Midweek Morning Meditation

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I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Nicene Creed

On Sunday, I continued with a series of homilies on the Nicene Creed, and the focus was on the Creed's declared belief in the "resurrection of the dead." Here is a succinct summary on that belief by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware from his book The Orthodox Way:

As Christians se believe not only in the immortality of the soul but in the resurrection of the body. According to God's ordinance at our first creation, the human soul and the human body are interdependent and neither can properly exist without the other. In consequence of the fall, the two are parted at bodily death, but this separation is not final and permanent. At the Second Coming of Christ, we shall be raised from the dead in our soul and in our body; and so, with should and body reunited, we shall appearbefore our Lord for the Last Judgement.

An Unfortunate Event

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The summit between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, is now over. I am not sure what was actually accomplished, but that is not my present concern. There was a deeply unfortunate event that was peripheral to the two presidents meeting. And that was the OCA Archbishop of Alaska - Aleksei - cordially and warmly greeting Putin and exchanging pleasantries and icons with him. Vladimir Putin is the personal source behind the war in Ukraine that has caused unbelievable suffering and grief for literally millions of people. Currently, the International Crime Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for his arrest, for the crime of kidnapping about 20,000 Ukrainian children and deporting them to Russia. Watching the warm greeting between this dictator and an Orthodox Archbishop was a cause of deep disappointment and dismay for both presvytera and me. It is not as if Putin is a benign representative of the Russian Orthodox Church! 

Presvytera Deborah and I have written a joint letter to Metropolitan Tikhon to express our profound disagreement with what transpired in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday (the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God!). Presvytera and I made it clear that this was a personal letter from the two of us, and not written on behalf of the parish. 

This unfortunate event is pulsating throughout the OCA. I will assume that some members of the Church had no issues with this meeting, but many clergy and laity are angered and frustrated. I have already heard from them. It is time for the Church to speak out on behalf of the Gospel of Jesus Christ against war-mongering and the kidnapping of children. Silence in the face of such calculated injustice is unworthy of the Church. This cannot be hidden behind cordial greetings, pious rhetoric and the exchange of gifts. 

I encourage everyone to remain faithful to Christ and the Gospel. Christ is the Truth and that Truth will always ultimately prevail. Our Christian witness is to always choose to stand with Christ and the Gospel over all oppressive forces that seek to harm other innocent human beings. May the Lord strengthen us in that witness!

In Christ,

Fr. Steven 

Coffee With Sister Vassa - THE PARADOX OF THE DORMITION

It is good to hear from Sister Vassa again! Having been expelled from ROCOR, and even "defrocked" (I have no idea how a monastic is actually "defrocked") she is obviously under a great deal of pressure which see seems to manage with a great deal of gracefulness. Please join me in keeping her in your prayers.

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“In you the laws of nature (τῆς φύσεως οἱ ὅροι, естества уставы) are defeated, O pure Virgin: from virginity comes childbirth, and life is introduced by death. After bearing, a virgin, and after dying – living, ever saving, O Mother of God, your inheritance.” (Ode 9, Byzantine Canon of Dormition)

The Theotokos defies our usual expectations of physical reality, which is why we can call her life ‘paradoxical.’ The word ‘paradox’ (from the Greek words ‘para,’ meaning ‘beyond,’ and ‘dokeo,’ meaning ‘expect’) means something beyond our expectation; a kind of thing we would not expect, like a virgin giving birth, or life springing from death. We would also expect that she, as a Jewish woman of the first century, would necessarily be subject to some man, either her father or her husband. But this was not quite the case. Sure, she was assisted in her vocation by certain people, (as are we all), at different stages of her life. There were her parents, by whom she is led into the Temple, but really it is her vocation that *led them* to parent this daughter in the way that they did, in their old age. Then there were the priests in the Temple, by whom she is led to be betrothed to Joseph, in the earlier years, but we see that Joseph is led by her vocation, not the other way around, and not because she is bossy. God was leading the way. Finally, there is John the beloved disciple, whom she is told by the crucified Lord henceforth to “mother,” which is a position not of subjugation but of authority. No merely-human being ‘had’ the Mother of God in the sense that women at the time belonged to someone, which is a thing we would not expect. 

