Tonight at the Divine Liturgy, Father Iura blessed herbs and flowers.
In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death. (Byzantine Liturgy; Troparion, Feast of the Dormition)
“Come, all you ends of the earth, let us praise the blessed passing of the Mother of God. She delivers her sinless soul into the hands of her Son; through her holy Dormition, the world is given new life.” (Stichera at the Litija)
The feast of the birth of John the Baptist is sometimes called the summer Christmas, so also the Dormition (falling-asleep) of the Mother of God might be called the summer Pascha. In both these feasts the cosmic change accomplished by the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God is seen in the lives of human beings, for in Christ the order of mortality is overturned. In the mystery of Mary’s falling-asleep, we see our sinfulness is over-written by the sinless one, who in obedience turns over her “sinless soul” to the incarnate God.
The Gospel today is a story not about Mary, the Theotokos, but about Mary of Bethany, but the words addressed by God to her sister Martha become iconic for all human beings: “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her. (Luke 10:42)” What has she chosen? To sit at the feet of our Lord, to put Jesus at the center of her life, and to listen to him. This is Mary’s eternal mission, as she tells the stewards at the wedding in Cana: “Do whatever he (Jesus, her Son) tells you. (John 2:5)” This is the mystery the ends of the earth celebrate today, for it has transformed the meaning of human life, and “through he holy Dormition, the world is given new life.”
Meditation by Archpriest David Petras
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 (Kontakion for the Dormition).
As part of our celebration of Dormition on Tuesday, August 15, we will bless herbs and flowers for use in the home. Please bring herbs and flowers to Divine Liturgy (10:00 a.m. and at 7:00 p.m.). As a point of liturgical fact, the Church asks God to bless herbs and flowers –and thus us– to remind all of us of the gifts God has given us for our sustenance, healing and beauty.
Holy Tradition educates us that all the Apostles, except St. Thomas who was late, were transported mystically to Jerusalem in order to be with the Mother of God – the Theotokos – as she reposed, and to given her a burial. When Thomas arrived the next day, the Apostles opened the tomb so that he could kiss Mary farewell. The opened tomb revealed that the body of the holy Virgin of Mother of God was missing, and filled with herbs and flowers. This event was a sure sign of her great purity and holiness.
What happens to Mary happens to all of us who imitate her holy life of humility, obedience, and love.
In addition to the myriad of feast days honoring Our Lady in her many titles and virtues, the entire month of May is especially given to her praise. In the words of Pope Paul VI: May is “a month which the piety of the faithful has long dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God . . . For this is the month during which Christians, in their churches and their homes, offer the Virgin Mother more fervent and loving acts of homage and veneration; and it is the month in which a greater abundance of God’s merciful gifts comes down to us from our Mother’s throne.”
This weekend we are celebrating the mystery of our Lord’s accepting human nature for our salvation. The Archangel Gabriel asks Mary to receive God’s plan and become the mother of the Son and Word of God, to be named “Jesus,” “Savior.” Mary replies, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)” Mary’s response to God was perfect and reversed the sin of Eve. In our Lenten journey, we are asked the same question by God, “Can you be perfectly obedient to my will.” This is not to put us into slavery, but to free us from the power of sin and death. Jesus gave the power to cast out evil to his followers, but in this Sunday’s Gospel, a distraught man who has a son possessed by a demon, comes to Jesus and laments, “I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able. (Mark 9:18)” Jesus immediately tells the man it is because of their lack of faith, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? (Mark 9:19)”
Mary’s obedience to God was perfect, and she gave birth to salvation, our obedience is not perfect, and so we are unable to cast out evil from our lives. Why is this? It may be because of weakness, that we are not strong enough to keep God’s law, and are in need of his strength through grace. It may be that we do not fully understand God’s will, and mix up our own desires with it. In any case, our Lord asks us to become more faithful in the second half of the Great Fast, since “this kind cannot be drive out by anything but prayer and fasting.” This is true faith.
Annunciation of Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos), March 25th
The following meditation opens an interesting question about Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos means the bearer of God). A daughter of an Orthodox priest, Sister Vassa, a native of Nyack, NY, earned a doctorate in liturgical theology from the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, now is a researcher and teacher in Vienna. She produces a the popular program, “Coffee with Sister Vassa.”
