Reflections on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

As Orthodox we are often asked about our devotion to the Mother of God.  Most protestants think we are extreme in our observance of her feasts and her life, and in our desires for her prayers.

Think for a moment, if you will, about the importance of the Apostles in the early days of the Church.  They went out as we say “into all lands” carrying the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ into sometimes very dangerous realms.  We speak of them as the Apostles to various areas:

Simon Peter –crucified

Andrew the First-called – brother of Peter; crucified

James (son of Zebedee) – also called “the Great”; beheaded

Philip – crucified

Bartholomew – also called Nathaniel; crucified, flayed and beheaded

Thomas – pierced with five spears

Matthew – also called Levi, burned alive

James (son of Alphaeus) – crucified

Jude – also called Lebbaeus, surnamed Thaddeus, brother of James the brother of God; crucified

Simon the Zealot – also called “the Canaanite”; crucified

Matthias – replaced Judas Iscariot; stoned and beheaded

John the Theologian – brother of James; reposed in a miraculous manner

It would seem rather thankless work, but not to those who responded to their preaching.  For them, they were, in one sense, the means of salvation.  Through them, they met and came to Jesus Christ.

Mary, the blessed Virgin and God-bearer, is the means to salvation for all of them.  Through her, the Apostles and everyone who would follow them, including us, met Jesus, for it was she who brought Him into this world.

Today we commemorate her Assumption into heaven.  Why should Enoch and Elijah be taken up bodily from this earth, and not the Mother of God?  She had prayed that her Son might deliver her in death as in life, and the icon of the feast reveals to us that the Lord fulfilled her prayer, and in the hour of her death came Himself from heaven with a multitude of angels to receive her soul.  

On the third day, they opened the tomb to venerate her relics, but did not find the body in the tomb.  The Mother of God later appeared to them as they sat to eat, shining with a heavenly light, and informed them that her Son had glorified her body also, and she, resurrected, stood before His throne.  The apostles greeted her with great joy, and from that time the Church began to venerate her as not only the Mother of God, but as their heavenly helper, as a Protector of Christians and intercessor for the whole human race.

In the West the feast is called the Assumption, for both Western Catholics and Orthodox believe that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven. There is, of course, no mention of this in the New Testament (in fact there is very little mention of the Mother of God anywhere in the New Testament).   

The information comes from other sources.  We believe it, however, because it is the witness and the Apostolic tradition of the Church. 

We believe that Mary, chosen to be the God-bearer, was assumed, without corruption, into heaven, and received her resurrection body.  Indeed we believe that she has been deified – been made like God.  

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are instructed that we may all be deified, achieving the likeness as well as the image of God, and receiving Resurrection bodies. The Mother of God is therefore our example of what is possible to humanity through the salvation wrought by Christ.  

In another sense, the Assumption is the fulfillment before the eyes of the Apostles of Jesus’ prophecy in John’s Gospel that He is the Resurrection and the Life: “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”  Though, as Orthodox Christians we believe that Mary reposed before her resurrection, it was, as the word Dormition means, merely a falling asleep to this life and a rising to the life of the Age to come.

So shall it be for each of those who are in Christ as His faithful disciples. In this too, the Blessed Virgin stands as our example and forerunner, though for most of us, there will likely be a longer time of rest between our repose and our Resurrection.

She, above all the Saints, shows us that victory over temptation is possible; that true holiness can be attained in this life, by the grace of God and by our faithful efforts.

Her greatness is that of the human creature who has so joined herself to the divine grace as to be considered not only blessed and full of grace, but “more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, thou who without stain bearest God the Word, and art truly Theotokos, we magnify thee.”