One sees in her cross-carrying journey, throughout which she is *obedient* to the vocation that came not from men but from God, that she remains free in her obedience, which is a paradox, because we might think that freedom and obedience don’t mix. Even after her dormition, we don’t ‘have’ her body to venerate as holy relics. It was taken up or ‘assumed’ (as the Roman Catholics call this) into heaven by her Son, because even death could not hold her physically. What is my point? Because the Mother of God is traditionally seen as an image ‘par excellence’ of the Mother-Church, her ‘paradoxical’ and liberating vocation is something we all share, insofar as we are members of the Mother-Church. Our own vocations are necessarily both paradoxical and liberating, insofar as we do not fear the paradoxes and the freedom, into which our crucified-and-risen Lord is leading us, by our obedience to Him. The connection between baptism and freedom is why the Exodus from bondage in Egypt, through the waters of the Red Sea, is seen as an image of Baptism.

Thank you, Mother of Life, Most Holy Theotokos, for having the courage and obedience to follow your vocation. “You passed into life as the Mother of Life, and by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death.”

The Dormition (“Falling Asleep”) of our Most Holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary

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The death of the Theotokos was also life-bearing, translating her into a celestial and immortal life … Its commemoration not merely renews the memory of the wondrous deeds of the Mother of God, but also adds thereto the strange gathering at her all-sacred burial of all the sacred apostles conveyed from every nation … Thus she exalted those under her thought through herself, and, showing while on earth an obedience to things heavenly rather than things earthly, she partook of more excellent deserts and of superior power. 

… She alone in her body, glorified by God, now enjoys the celestial realm together with her Son. For earth and grave and death did not hold forever her life-originating and God-receiving body—the dwelling more favored than Heaven and the Heaven of heavens … How indeed could that body suffer corruption and turn to earth?

… The “ark of holiness” (Ps. 131.8) is resurrected, after the prophetic ode, together with Christ … by her ascension … uniting those on high with those below … In this manner she was in the beginning “a little lower than angels” (Ps. 8.6), as it is said, referring to her mortality, yet this only served to magnify her pre-eminence as regards all creatures.

… Receptacle of great graces … she only is the frontier between created and uncreated nature, and there is no man that shall come to God except he be truly illumined through her … It was through the Theotokos alone that the Lord came to us.

—St. Gregory Palamas, Homily on the Dormition

'Beyond Death and Judgment' - The Dormition of the Theotokos

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The Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos has come to be experienced as something of a "summer pascha," and as such has steadily become an integral event of our parish life. And this is "meet and right." The decorated tomb of the Theotokos, containing an icon of her sacred body in blessed repose, was in the center of the church during the Vesperal Liturgy yesterday evening. The tomb is back in its usual spot, but the icon will be there for veneration until the Leavetaking of the Feast on August 23.

American Christianity has been shaped by the Protestant ethos, and that basically means that there is no real place for the veneration of the Mother of God. This was primarily based upon a reaction against the perceived excesses of the medieval West's Marian piety by the early Protestant reformers. In a short time, this reaction became a thorough rejection - at times quite vehement - in many Protestant circles. So the Virgin Mary pretty much disappeared from Protestant worship and piety. Perhaps the classic example within Church history of "throwing out the baby with the bath water."

Orthodox Christians cannot succumb to any such truncated form of the Church's living Tradition. (However, there have been clear signs recently of a "recovery" of the role of the Virgin Mary in some Evangelical circles). One of my beloved professors from seminary always used to say that a sign of a spiritually strong parish is that parish's devotion to the Mother of God. For she is the personal image of the Church - warm, embracing, nurturing, protecting.

Since the Dormition has no biblical source, this feast slowly developed over the course of the first five centuries of the Church's history on the basis of a wide variety of sources - primarily narratives, rhetorical homilies and theological poetry/hymnography. (Much of this material now exists in English translation). There is no one authoritative text or document.

