Homily II on the Dormition of the Mother of God

AN ENCOMIUM ON THE HOLY AND VENERABLE DORMITION OF OUR MOST GLORIOUS LADY, THE MOTHER OF GOD AND EVER-VIRGIN MARY

By Our Father St. Germanus, Archbishop of Constantinople

HOMILY II

[1]. “A good, upright reputation puts flesh on the bones,” we read in Scripture (Prov 15:30). And the story of the bodily sleep of the Mother of Life, Mary ever virgin- of her who is the divine breath, the fragrance of the supremely holy flesh of Christ–brings a blessing to those who call that flesh blessed.

For when her human bones were once transformed, by the mercy of God, in the depths of the earth, the immaculate body of the Mother of God again put flesh on them, though they had become hard and shrivelled in decay,? indeed, they grew “softer than oil” (Ps 54:22 [LXX]) in their incorruptibility, because of the resurrection of him who was born of her. Let us, then, recall a little of her passage into glory, which is always worthy of memory; for hearing a story such as this is truly a source of joy.

When Christ, our God, wished to bring his Mother, the bearer of life, to himself, he indicated to her again, through an angel with whom she was familiar, that the time of her falling asleep was at hand, so that death should not come upon her suddenly, as it does for the rest of humanity, or cause disturbance in her as she parted from this life. Normally, the separation of body from soul depresses the spirit, even in the greatest men and women. In order, then, that she should not also be disturbed by the natural characteristics of her flesh in depart

ing this life unexpectedly, without foreseeing her own end-she who had borne as her child the God who knows all things–an angel was sent to her to comfort and strengthen her, with these words from Christ himself:

[2.] “It is time, my Mother,” says the Lord, “to take you to myself. Just as you have filled the earth and all who dwell in it with joy, O you who enjoy such grace, come, make the heavens joyful once again.

.? Make my Father’s dwelling-place ra-

diant; be a spiritual guide for the souls of the saints. For when they see your glorious passage here to my side, escorted by an-gels, they will be convinced in their faith that their own place, too, through you, will be to dwell here in my light.”

Come,

then, in exultation; rejoice now, as you rejoiced at the angel’s greeting. In every way you now have the dignity of your title,

“full of grace.’ As when you were about to conceive me you were invited to rejoice, so rejoice again in my desire to take you to myself. Do not be disturbed at leaving behind the corruptible world, with all its desires. Forget about its power of corruption. For you will not leave those who live in the world bereft of your protection; but just as I, who am not of the world, watch over those who live in it and take care of them, so your patronage will not be taken away from those who live in the world, until its consummation.

“The extravagant demands of the flesh will no longer disturb you. You are ascending to a fuller life, to joyful rest, to unconquerable peace, to an existence untroubled by cares, to delights free of passion, to permanent freedom from distrac-tion, to unending enjoyment, to a light that never fades, to a day without evening -to me, the creator of all that is, including you. Where I am, there is eternal life, incomparable joy, a dwelling-place without parallel, an indestructible city. Where I am, then, you will be also: a mother inseparably one with her undivided Son.

Where God is, there is all goodness of heart,

all delight, all brilliance. No one who knows my glory wants to abandon it. No one who comes to my rest seeks again the things of the corruptible world. Ask Peter if there was any comparison or likeness between the world and Mount Tabor, when he gazed for a short time there on my glory.

“When you lived in the world of corruptible things, I revealed my power to you in visions; now that you are passing from that life, I will show myself to you face to face. Give the earth what belongs to it, without anxiety. Your body belongs to me, and since the ends of the earth are in my hand, no one can take anything from me. Entrust your body to me, just as I placed my divinity trustingly in your womb. Your soul, full of divine power, will see the glory of my Father. Your immaculate body will see the glory of his only Son. Your pure spirit will see the glory of the all-holy Spirit.

