Homily I on the Dormition of the Mother of GOd

ON THE MOST VENERABLE DORMITION OF THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

By Our Holy Father Germanus, Archbishop of Constantinople

HOMILY I

[1.] A debtor always sings the praises of his benefactor. One who has been saved is not ignorant of his savior’s protection.

And if one is not rich enough to offer a recompense in real terms, he knows he must at least present his patron with a verbal salutation. Therefore I, too, shall dare to speak out in your praise, O Mother of God, as one who has received marvelous gifts beyond explanation, beyond words or understanding. In my boldness and joy, I speak out to you what your own voice has proclaimed: look on the lowliness of your servant; exalt the mouth of this lowly one; fill me, as I eagerly hunger for words to praise you, with the riches of your good things, that as you guide the steps of my mind with your ready hand, I may not go astray in my praise of you, my mistress. For you rightly said that all generations of men and women would call you blessed–you, whom no one has ever worthily magnified; you, who are always full of compassion for the impulsive poverty, the limitations of spirit, of those who would praise you!?

What shall I say first, and how shall I continue? Shall I strike up the praises of your life among us in human flesh, or shall I celebrate the glory of your transferral in the Spirit, your falling asleep into life? Both are formidable tasks, each terrify-ing! But our sermon must eventually reach its conclusion by telling of your triumphs; setting forth, then, from today’s theme, let it now begin to praise you, O Mother of God, for your noble and glorious departure from our midst.

1. ] When you moved on from the earthly realm, it is clear that you entered heaven; yet even before that, you had a share of heavenly things, nor did you leave our earth completely when you departed from us even when you took your place high above both the ranks of heaven and the creatures on earth.
   For in truth you have become an ornament to heaven, O Mother of God, and a light for all the earth! You are an ornament to heaven, since as soon as the human race came to be, angels were appointed to watch over their life, to lead them on their way, to rule them and protect them in a heart full of unshakable faith in God. As scripture says, “You have established the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God” (Deut 32:8), and “the angel of the Lord is encamped around those who fear him, and will protect them” (Ps 33:8 [LXXI). But as wretched humanity began, in past times, to live in error and idolatry, and to contaminate the air with the aroma of sacrifices, the angels broke off their companionship with them for good, and God, in turn, took away from them his Holy Spirit. But when you gave birth, at the end of time, to the one who was “in the beginning,” the Word of God the Father (In 1:1), from that very moment of your labor the angels looked down from heaven and sang the praises of God, now born of you. Crying out that glory had been added to the heights of heaven, they also exclaimed that peace had at last come on earth (cf. Lk 2: 14), so that enmity could no longer be called a barrier between angels and human beings, heaven and earth; there was now a reign of harmony, one mutually complementary song of praise sung by both angels and human beings to the God who is one and three.
2. ] The Father of the only-begotten Son, bearing witness to his bodily birth from you without a human father, cries to him, “Today I have begotten you” (Ps 2:7 [LXXI), and again,

“From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten

you'” (Ps 109:3 [L XX).” O words so revealing of the mystery of God! If before he was begotten of you, his Virgin Mother, this was the only begotten Son of God, how does the Father

say to him,’

“Today I have begotten you”? Clearly the word

“today” does not mean that the existence of the Only-begotten’s divinity is something new, but it confirms his bodily presence among the human race. And the words, “I have begotten you,” reveal that the Holy Spirit, who shares the Father’s substance, is also in the Father- -the source of divine life and the sharer in his activity. For since the Spirit is not alien to the Father, but dwelt in you, Virgin and Mother, by the Father’s good pleasure and commission, the Father makes the activity of the all-holy Spirit his own. That is why, when the Father, along with the Spirit, inaugurates the coming-forth of his Son from you in bodily form, he says to the Son, “Today I have begotten you.” And the verse, “From the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you,” has the same meaning for our faith: namely, it gives evidence both for the divine substance in the Son, eternally shared with that of the Father before all ages, and also for his taking on natural human flesh, not simply in appearance, from you, the ever-virgin, at the end of history. By