However, though details may differ, a tradition emerged that tells of how the apostles were miraculously brought back to Jerusalem in order to surround the bedside of the Virgin Mary as she lay dying. Upon commending her holy soul to her Son and Savior, she peacefully "fell asleep" in death (the meaning of the word dormition) in the presence of the apostles who stood weeping and grief-stricken by her bedside. With great solemnity they buried her pure body which had itself been the "tabernacle" of the King. The traditional place of her burial is a tomb close to Gethsemane. When the tomb was opened on the third day so that the Apostle Thomas, who arrived late, could venerate the body of the Theotokos, it was found to be empty. The "Mother of Life" was thus "translated to life!"

Archbishop Kallistos Ware summarizes the Church's understanding of this tradition in the following manner:

Without insisting on the literal truth of every element in this account, Orthodox tradition is clear and unwavering in regard to the central point: the Holy Virgin underwent, as did her Son, a physical death, but her body - like His - was afterwards raised from the dead and she was taken up into heaven, in her body as well as in her soul. She has passed beyond death and judgement, and lives wholly in the Age to Come.

The Resurrection of the Body, which all Christians await, has in her case been anticipated and is already an accomplished fact. That does not mean, however, that she is dissociated from the rest of humanity and placed in a wholly different category: for we all hope to share one day in that same glory of the Resurrection of the Body which she enjoys even now. ( The Festal Menaion, p. 64)

Fr. Thomas Hopko further elaborates on the meaning of this beautiful Feast and how it "relates" to every generation of Christians:

Thus, the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the celebration of the fact that all men are "highly exalted" in the blessedness of the victorious Christ, and that this high exaltation has already been accomplished in Mary the Theotokos.

The feast of the Dormition is the sign, the guarantee, and the celebration that Mary's fate is the destiny of all those of "low estate" whose souls magnify the Lord, whose spirits rejoice in God the Savior, whose lives are totally dedicated to hearing and keeping the Word of God which is given to men in Mary's child, the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

Dormition, of course, means "falling asleep," the Christian term par excellence for how we approach the mystery of death. And here we further approach the paradox, from a Christian perspective, of death itself - the "last enemy" that causes great anguish and grief; but yet which now serves as a passage to life everlasting, and thus a cause for festal celebration in the death of the Mother of God. For the Virgin Mary truly died, as is the fate of all human beings; and yet "neither the tomb nor death could hold the Theotokos" who has been "translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb!" Without for a moment losing sight of the reality of death (notice the weeping apostles around the body of the Theotokos on the Dormition icon), from within the Church we can actually celebrate death during this "summer pascha" because of the Resurrection of Christ.

Thus, the Feast of the Dormition clearly raises the issue of death and dying, and what we mean by a “Christian ending to our life.” For the moment, though, here is a challenging paragraph from Fr. Thomas Hopko about some of our own misconceptions – basically our fears – that often find us wandering far from an Orthodox approach to death and dying:

I believe that the issue of death and dying is in need of serious attention in contemporary Orthodoxy, especially in the West, where most members of the Church seem to be “pagan” before people die and “Platonists” afterwards. By this I mean that they beg the Church to keep people alive, healthy, and happy as long as possible, and then demand that the Church assure them after people die that their immortal souls are “in a better place, basking in heavenly bliss” no matter what they may have done in their earthly lives.

This is precisely why we can call the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, “pascha in the summer!” The Virgin Mary and Theotokos died a “deathless death.” Now we have the opportunity to participate in this mystery in the celebration of this event as nothing less than a Feast. The Leave-taking of the Feast is on August 23. That means that we continue to sing and chant the troparion and kontakion of the Feast in our liturgical services until then, in addition to other hymnography of the Feast. I would strongly urge everyone to incorporate these hymns into your daily rule of prayer, including their use when you bless your meals as a family, replacing the Lord's Prayer up until the Leave-taking. If you can't sing these hymns, you can certainly recite them! The troparia and kontakia or the major Feasts are included in many Orthodox Prayer Books, but if you do not have the texts available at home, I am including them here:

Troparion of the Dormition

In giving birth, you preserved your virginity!
In falling asleep you did not
forsake the world, O Theotokos!
You were translated to life, O Mother of Life,
and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death!


Kontakion of the Dormition

Neither the tomb, nor death, could hold the Theotokos,
who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions.
For being the Mother of Life, she was translated to life
by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb!

The great Feasts extended in time, give us an opportunity of integrating them into our lives in a meaningful way.