August: Day 15: Teaching 1: Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos

August: Day 15: Teaching 1:
Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos
 
(Means By Which One Can Meet Death Not With Fear, But With Joy)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The highly festive feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, which we have gathered here today to honor, at the call of our loving mother and wise educator – the Church, evokes in the mind of a Christian the most joyful hopes.

Church tradition tells us that after the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven, His Most Pure Mother visited with special love those places near Jerusalem that were marked by the prayer, suffering and death of Her beloved Divine Son. The Mount of Olives, Golgotha, the garden where the body of the Divine dead man was buried, became the favorite places of Her prayers and outpourings of the holy feelings of Her heart.

She thought long and often about Her death and the afterlife, and often even prayed to God to speed up Her departure from this world.

And then one day, while she was praying on the Mount of Olives, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her and foretold the time of her death.

Filled with deep faith in the future eternally blessed life, She accepted this news not with fear and sadness, but with a feeling of the most lively joy and the greatest gratitude to God.

And at the time predetermined from above, the Holy Virgin, surrounded by the Apostles, who from all ends of the earth were miraculously gathered in Jerusalem for the day of her glorious dormition, with joy in Her heart and prayer on Her lips, calmly and painlessly gave up Her spirit to God. But Her most pure body did not see decay: on the third day after Her dormition she was resurrected by God to eternal blessed life and in a new, glorified body ascended to heaven. The Apostles were convinced of this wondrous transfer of her to the future glorious life not only from the fact that on the third day Her body was no longer in the tomb, but even more from the fact that on that same day the risen Mother of God, shining with heavenly glory and surrounded by the faces of holy angels, suddenly appeared to the Apostles gathered in one house, promising them her invisible presence among them and her maternal intercession for the world. After this She disappeared from their eyes, filling their hearts and those of all Christians with inexpressible joy and further strengthening their faith in the resurrection of the dead.

Thus, the death of the Mother of God is only a quiet and peaceful sleep, or, as the Orthodox Church calls it, "dormition." It does not contain anything terrible or joyless for the mind and heart of a Christian: on the contrary, the Holy Virgin Mary showed in Her dormition that death for a Christian should not be an object of fear and despair, but of the greatest joy and brightest hope, for death is only a more or less prolonged sleep, followed by a joyful awakening in a new glorified body for an inexpressibly blessed life in heaven.

II. Let us pause, my brethren, for a short time to reflect on the means by which a Christian can and should meet his death not with fear, but with joy.

a) The first means is the memory of death.

For us, in our sinful state, constant remembrance of death is necessary; the constant remembrance of death, which can overtake us every day and hour, will force us to vigilantly watch our moral behavior, to prepare our souls in advance for eternal life after death, to accustom ourselves gradually to part with habitual affairs and passions, to crush the earthly idols of our hearts, to renounce all sensual earthly attachments and, so to speak, gradually die to sin.

That is why our Holy Church, as a wise educator of Christians both for this temporal life and for the future eternal life, makes it obligatory for everyone to remember death before going to sleep. And holy men who have reached a high degree of righteousness testify to the great benefit of remembering death for the life of a Christian.

Thus, Saint John Climacus says that the memory of death is as necessary for a person as bread is necessary, and just as it is impossible to live without bread, so without the memory of death it is impossible to manage one’s life.

There are several examples in the lives of saints of awakening from the sleep of death. Having acquired a living memory of death in this way, such people surrendered after such a strict ascetic life that they surprised everyone. Thus, the Venerable Athanasius of the Caves, who rose from the grave on the third day after death, answered the question about the afterlife with only: "Repent every hour and pray and do not ask me about anything else" - then he locked himself in a cave, where he spent another 12 years in feats of piety.

One monk (named Hesychius of Horeb), about whom Saint John of the Ladder speaks, fell ill and died. But an hour later, by the action of Divine power, he was again awakened to life. From then on, he completely changed his life, devoting himself entirely to prayer and exalted ascetic feats. Before his death, he told the brethren only the following: "Whoever has acquired the memory of death can never sin."

Thus, the memory of death can save a person from the destructive sinful sleep, give him a spiritual weapon, righteousness, with the help of which he is able to more or less calmly, without particular shame and fear, meet death, this enemy of his earthly life.

b) The second remedy against the fear of death is a clear conscience. He who has a clear conscience can calmly cross the threshold of eternity - physical death; his conscience, which awakens, as experience shows, with particular force before death, will not torment the soul with late and useless regret about the earthly life wasted in vain, about talents buried in the earth, about injustices and insults caused to neighbors, about the impossibility of correcting one's mistakes, about ingratitude to God for all His unspeakable blessings; it will not frighten him by restoring to his consciousness, in the hours before death, all his iniquities and will not plunge him into the abyss of despair, the horror of which surpasses death itself. A man with a clear conscience, standing on the edge of eternity, before the dying lamp of his life flares up with its last flame, can say with righteous Symeon: "Now let Your servant depart, O Master, in peace." But who can have a clear conscience before death? The one who has tried to live a Christian life, who has been an obedient son of the Church, who has reconciled with God and people, who has managed to prepare for death through the Mystery of Repentance, which removes the burden of sins weighing on the conscience, and to partake in the Mystery of Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, as the source of eternal life. Such a Christian, having surrendered his whole being to the will of the merciful and just God, can meet death not faintheartedly and timidly, but boldly and confidently, as the dawn of a future blessed life.

c) The next equally powerful means for a person against the fear of death is his faith in the immortality of his soul, faith in the undoubted truth that the best part of his being – the soul – will never die, but will live forever. The body is destroyed and decays, it can even be torn away from the soul by force – and a person dies, but his spirit, created by God for immortality, remains to live forever. “And the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). “Fear not those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” the Lord admonished His disciples before sending them out to preach. “O man, you are certainly immortal, even if you do not think about it, even if you do not want it!” we will say in the words of the ever-memorable Saint Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow. "Beware of forgetting your immortality, lest the oblivion of immortality become a deadly poison for your mortal life, and lest the immortality you forget kill you forever, if it suddenly appears to you, not expecting it and not ready for it. Do not say desperately: 'In the morning we will die,' so that you rush all the more unbridledly after the pleasures of mortal life. Say with hope and fear: 'In the morning we will die on earth and be born either in heaven or in hell.'"

d) The last and most powerful weapon against the fear of death is the faith that the soul is not only immortal, but that there will be a time when it will be united with its resurrected glorified body for eternal life beyond the grave - blessed for the righteous, tormenting for the sinners. Having a living faith in this truth, a Christian will not only not fear death, but will even greet it with joy when it comes to him, like the All Holy Virgin Mary.

This living faith in the existence of an eternal blessed life beyond the grave inspired countless multitudes of martyrs in the first centuries of Christianity and made death the most joyful event for them, despite the terrible inhuman tortures to which the Holy Martyrs were subjected, when they were burned alive at the stake, crucified on the cross, given over to be torn apart by wild hungry animals, their bones were crushed, their limbs were torn from their living bodies and subjected to other countless tortures, the invention of which was only possible through the satanic malice of the enemies of Christ.

III. Let the teaching of the Holy Scriptures on the resurrection of the dead and the future life and the living example of the Holy Martyrs awaken at least a small part of this ardent faith in us, Orthodox Christians. The Savior clearly said for all times and peoples: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live... all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth — those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:25-29). "I am the resurrection and the life," says the Savior to Martha, the sister of Lazarus, who died and was resurrected by Him, and to all mankind, “he who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

Let us, brethren, live in such a way that death does not seem to us a terrible, but a joyful messenger, calling us to an eternal blessed life beyond the grave. Amen. 

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.