“the womb before the morning-star,” the Scrip-

ture refers to the birth of light which exists before the heavens, but which has now appeared on earth, in order to show that before all creation, visible and invisible, the Only-begotten was brought forth from the Father without beginning, as light is born of light; and “the womb” here signifies your own body, in order to show that the Only-begotten One also came forth from you in flesh. “Before the morning star” also refers to the night before that dawning; for day is fittingly referred to as “the morning star,” and since you brought forth light in the night “for those who sit in shadow” (cf. Lk 1:79), Scripture calls the hour of your childbearing “before the morning star.” “For

shepherds,” it says, “were dwelling in the same country, guarding their flocks by night.” (Lk 2:8)

[4.] This is the new glory that was bestowed on the citizens of heaven, O Mother of God, because of you. For if it had not been given to them anew, the angels would not have sung out, in praise of what was already glorious, “Glory in highest heavens,” at the moment when your ineffable childbirth came to its term. And what light is this that radiates on the inhabitants of the earth? It is that the human person is now made a full citizen of heaven, through your immaculate flesh, and shepherds now mingle with the angels. For the angels <now bend down towards the lowliness of this newborn child, while human beings> are lifted up towards the glorious dignity of God- -that is, they are made wise enough to recognize the common substance of Father and Son as something without beginning, a generation before all ages, but not a creation.

If, then, O holy Mother of God, heaven and–all the more earth find their beauty in you, how is it possible that you have deprived the human race of all sight of you by depart-ing? Far be it from us to think this! For just as when you led your life in this world, you were no stranger to heavenly ways, so now, after your passing there, you have not been removed in spirit from your associations with men and women. We see you now revealed as a heaven wide enough to hold God most high, in that your bosom was ready to bear him as your child, and we also call you his spiritual earth. As a result, we naturally suppose that when you lived in this world, you were God’s neighbor in every way, so now, though you have passed on from human contact, you have never abandoned those who live in the world. Nonetheless, we who are used to offering you faithful veneration continue to prattle on: why have we not been found worthy to encounter you in your body? That is why we call them three-times blessed, who had the privilege of see

ing you during the time of your presence on earth, since they could count the Mother of Life as their own contemporary. Yet just as you still walk with us, too, in a certain bodily way, so too the eyes of our souls are being led each day to see you more clearly.

[5.] For as you associated with our forebears in the flesh, so you dwell among us still in the spirit; your great role as our protector is the chief mark of your presence among us. All of us hear your voice, and all of our voices come to your attentive ears. You know us because you care for us, and we know your constant patronage and protection. For there is no barrier, not even that due to the division of soul and body, to the mutual recognition between yourself and your servants. You have never dismissed those whom you saved, nor abandoned those whom you gathered together; your spirit lives always, and your flesh did not undergo the corruption of the tomb. You watch over <us> all, O Mother of God, and your care is for all people; so that even if our eyes may be prevented from seeing you, all-holy one, you love to dwell in the midst of us all, and you show yourself in a variety of ways to those who are worthy of you. For the flesh does not stand in the way of the power and activity of your spirit; your spirit “blows where it will” (cf. Jn

3:8), since it is pure and immaterial, an incorrupt and spotless spirit, a companion of the Holy Spirit, the chosen one of God’s only-begotten. “You live in beauty,” as Scripture says (Cant

2:13 [LXXJ), and your virginal body is all holy, all pure, all the dwelling-place of God. As a result, it is also a stranger to all dissolution into dust. It has been changed, in its humanity, to the highest incorruptible life; it is preserved and supremely glorified. Its life ended, it remains unsleeping, since it was impossible for what was God’s vessel, the living temple of the all-holy godhead of the Only-begotten, to be conquered by the lethal confinement of a tomb.

16.] Truly–truly, I say again, and with thanks–you were not separated from the Christian people when you passed from us; you were not taken far off from this corruptible world, O life of our common incorruption, but you come close to those who call upon you, you are found by those who faithfully seek you. And these things are proof positive of living activity, of a constant spiritual presence, of a body free from decay.’ For how could fleshly decay turn you back into the dust of the earth, you who have redeemed humanity from death’s corruptive power through the Incarnation of your Son? You have moved on from our earthly life, in order that the awful mystery of God’s becoming human might be confirmed in more than mere appearance: in order that, as you are separated in this way from temporal things, we might come to believe that the God who was born of you came forth as a complete human be-ing, the son of a real mother who was subject to the laws of natural necessity, [and that this happened] at the command of God’s decree and subject to the temporal limitations of our life. You had a body just like one of us, and therefore you could not escape the event of death that is the common destiny of all human beings. In the same way, your Son, even though he is the God of all things, himself “tasted death” (Heb 2:9), as we do, in his flesh, because of the dying human being, if I may put it this way, formed by the whole of our race. Surely he has performed miracles both in his own life-giving tomb and in the life-giving sepulcher where you were laid to rest: both tombs really received bodies, yet neither of them was a workshop of decay. For it was impossible that you, the vessel which bore God, should be dissolved and decomposed into the dust of death. Since he who emptied himself into you was God from the beginning, and life eternal, the Mother of Life had to become a companion of life, had to experience death simply as a falling-aslcep; you had to undergo your passage from this