[3.1 “Death shall make no boast at your expense, for you have given birth to life. You are my vessel; the mortal cracks caused by the fall shall not break you apart. The overshadowing gloom shall not rob you of sight. Come eagerly to the one whom you brought into the world. I want to make you happy, as a son should do to pay you the pension due a mother’s womb, to recompense you for feeding me milk, to reward you for your nurture, to give your maternal love its full return. You begot me, Mother, as your only Son; now make the choice to come and live with me, for I know your heart is not divided by love for another child. I revealed you as my virgin mother; now I will make you a mother who rejoices in her Son. I will show the world now to be your debtor, and when you come to me I will glorify your name still more. I shall build you into the wall of the universe, into a bridge for those who are awash in the waves, an ark of salvation, a staff for the disabled, an advocate for sinners, a ladder to heaven strong enough to bear the weight of all humanity as it climbs.

“Come, then, with joy! Open up Paradise, which your ancestor Eve, your natural sister, had locked. Enter into the joy of your Son. Let go of the Jerusalem that is below, and hasten up to the heavenly city; for the Jerusalem below, ‘lamentation will soon be multiplied,’ as Scripture has it, ‘like the lamentation for the pomegranate grove cut down in the plain’ (Zach

12:11 [LXXJ. Lie down to rest, if only in appearance, in Gethsemane, the place of your tomb. I will not leave you alone there for long. I will come to you very quickly, when you have been buried in the sepulchre-not to dwell in you again by being conceived, as once I was, but rather to take you now to dwell with me. Rest your body confidently in Gethsemane, as once I rested my knees there in human prayer, before my pas-sion. I gave you an image of your own death, bending on that very ground the knees I took from your body. As I came forth willingly, then, after that prostration, to a death on the cross that was the source of life, you, too, will pass immediately into life when your remains have been laid in the earth.

“Behold, my disciples are coming to receive you; they, my spiritual sons who are filled with my light, will bury you in all reverence and piety. I have bestowed on them the grace of adoption as sons, as you yourself can testify (see Jn 19:26f).

So when you are laid by them in the tomb, consider that it is my hands which are caring for you; for it is not fitting that you should be laid to rest by anyone else but my apostles, in whom the Holy Spirit makes his home and who represent my own person. Only they can do honor to your passing, O all-immaculate one!”

[4.] When she heard this message, the Mother of God rejoiced greatly, taking but little account of this passing human life; lighting great lamps throughout her house, she invited her relatives and neighbors, swept her room and decked her bed with flowers, as if it were all a virgin’s bridal-chamber-that

bed which until then she had flooded every night with prayerful tears, in her longing for Christ her Son. “On my bed,” as Scripture says, “I have sought him whom my soul loves.” (Cant 3:1 [LXX1) Eagerly, she prepared all that was needed for her departure. She announced she was about to pass on, made public what had been revealed to her by the angel. And she showed everyone the baton that had been given to her: a palm branch,’ the symbol of victory over death and the token of un-fading life. This was to assure her, at her moment of departure, that she would utterly overcome decay, just as Christ, whom she brought forth into the world, had triumphed over the realm of death. It was the same kind of palm branch that the devout young Hebrews waved in acclamation for Christ, when he approached his passion as one who would be victorious over death, crying “Hosanna in the highest!”-that is,

“Save us,

you who dwell on high!” for “Hosanna,” in Hebrew means

“Save us.” Just as palm branches then indicated, by a symbolic figure, that Christ’s death would be a victory, so this baton of palm, given to the Mother of God, was meant as an assurance of victory over mortal decay.

[5.1 The women who had been invited began to weep; those gathered around her wailed in lament, flooding the house, so to speak, with rivers of tears. They begged her not to leave them alone. But she said, “Let the will of my Son, my God, be accomplished in me. “For he is my God, and I will praise him; my Father’s God, and I will exalt him.’ (Ex 15:2) He became my Son in the flesh, but he is himself Father and Creator and God to his own Mother. If you, then, who are parents of mortal children, through a sordid kind of union, cannot bear to be separated from them for an instant, how shall I, who have borne God the Son, not be overcome even more than you by maternal affection? For I offered him a womb that was whole, conceived him as a pure virgin, without help of a hus

band. You are consoled by each other for the loss of your chil-dren; but since I have been privileged to have this Christ as both my God and my only son, how can I fail to rejoice at going to him, who lives forever and gives life to all?”

