“Take-leaving" Apodosis of the Feast
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We are still in the light of the Feast of the Falling asleep of the Mother of God. On Friday we kept the last day of this Feast which in the calendar is called the ‘Take-leaving’ and which, if we translate the words properly from the Slavonic mean the ‘Handing-over’.
This feast, the event occurred on earth. The Mother of God died, She fell asleep. In the Old Testament, the death of the person was something frightening because all mankind that had been separated from God through the sin of man, in death found itself also in a certain separation from God. It was not the glorious union for which we long, it was a time when the righteous enjoyed peace, rest, and the evil were separated from God, but there was no union between man and God. It is only the death of Christ upon the Gross, in an act of perfect Divine love, but also in an act of human acceptance of the Divine Will, readiness, and indeed actual fulfilling of our salvation in the tragedy of His bodily human death and His soul's descent into hell and finally His resurrection that broke this tragic separation.
Now, after His Resurrection, those who die, by the power of His resurrection, in the glory of His love could enter that communion with God which will be fulfilled at the end of times, as expressed by Saint Peter, as our partakers of the very Divine nature.
And the death, the falling asleep of the Mother of God, and also, as we believe according to Orthodox Tradition, Her bodily resurrection, show us that all things are truly fulfilled by Christ - truly: She fell asleep, the sleep of all those who live on earth and come to a time when they can no longer reach out into eternity without breaking the bonds of the earth. But She, Who in Her purity, Her faith, Her total gift of self to God have made the Incarnation possible, could not be held, even bodily in the bonds of death; She rose again by the power of the Only Begotten Son Whom She had made the Son of Man.
So it is not only that we are promised eternal life in the resurrection; it is not only that we see it enacted in Christ, - we might say: yes, what is true for Christ, can it be true for us? - but we see it happening in one of us, in the Holiest of us perhaps, certainly - but in one of us, The Mother of God fell asleep - and rose again.
And this ‘handing-over' of the event to God is, as it were, a promise to us. It happened on earth, it was with us all the time; but we cannot yet live in a full communion with this wonderful event of eternal life breaking the fetters of our human, earthly existence. It is handed over to God as a promise: what happened to Her, we can look at it with the certainty that it is also our destiny in the future. And so, we are not simply ‘taking leave’ of a wonderful event: it is put into the eternity of God for us to meet in it’s own time.
But the parable which was read today warns us that we must watchful, that we must be faithful, that we must be truly human in order to become truly partakers of the Divine nature. In times past the prophets came, the witnesses of God came - they were rejected, murdered, stoned. We don't murder, we don’t stone, but we turn a deaf ear to Christ speaking in the Gospel, to the testimony of Saints; or we accept them with joy for one moment, but then, we do not carry it across long enough, determinably enough. And when we hear Christ speak, we don't murder Him as the Jews did in the days of His flesh; but we turn away, and we are on our own ways. Unless we turn back to God, unless we learn like the Mother of God live in God, and allow God to live in us, we remain strangers to the mystery of the Assumption of the Mother of God, both Her death in purity, in total, final surrender to God, and Her resurrection which is a return to the fullness which She possessed in Him.
Let us reflect on it and let us wait with hope for the time when we can say not only in faith, but in experience as Paul said it, that death is not divesting ourselves from life temporal: it is clothing ourselves with eternity. Amen.
Dormition of the Mother of God
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
The Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God - which combines two events: Her death and Her resurrection in the body on the third day - has been for centuries, indeed, from the very beginning of the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church its Feast, its joy, its glory.
The Mother of God has not been a passive instrument of the Incarnation; without Her 'Amen' the Incarnation would have been as impossible as without the will of God. She is the response of the whole creation to God's love and to God's gift of self not only to mankind but to the whole Cosmos He has created. And in that we rejoice, because Her word is our word. Her word was perfect, as Her trust was, Her faith was, Her gift of self was. Ours is imperfect, and yet our voices resound within Hers, weakly, hesitantly at times, but with faith and also with love.
She is the glory of all Creation; the Mother of God: one might have expected that death could not touch Her; but if death and a death so cruel could touch Her Divine Son, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, the Son of God and the Son of man - of course She had to pay the tribute of all the earth to the sin of man and also die. But according to Orthodox Tradition, death could not keep Her prisoner. She had given Herself unreservedly and perfectly to God, and it was to God, no longer to the earth that She belonged. And on the third day, when the Apostles came and reopened Her grave for one of them to be able to venerate Her, who had not been present at Her burial, it was found empty: She had risen because the bonds of death could not hold Her, and corruption could not touch a body which had been the body of the Incarnation. What a wonderful joy to think that now, side by side with the risen and ascended Christ, one of us, of mankind, a woman of flesh and blood is enthroned and in Her we can see the glory which will, we believe, be ours if we are faithful to God as She was.
So, let us rejoice, and not only here where our church has been dedicated since the early eighteenth century to the Assumption of the Mother of God, to Her Dormition, but with the whole Russian Church, and with all those who belong to it and are scattered over the face of the world, one with the Mother Church, one with the Mother of God, worshipping the Lord with all there is in us and seeing in Her the image of the whole Creation in adoration before the Living God.
Amen.