world as an awakening to your own reality as Mother of Life.

For as a child seeks and yearns for its own mother, and a mother loves to live with her child, it was fitting that you, in your motherly tenderness for your Son and God, should go to him; and it was certainly right that God, holding on to his filial love for you, his mother, should confirm his intimacy with you by making you a sharer in his life.

In this way, when you had suffered the death of your passing nature, your home was changed to the imperishable dwellings of eternity, where God dwells; and becoming yourself his permanent guest, Mother of God, you will not be separated from his company. For you became, in your body, the home where he came to rest, O Mother of God; and by your migra-tion, O woman worthy of all praise, he is himself now the place of your repose. “For this,” he says, “is my place of rest for the ages of ages” (Ps 131:14 [LXX]): referring to the flesh which Christ took from you and put on himself, O Mother of God–the very flesh with which he not only appeared in this world and received faith in return, but with which he will also come again in the age to come, and will appear among us to judge the living and the dead. Because you, then, are his eternal place of rest, he has taken you to himself in his incorrup-tion, wanting, one might say, to have you near to his words and near to his heart. So whatever you desire of him, he gives you with a son’s affection; and whatever you ask from him, he brings to fulfillment with a God’s power- -he who is blessed for all ages!

[7.] Let the ignorant, raving words of the heretics come to an end! Let their wicked lips be stopped! “Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad,” O Mother of God, and let those who rightly love to magnify your name “say always, “The Lord be magnified!'” (Ps 39:17 iLXXJ) For “the mouth” of Christians “will meditate on your righteousness” and your virginity, “and

all day long will praise” your holy childbirth (Ps 34:28 [LXXI). “The poor have seen,” through you, “the riches of God’s goodness”

” (Ps 68:33 [LXX]; Rom 2:4); they have seen it

and said, “The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord” (Ps 32:5 [LXX). “Sinners have looked for God” through you, “and were saved” (Ps 33:3 [LXX]). And they said, “If the Lord had not come to our aid” by taking flesh from a virgin, “soon our lives would have ended” in Hades, which consumes all things in death (Ps 94:17 [LXX]). For your help is powerful to save us, O Mother of God, and needs no one else to bring our prayers to God. You are the mother of the life that is real and true. You are the yeast of Adam’s remaking; you are the one who liberates Eve from all shame. She was the mother of dust, and you of light; her womb harbored corruption, but yours incorruption.

She became death’s dwelling-place, but you release us from death. She made our eyes downcast, weighted towards the earth, but you are the unsleeping glory of eyes awake. Her children are grief, but your Son is joy for all ages. She, who was earth, came back to earth in the end; but you have given birth to life for us, and you have ascended to life, you are powerful enough to offer life, even after death, to your fellow men and women. We can never have too much of your protection, nor is there any hidden danger for humanity lurking, so to speak, in our sense of your passage into glory through that life-giving sleep. Your patronage, rather, is something living, your intercession gives life, and your protection is without end.

[8.] For if you had not gone before us, no one would ever become perfectly spiritual (TVEUMaTUKÓS), no one would worship God in the Spirit (Jn 4:24).