16.] When she had said this, there was suddenly a mighty clap of thunder, and a rush of wind from a cloud that hung low over the earth; like drops of rain, the disciples of Christ appeared from its midst, gathered together to stand as one before the Virgin’s house. When they saw her, they bowed before her reverently, and after learning the reason for their arrival from her, they spoke as follows: “For the very reason that we have you as our neighbor in the the city of this world, O Mother of God, and that we are encouraged by the sight of you as if we were gazing on Christ himself, we must reflect deeply on your departure. But since you have been summoned to go on to God_-partly by divine power, partly through a Son’s human affection for his mother–we rejoice at what is fittingly being done for you, and at what will surely turn out for all our good.

For in you we, too, receive a promise of eternal life, and we will have in you a mediator with God. It is not appropriate, after all, that the Mother of God should go on living in the midst of ‘a crooked and perverse generation’ (Phil 2:15); you should move on to the tents of heaven, to incorruptible dwellings.” All the while they said this, they wept inconsolably. But she said to them, “Greetings, spiritual sons of my son! Remember his words, how he ordered us at the time of his passion not to turn the world’s joy into mourning (In 16:20); today, as I take my departure to him, do not turn my delight into sadness. All of you must lay my body to rest, just as I arrange it on my bed. For I will seem to be buried by the very hands of my Son, if I am reverently laid to rest by you who are his disciples.”

[7.] As she was saying this, the apostle Paul arrived, summoned from afar by the news. He knocked at the door of the

house, and the master of the house, John the Aposile, opened for him with joy; a virgin himself, he had “received” the Vir gin “into his houschold” (In 19:27) from the houschold of Christ, as if she were his mother. The apostles saw Paul and took heart, and made him sit in a raised seat of honor. The Virgin received him with joy, and Paul threw himself at her feet, feet that once supported God; when he learned why he, too, had been brought there, he opened his mouth- ever ready to teach–with a great and tearful cry, and praised the Virgin lav-ishly. These are a few of the things he said:

“Hail, Mother of life, the content of my preaching! Hail, fulness of my consolation! For even if I have not seen Christ in the flesh, by seeing you in bodily form I am persuaded that I see Christ, since you gave the bodiless one that body in which he clothed himself. I have fulfilled my longing to see Christ by looking at your face. Until yesterday, I have preached to the Gentiles that you have given birth to God in the flesh; from now on, I shall also teach that you have been allowed to pass over into his presence, so that the Gentiles may realize that their own salvation is confirmed by your intercession, so that they, too, might have a permanent patron before God.”

[8.] After Paul had said many other things- so far as we can ascertain–by way of offering praise to the Mother of God, the Virgin took her leave of them all. She lay back on the pallet which she had herself arranged, composed her immaculate body as she wished, and gave up her spirit as if she were falling asleep. Or I should say, she left her flesh behind while fully awake, departing from it in a way free of all corruption.

And when she had entrusted her blameless spirit, in the hearing of all, to Christ, her God and her own bodily Son, Peter urged his fellow chief apostle Paul to formulate the customary prayer over the Virgin’s remains. But Paul declined, saying it was fitting for Peter, as chief shepherd, to do this. Peter en

couraged him, yielding modestly to Paul with the excuse that he was weary from the heavy burden of his preaching; but Paul was not at all to be persuaded, insisting that Christ had conferred a leadership on Peter that could not be set aside for new arrangements. So Peter spoke the prayer; the rest of the apostles lifted the bier onto their shoulders, and with hymns and lighted lamps they reverently and solemnly carried the Virgin’s body out to its tomb.

[9.] An uncountable throng joined in the funeral of the Mother of Life. They were at her sudden passing, and they also marvelled at the Apostles’ arrival, through the air, from distant parts of the world. For the report went out about them in all Je-rusalem, that a thunderstorm had overshadowed the city a moment before, and that a whirlwind had brought them there like drops of rain, falling before the Virgin’s house. A certain foolish member of the unbelieving Jewish people-for they are a

“vanity of vanities” (Eccl 1:2), always giving offense and always ready for a quarrelsome argument- -reached out his lawless hand (for Scripture says,’

“In these hands there is always

iniquity” [Ps 25:2 (LXX)]), and shook the pallet that served as her bier, daring to molest the body of the immaculate one and not fearing even to throw to the ground the fleshly throne of the Most High. Immediately his hands were cut off, and he became a dreadful example to the Jews, who are always so aggressive against Christ. Her body was now near the sarcopha-gus. The Apostles shrank back, in godly reverence and fear, from touching the Virgin’s body. And this hesitation the disciples showed about touching her body was praiseworthy: they knew how much honor it deserved, since the pure one’s body was God’s vessel. But the faithful people tried to take from her some part of her burial wrappings, to bring them a blessing. No one, however, laid hands directly on her, since they had before their very eyes the example of the Jew who had acted so rashly.

