229. Слово в день Успения Пресвятыя Богородицы

(Said in the Assumption Cathedral on August 15; printed in the Works of the Holy Father in 1848 and in the collection in 1861) The Council of the disciples and the Divine Apostles gathered to bury the God-pleasing body of the one Mother of God 685. The Holy Church has the custom of announcing this hymn to us even at the beginning of this holiday. The Church speaks as if about what it sees: and therefore speaks for all of us; then, it seems, he wants all of us not just to remember, but to see, as it were, the Dormition and burial of the Mother of God. Can we live up to this intention of the Church? – It is not difficult to understand that this is not a matter of the bodily eyes. Two eyes are required: the eye of a pure mind, and the eye of a believing and loving heart. Let us admit the imperfection of our eyes. But can’t we look well through the eyes of the Saints who knew how to contemplate and wanted to help our contemplation? Let us try to look at the repose of the Mother of God through the eyes of the Saints: Dionysius the Areopagite, Juvenal of Jerusalem, Andrew of Crete and John of Damascus. True, Saint Andrew himself encounters some difficulties. In the Word for the current holiday, he suggests the bewilderment of the inquisitive: why did not the repose of the Mother of God be described by anyone who compiled the book of the Divine Gospels? However, he resolves this bewilderment, saying: “this may be because Her God-pleasing Dormition occurred a long time later” after the Ascension of the Lord; “for,” as they say, “She, having reached a ripe old age, passed away from this life; or, the times of that time did not allow such a presentation.” Further, in the same Word, St. Andrey does the same as we do now. He looks at the Dormition of the Mother of God through the eyes of a contemporary of this event, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, citing his words from his book on the “Divine Names.” St. Dionysius, addressing St. Timothy, and mentioning St. Hierotheos, says: “And we, as you know, and he, and many of our sacred brethren, flocked together to see the life-giving and God-receiving body. Both God-brother Jacob and the supreme and oldest of the Theologians Peter were present. Then, after the sight, it pleased all the clergy, since each was capable, to sing of the immeasurably powerful goodness of God’s infirmity,” that is, as St. Maxim, praise the free condescension of the Son of God, who took upon Himself the weak human body, except for sin. At this spectacle revealed to us by St. Dionysius, I cannot help but stop and cry: this is, in truth, the great Assumption Council, the source and model of our local, and all Assumption Councils: and oh, if only our Council, imitating the Apostolic Assembly of the clergy and clergy and the abundance of hymns, - oh, if only it did not lag too far behind its model and glorify with the zeal of prayers, and the spirits of grace, and zeal the incarnate God the Word and His Most Pure Mother, more than words and songs in deed and life! But St. Dionysius revealed to us only part of the wondrous spectacle, as can be seen from his words, close to the following ones above, also addressed to St. Timothy: “what was mysterious there, I pass over in silence, as something that is not spoken to many, but known to you.” Let us humble ourselves if we also belong to many for whom much that is mysterious is ineffable: but what is known to St. Timothy probably became known from him to other worthy people, and from them something of this could have reached us. Mystery can be assumed in the very way that many Apostles gathered for the burial of the Blessed Virgin, when they were scattered to different countries to preach the Gospel. And this secret is somewhat revealed and explained to us by St. Andrew, when he says: “It is not surprising if the Spirit, who once lifted up Elijah and the heavenly fiery charioteer, suddenly gathered them together, bringing them on the clouds in the spirit. For everything is convenient for God, as we know from the examples of Habakkuk and Daniel.” And St. John of Damascus, also in the Word for this holiday, more decisively explains that, for the sake of the honor of the repose of the Mother of God, the Apostles, “by God’s command, the cloud, like some kind of net, was drawn to Jerusalem, and from the ends of the earth, like some eagles, it rushed into one place and gathered together.” St. Damascus also contemplates the mystery of the repose of the Mother of God, and reveals to us: namely, “the coming of the King Himself to His Mother, in order to receive Her holy, pure and immaculate soul with Divine hands.” Finally, St. Damascene, to explain the mysteries of the Dormition of the Mother of God, accepts St. for help. Juvenal, Archbishop of Jerusalem, extracting the following narrative from some historical writing. During the reign of Marcian, Pulcheria created and decorated a church in honor of the Most Holy Theotokos in Constantinople, in Blachernae. Wanting to acquire for this church a shrine appropriate to it, and hearing that near Jerusalem, in Gethsemane, there is a church, on the site where the life-giving body of the Ever-Virgin was laid in a shrine, the Emperor and Empress expressed to the Archbishop of Jerusalem the desire that these relics be brought to the newly created church, for the protection of the reigning city. In response to this, St. Juvenal, affirming himself on the