No one is filled with the

knowledge of God except through you, all-holy One; no one is saved but through you, Mother of God; no one is free of danger but through you, Virgin Mother; no one is redeemed but through you, Mother of God; no one ever receives mercy gra

tuitously except through you, who have received God. Who fights on behalf of sinners as much as you do? Who pleads on behalf of those who need correction, and takes their part, as much as you do? For every power that might come to our aid, fearing that the fig-tree of the parable (Lk 13:6ff) might in our case be cut down, hesitated to intercede for us with God, lest when sentence is passed on us for not bearing the promised fruit, his plea might appear to have been spurned. But you, whose power before God is that of a mother, win superabun-dant forgiveness for those whose sins exceed all bounds. For it is impossible you should be ignored, since God obeys you as his true and immaculate Mother in every way, always, and in all respects. So anyone who is in trouble rightly runs to you for refuge; anyone who is weak clings to you; anyone under attack takes you as his shield against the enemy. You put an end to

“anger and wrath and tribulation, and to assaults by the evil an-gels” (Ps 77:49 [LXX]). You turn away from us [God’s] just threat, and his verdict of a painful condemnation, because you love so greatly the people called by the name of your Son. That is why your Christian people, rightly recognizing its own situation, confidently puts into your hands the office of imploring God on its behalf. It unhesitatingly and boldly implores you, all-holy one, because of its past experience of the abundant blessings you have bestowed on us, and it constantly belabors you with petitions.

[9.] Who would not call you blessed (cf. Lk 1:48) because of all these things: your knowledge of God, beyond the understanding of the angels; your human fulfillment, unique among all your peers; your reputation with the Christian people; your much-sought-after role as refuge of sinners; your [memory],’° constantly in the mouths of Christians? For even if a Christian should be terrified, or if he should “strike his foot against a stone” (Ps 90:12 [LXX]), he calls out your name for help. If

some one, after all, should praise you without ceasing, he will not consider «that he is praising yous;”

he praises you, rather,

only if he sets out with the insatiable desire to do so, for it is impossible to sing your praise worthily. He longs to magnify you in every way by continually praising you, finding lin the endless praise] some consolation for his need. For when one who owes you much can repay you nothing, he multiplies his gratitude as you increase your gracious patronage. A supremely valuable gift, after all, which never comes to an end, continues to bring thanks to the benefactor, as it has from the beginning.

Who would not admire you for your unwavering care, your unchanging readiness to offer protection, your unsleeping inter-cession, your uninterrupted concern to save, your steady help, your unshakable patronage? [Who does not recognize you as] the unconquerable battlement, 12 the treasury of delight, the garden free from reproaches, the citadel of safety, the strong fortifi-cation, the mighty tower of help, the harbor of storm-tossed ships, calm for the distraught, a corrective for sinners, a new beginning for those despaired of, welcome for the exiled, return for the outcast, homecoming for the alienated, a good word for the condemned, a blessing for the purified, dew for the soul’s dry season, a drop of rain for the parched grass? “For our bones,” as Scripture says,

“will blossom like the grass, because

of you.” (Is 66:14 [LXXJ) You are mother of the lamb who is the shepherd, the recognized patron of all the good. All your qualities are remarkable,’

“true, and righteous altogether, all are

desirable things, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For we, your servants desire them, and in desiring them we find a great reward.” (Ps 18:10-12 [LXX]) “Who shall understand your mercies?” (Ps 106:43 [LXX])

[10.] But it is enough praise, O most admirable one, if we simply admit that we have not the resources to praise all your

gifis. You have received from God your exalted position, as a cause for triumph; therefore you have formed for him a Christian people from your own flesh, and you have shaped those of a race like your own to be conformed to his divine image and likeness. “For this reason, may your name be blessed for all the ages!” (Ps 71:17 [LXX) Your light outshines the sun, your honor is above that of all creation, your excellence before that of the angels. “You are higher than heaven” (Job 11:8), and wider than the heaven of heavens even than that seventh heaven, which a certain holy man, on the basis of Scripture, distinguishes from it.

13 You are greater than the eighth heaven,

and than any other heaven beyond it. You are blessed for generations of generations, and “in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed” (see Gen 12:3; 18:18; etc.). For there is no place where you are not called blessed, no tribe from which fruit has not been borne for God from you. Even the peoples of this world who have not known you will themselves call you blessed, O Virgin, at “an acceptable time” (Is 49:8; cf. 2 Cor

6:2). For when he who was born of you shall come “to judge the world in justice” (Ps 97:9 [LXX]), “they will see and will beat their breasts” (Zach 12:10 (LXX]) who have not already wished to confess you, in good faith, as Mother of God. Then at last they will know of what a treasure they have deprived themselves, through their own evil will.