“Most Holy Theotokos, save us!” (Byzantine prayer)
What, exactly, are we asking for in this prayer? Are we calling for another human being, Mary, to “save” us, as only our One Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ can?
No. We are calling for the “Birth-Giver of God” in the flesh, the “Theo-tokos,” in Her unique ministry of bringing Him into the world, to bring us His salvation. He willed it to “save” the world in His incarnation, coming to us through Her over 2,000 years ago. And we believe in Him as in One Who continues to come to us, to “come again” and again (καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον, и паки грядущаго) as the incarnate Lord.
Thus when we say, “Most Holy Theo-tokos, save us!” – and not “Mary, save us!” – we are calling also upon His name, the name of “God” incarnate, Who has brought us His salvation not without Her. We thus embrace that great mystery, of the Incarnation, when we say this today, because that mystery continues to work its salvific consequences in His One Body that is the Church. “Most Holy Theotokos, save us!” I say today, embracing His coming as He does, not only spiritually, but also physically, into holy communion with us.
Today, the day after the Christmas feast the Byzantine Church honors Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos) with a special feast day of remembrance.
Our meditation is given by Father David Petras.
Many Byzantine feasts have a commemoration on the day after a great feast called a “synaxis,” that is, an “assembly” or “gathering” in honor of one who participated in the feast. No more honorable person could ever be found than the holy Lady, the Mother of God. This feast of her Synaxis was actually the most ancient, the first, celebration of her memory on the church calendar, because her giving birth to the Son of God was truly her greatest glory. It was by her free will, ““Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. (Luke 1:38),” that our God and Creator became one of us. It was certainly her joy that she gave birth to this child, but we commemorate on this day all the suffering she bore because of her choice, the near repudiation by Joseph, the persecution of her son by Herod, causing them to flee for their lives to Egypt, until, at the end, she had to endure seeing her beloved son crucified as a common criminal on the cross.
So, Simeon the prophet told her, “ “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)” Truly, she became by her suffering an intercessor with her Son. We must ask if we are prepared, as St. Paul, who wrote “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body. (Colossians 1:24)” We also have the comfort of knowing, if we unite our will with that of Mary, that we, too, can become bearers of God through Communion in his Body and Blood by our own free will.
The Divine Liturgy will be offered on Thursday, December 8th at 9:00 a.m. for the feast of Conception of St Anne [also called the Maternity of Holy Anne].
It is a holy day.
In the Roman Church, the feast is called the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
“With the Angels let us celebrate the aIl-glorious conception of the Mother of God” (from the Office of Matins).
Holy Scripture does not about about the birth and infancy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The early Christians believed, based on the Protoevangelium of St. James, a document compiled by an unknown author in the middle of the second century. In this text the birth of Mary was considered as miraculous in manner that we consider the birth of St. John the Baptist to be.
More about today’s feast can be read here.
“The most pure Temple of the Savior; / the precious Chamber and Virgin; / the sacred Treasure of the glory of God, / is led today into the house of the Lord. / She brings with her the grace of the Spirit, / therefore, the angels of God praise her: / ‘Truly this woman is the abode of heaven.’” (Kontakion-Hymn of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple)
Today we have two great feasts celebrated in our churches: According to the so-called New Calendar, it is the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple, and on the Older Calendar it is the feast of the Archangel Michael and All the Bodiless Powers.
So let me reflect on both. Let me reflect on the visible “temple” of the Lord, the Mother of God, entering another visible temple, in Jerusalem, as “the angels of God praise Her.” Both She, and all visible “temples” of today, like us, and our church-buildings, have received the capacity to unite the visible and invisible created worlds, in the Coming of Her heretofore invisible Son in the flesh. We unite with the invisible creation in praise, as we “mystically represent” or “mystically become icons of” (μυστικῶς εἰκονίζοντες) the cherubim at every Divine Liturgy.
But amazingly, we also receive an honor that exceeds theirs, by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ as they do not. So today let me be humbled by the unique honor I am given in God’s one, created world, with the help of His invisible and visible servants. And let me follow His Most-Pure Mother into the Holy of Holies, into a Communion that even the angels are not given.
Sister Vassa Larin