§ 133. The Services of the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God - 15th August. The origins of the celebration of the Dormition of the Mother of God are found in the fourth century.
The festal hymns for the Dormition express reverent wonder at the death of the Mother of God - “the source of life is laid in a grave, and the ladder to the heavens is contained in a tomb.” Then they express their wonder at the events surrounding the Mother of God’s Dormition, and they compile an record of the outer events of the feast: the gathering of the Apostles that they might reverence and kiss the body of the Mother of God, the appearance of the Saviour Himself to take the soul of the Mother of God. And finally they demonstrate that the Dormition of the Mother of God is not simply a death, but her passing over into life. The faithful are then called upon to glorify the Mother of God and to supplicate her heavenly aid and protection.
The troparion is:-
“In giving birth thou didst preserve thy virginity;
in thy dormition thou didst not forsake the world, O Theotokos.
Thou wast translated unto life,
since thou art the Mother of Life;
and by thine intercessions
dost thou redeem our souls from death.”
“The grave and death could not hold the Theotokos,
who is unsleeping in her intercessions
and an unfailing hope in her mediations.
For as the Mother of Life she was translated to life
by Him Who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb.”
The Old Testament readings are the same as those which were read on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin.
In the canon the words of the Mother of God calling upon her Beloved Son to take her to Heaven in the shortest possible period are brought forward, and those of the Saviour, who with the Angels had descended to take the all-immaculate soul of her that bore Him in the flesh and present it to the Father. Then we have the funeral hymns of the Holy Apostles, who had gathered from the ends of the earth to honour the all-immaculate body with reverent burial, that body which, even after death, remained untouched by corruption and in a miraculous manner was translated into Heaven. To these themes, there is added the laudation of the Apostles, supremely exalting the Mother of God, who even after death does not cease to deliver us from spiritual death through her prayers.
The prokeimenon, the Apostle reading and the Gospel are also the same as those used on the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.
The megalynarion is:-
“The angels, as they looked upon the Dormition
of the All-immaculate one, were struck with wonder,
seeing how the Virgin went up from earth to heaven.
In thee, O virgin pure, the bounds of nature are overcome:
for childbirth remaineth virgin, and death is betrothed to life.
O Theotokos, Virgin after bearing child, and alive after death,
do thou ever save thine inheritance.”
The Communion hymn is: “I will take the cup of salvation, and I will call upon the name of the Lord.”
… to be continued in the next issue with “Part Seven - The Particular Services or Needs”