To us Christians, then, who reverence you in our Christian faith, show the mercy of your unchanging patronage. We rightly consider your falling asleep as [entry into] life, O Mother of God, and we believe you dwell with us still in the spirit. For in times of tribulation you are near, and we find safety in seeking your help; and when it is time to rejoice, you are joy’s sponsor. Whenever we find ourselves completely under your maternal care, we cannot help believing that you live among us. Just as the thirsty person hastens to the spring, every

faith-filled heart runs towards you, burning to fill himself with your gracious help. And again, just as a breath of air fills a person’s nostrils with life, so the breath of every right-believing Christian bears you on his lips. For we do not draw life from breathing the air to the same degree that we draw safety from the protection of your name; so the text of Scripture is fulfilled in Christ and in you, which says, “You are the breath of our nostrils; we shall live in your protection, and in breathing you.” (Lam 4:20 [Lyx114*

[11.] For what race of human beings, except Christians, has been blessed with such glory or is privileged with such a reputation? The angels luxuriate in their heavenly dwellings, but we rejoice to take our leisure in your holy temples.’

15 For if

the temple of Solomon once represented heaven in an earthly image, will not the temples built in honor of you, who became the living temple of Christ, all the more justly be celebrated as heavens on earth? The stars speak out with tongues of flame in the heavenly firmament; and the material colors of your icons, O Mother of God, dazzle us with the representation of your gifts. The sun and the moon illumine one pole of the sky above and around us; but every house, every city and region, shines with your light, which comes from the light of the Son you bore. For this reason, blessed is the human creature: though a sinner, he has been found to be bound to you by natural ties and to share through you in the nature of God. He is truly

“blessed,” and it is well with him-or rather, “it shall be well” (Ps 127:2 [LXX1). For you will not abandon those who have been found worthy to enjoy your help until the end.

Far be death from you, Mother of God, for you have brought life to the human race. Far be the grave from you, since you have been made the divine foundation of ineffable exaltation. Far be dust from you, for you are a new creation, since you are now the mistress of those who have decayed into

their elementary clay. So we confess, in our faith, that we have you with us as a companion on our journey. For if we did not find consolation in this thought, our spirit would faint in longing for you. “We know by faith that the heavens were formed,” as Scripture tells us (Heb 11:3; cf. Gen 1:1); so, too, we believe that we can gaze on you in our midst as our companion, even after your departure from the body. For it is not such torture to the soul to be separated from the flesh as it would be to be deprived of you, O wholly immaculate one. Thus, as it is written,

“Even if your body is asleep, your heart is waking.” (Cant 5:2 [LXXJ; and even if you accepted, as due to your human na-ture, the inevitable fate of death, your eye that watches over us

“neither sleeps nor slumbers” (Ps 120:4 [LXX]).

[12.] Your passing from this world was not without wit-nesses, nor was your falling asleep a deception. “Heaven tells the glory” (Ps 19:1 [LXX]) of those who then were suddenly brought together on your account; earth guarantees the truth about them, the clouds cry out the honor paid you by them, and the angels proclaim the rich gifts that were then bestowed on you. I am referring to the way that the apostles gathered in Jerusalem at your side, just as the prophet Habakkuk was taken up from the mountainous country and brought, in one hour, by an angel’s hand through the clouds, to stand in the pit with Daniel in Persian Babylon (Bel and the Dragon [Dan 12,

LXX] 32-39).16

‘But just as a drop of water adds nothing when

it is cast into the sea, and as a purse given to a poor man does not empty a rich man’s treasury, so no one is able to proclaim in human words the exalted beauty and greatness that should make up your praises. You have your own proper praise within yourself, in that you were designated Mother of God. You did not inherit the title, “Mother of God,” simply because we

“heard this with our own ears” in the explanation of Scripture, and nothing more; nor was it simply that “our fathers pro

claimed this to us” in a tradition of utter truthfulness (Ps 43:2 [LXXI. Rather, the work you have accomplished in us confirms that your are Mother of God in very fact, literally and without deceit, not by some verbal self-indulgence but in the way of true faith. For this reason, it was truly fitting that your body, which had been the dwelling of God, should not be bound within the limits of death’s mortal decay. Your tomb had [first] to receive the material proper to it, since that material was human; then, while you passed, at life’s conclusion, from your own life here to that of heaven, your tomb was revealed now as empty of your flesh, while your spirit was found to be inseparable from human company, thanks to the unseen activity of Christ our God, whom you, as a virgin, brought forth into the world. To him be glory for all ages!

Amen.