ancient, as he said, and the truest tradition, mentioning the wonderful meeting of the Apostles, instantly raptured from different countries to the Most Holy Virgin, with Divine glory betraying Her soul into the hand of God, about the carrying of Her body with Angelic and Apostolic singing and about its position in Gethsemane, continued: “In that place the Angels continued for three whole days ceremonies and chants. On the third day, after the cessation of the angelic hymn, the Apostles came, because one of them, Thomas, was late, came on the third day, and wanted to worship the God-receiving body. They opened the cancer, and they could not find Her all-valuable body. They only found Her burial shrouds lying there, and filled with an indescribable fragrance from them, they closed the shrine. Struck by the mysterious miracle, they could only think that God the Word and Lord of glory, who deigned to be incarnated and become human from Her, and to be born according to the flesh, and at the birth to preserve Her virginity incorruptible, was pleased by God the Word and the Lord of glory, and after the end of Her life here, to honor Her immaculate and pure body with incorruption and transmutation, before the general universal resurrection.” For this St. Juvenaly supplements his answer to the king with the testimony of St. Dionysius, which we have already cited; and St. Damascene ends the story with the fact that the ark with the clothes of the Most Holy Theotokos was transferred from Gethsemane to the Blachernae Church. Do you see the mysteries and miracles of the Dormition of the Mother of God? Do you see the earthly and heavenly triumph? Do you see the light, short-lived fog of death, through which eternal life shines clearly and majestically? Do you see the coffin, turned into a window, open to the invisible world, to the heavenly light? But watch yourself, how you look at this. Isn't it out of curiosity? - Unreliable way of thinking! Curiosity is more capable of stealing the unblessed fruit of imaginary and dangerous knowledge than of growing the vital fruit of truth. Is it with surprise? This is a natural way of looking at the marvelous, but unsatisfactory. The God of miracles reveals marvelous things not only to surprise, but in order to arouse attention with surprise, to make His invisible wave perceptible to the excited attention, and with this wave to guide a person to truth and righteousness. Is it with faith? This is actually the Christian way of looking at the Holy and Divine: however, the gaze of faith should not only rest in the delight of what is contemplated, but also extend into what is before; because faith is not the final goal, but a means of Christian life. Is it with the desire to imitate the holy and strive for the heavenly? – This is what should be primarily the fruit of both all spiritual and real contemplation of ours. We see the glorious Dormition, which is miraculously adorned with their presence by the Apostles, Angels, and the Lord Himself; and we know that this is a consequence of a most pure and holy life, the fulfillment to the highest degree of the law of Divine truth, according to which “the death of His saints is honorable before the Lord” (Ps. 116:6). Let us love that which leads to death, honest not only before men, but especially before the Lord; – let us love purity and holiness of life; let us hate sin; let us reject the impurity of deeds and thoughts; “Let us cleanse ourselves” with a decisive desire of the heart, and we will not cease to cleanse ourselves through daily struggle, “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, doing holiness in the passion of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). After the Dormition we see an unusually quick awakening; after death there is immediately immortality, in its fullest power; we see the soul of the Blessed Virgin in the arms of the Lord, and therefore at the highest degree of bliss, because closeness to the Lord and the height of bliss are one and the same; We also see Her ever-virgin body, which did not submit to the law of corruption, which did not await the urgent day of resurrection for everyone, but at the very time of sowing into the ground, it grew into the sky and flourished in glory. Let us take a closer look at immortality, which is to some extent not alien to us; let us remember and stop forgetting that according to the intention of the Creator, according to the gift of the Savior, “our life is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). And what is it better for us to care about: earthly acquisitions and pleasures, which often run away from those who seek them, do not satisfy those who achieve them, deceive those who enjoy them, enslave those who possess them, disappear from the living, do not follow those who die, or about heavenly blessings, which surely await us for eternal pleasure? Let us limit our earthly desires; Let us not allow ourselves to value dust and decay; Let us not allow the immortal soul to bury itself in the earth by addiction, in which our body should not remain forever; “let us hide treasure for ourselves in heaven,” yes, according to the word of the Lord, “where our treasure is, there will our heart be also” (Matthew 6:20–21), so that in this way our heart will completely attract us to heaven; for where a person’s heart is, there is the whole person, and his whole destiny! Amen. Dormition, Small Vespers, 1st stichera on the stichera. You might be interested in: