In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
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
.