But at the common decision and urging of the Apostles, Peter and Paul picked up the ends of the shroud that hung down loosely on either side of the bier, and by handling only the shroud, and not attempting to touch her body with their hands, the worthy and reverent Apostles placed her body in the tomb.

So through their longing for God these two men revealed their reverence for him, exalted like the heavenly hills by their very humility. In their self-effacing service, they won honor for themselves, and in their love for Christ they earned distinction.

For they showed reverence then to the Son through his Mother, and to the Mother–in an outstanding degree because of the Son; because God had become flesh, they showed genuine honor to his Mother, the one who endowed him with that flesh. And it was from their hands, as all looked on, that the Virgin’s pure body was taken away.

Who took it, no one

could see_-for God is invisible! But the shroud was then gently taken up into the air from the Apostles’ hands in a light cloud–in what the words of the prophet had spoken of, in a fleshly sense, as a “light cloud” (Is 19:1) and disappeared.

[10.] The disciples realized that Christ had come, with his angels, to meet his Mother, and trusting that she had been taken to heaven by him, they glorified God with joyful voices, speaking to the people in these words: “People of Israel, you should now know what has been revealed to all of you concerning Mary, the fleshly Mother of Christ: that having been carried dead, by us and by you, to her tomb here, she has been lifted up out of our hands. Let no one show himself slow to believe what has happened in our midst. Let no one falsely accuse us of stealing her body, too, as they did for the body of Christ! But if anyone should hear such an accusation from the governor or from your priests, pay attention to the truth, not to lies. Be witnesses of what you have seen! Go forth from this tomb today yourselves, as new, fleshly messengers of heaven.

Give your tongues wings to proclaim the truth. Say for your-selves, ‘Behold, here is the place where the Virgin was buried.

Mary, the Mother of Life, has been taken up to heaven.

Look-here is the shroud without the one who was wrapped in it, lacking its burden; it once was wrapped around her as a lifeless corpse, and now it yearns to be a carpet for her in her new life. You, too, must become the ‘myrth-bearing women’ for the one who has gone to heaven.! Run, tell of her passage from the tomb that enclosed life!

“Blessed are you, too, region of Gethsemane! You are renowned because of the Garden of Joseph (of Arimathea), which is near; there Peter and John ran to find the burial cloth and napkin, and believed that Christ is risen.”

In you, Gethes-

mane, all of us have seen the ever-virgin Mary buried in her tomb and taken up to heaven–we disciples, and also this crowd, which gathered in such numbers for her funeral. She was taken from our view here, beyond any dispute, before her tomb was sealed with a stone, so that no one might find an easy opportunity, in the absence of seals and guards, to convince unbelievers of a theft. But see: with hymns of praise she was brought to this tomb, and then left the tomb empty; now she fills paradise with her glory, and she shares the refreshment of the life of heaven. Now she lives on, as a participant in the delights of God.” These were the words of the Apostles about the Mother of God.

[11.] But I, too, have gone far enough, my immaculate Lady, in this rash torrent of words; an age, after all, would not be enough time for those who dare to speak your praises! Here, then, I bring my hymn to a close. Remember your Christian servants; present the prayers and the hopes of us all [to the Lord]. Confirm our faith, unite the Churches, give victory to the Empire and fight with our army: 12 give peace to the world, save us all from danger and trials, and beg that for each of us

the day of judgment may not be a day of condemnation. To whom else shall we go? You have the words of life In

6:68)the petitions you make to God on our behalf. For you are the one who has always done great things among us, and who never ceases to do them; holy is your name (see Lk 1:49), 13 which is blessed by angels and human beings from generation to generation (ibid. 48, 50), now and to the ages of ages.

Amen.