottom of the icon, a strange episode is depicted: The impudent Jew Athonios, or Iephonias, carrying in his mind a tempest of faithless thoughts, on seeing the body of the virgin carried by the Apostles, wanted to throw it to the ground. Suddenly struck blind, both hands cut off by an angel, he professed his faith and exclaimed Alleluia. According to tradition, Athonios was a priest of the Old Covenant. His rabbinic zeal had made him an outsider to the mystery of the Church. His faith was restored only through a miracle of the Theotokos. However, the symbolism of this episode is still deeper. This detail reminds us that the end of the earthly life of the Mother of God is, as mentioned above, a deep mystery of the Church. As such it cannot be exposed to profane eyes. This truth is very emphatically expressed in the hymnography of the Church: “O Mother of God, you are the precious Ark of God; no profane hand may touch you” (ninth Ode of the Canon of St. John of Damascus on the feast of the Annunciation). Indeed, the Panagia is the innate ark of the glory of God and thus her resurrection witnesses to the plan of God the Father for all creation: the perfect union of the human and divine element in the first deified human being.
This feast, like most of the Mariological feasts, lacks any Biblical and, especially, New Testament witness. It is in other words nonscriptural. Nevertheless, the Church reveals in this way, a real faithfulness to the Bible. We should not forget that it is the Church that gave the Bible to us and not vice-versa. So it is from within the Church herself that this feast stems and is based on Holy Tradition. Tradition is not a religious idea having to deal with certain moral customs, rites and persons, but the sacred memory of all “those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk. 11:28). And here, the Θεοτόκος is she who “kept all these things (i.e. the sacred data of our history), pondering them in her heart” (Lk. 2:18). In the light of this ecclesiastical Tradition the Church fulfills her mission, inviting the faithful, helping them to grow spiritually into these mysteries of faith which are as well the mysteries of their own existence and spiritual destiny. In the Church they learn to contemplate and to adore the living Christ together with the whole assembly and Church of the firstborn that are written in heaven. And in this glorious assembly, they discern the eminent person of the Virgin Mother of the Lord and Redeemer, full of grace and love, of charity and compassion – “More honorable than the cherubim, more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, who without spot didst bear the Eternal Word”.
Icon of The Dormition. Detail, 1952. Wall painting by Photios Kontoglou. Chapel of St. Andrew, Athens.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Liturgical Texts
1. Le Typicon de la Grande Eglise. Tome 1. Le Cycle Des Douze Mois. Rome. Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1962.
2. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. New York, 1965.
3. The Festal Menaion. Translated from the original Greek by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. Faber and Faber, London, 1969.
Other Books
1. Florovsky, G. Creation and Redemption. The Collected Works of G. Florovsky, Volume 3. Belmont, MA. Nordland Publishing Company 1976.
2. Ouspensky, Leonid and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982.
3. Lossky, V. In the Image and Likeness of God, Crestwood, N.Y. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974.
4. Meyendorff, J. Byzantine Theology. New York. Fordham University Press, 1974.
5. Schmemann, A. Liturgy and Life, Department of Religious Education, OCA, N.Y. 1974.
6. _____________ The Virgin Mary, Sermons, vol. 3, Crestwood, N.Y. St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995.
7. Yannaras, C. Elements of Faith. Edinburg, T. & T Clark, 1998.
8. Zizioulas, John, Being as Communion, Crestwood, N.Y. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.
9. Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World, Crestwood, N.Y. St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994.
10. Πάσχου, Π. Β. Έρως Ορθοδοξίας, Αθήνα4, 1987.
11. Σκαλτσή, Π. Ι. Λειτουργικές Μελέτες Ι, εκδ. Π. Πουρναρά, Θεσσαλονίκη, 1999.
12. Φουντούλη, Ι. Μ. Λογική Λατρεία, Αποστολική Διακονία της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος, Αθηνα3, 1997.
13. _____________ Λειτουργική Α, Εισαγωγή στη Θεια Λατρεία, Θεσσαλονικη3, 2000.
14. Καβαρνού, Κ. Η Ιερά Βυζαντινή Τέχνη, εκδ. Αστέρος, Αθήνα, 1992.
* Emmanuel A. Loukakis is a teacher of Orthodox Theology at Επαγγελματικό Λύκειο (Vocational Senior High School) of Agios Nikolaos, Crete.
