An Empty Tomb and the Bridal Chamber:
A Reflection on the Feast of the Dormition

by Dr Lydia Gore Jones (Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies)

“The Bible says nothing,” a non-Orthodox friend asked me, “about the death of Mary and her assumption, does it?”

He was absolutely right. There was no historical records, and neither the Gospels nor Patristic writings in the first four centuries of Christianity mention anything about Mary’s life after the Pentecost. St Epiphanius of Salamis, who died in 403, writes that people examining the scriptures “will find no evidence there either on the death of Mary, nor on whether she died or not, nor whether she was buried or not buried. And when John went to Asia, nowhere is it mentioned that he took the Virgin with him.” Only from the late 6^th century did the Dormition become a feast day on the Church’s liturgical calendar. Its establishment is not to be traced to scriptures, but to a sacred tradition from apostolic times, the faith of the people and the unanimous affirmation of holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church.

“If the Gospels say nothing about it,” my friend continued, “why is it important?”

“But why wouldn’t one want to commemorate the passing of someone as important as their own Mother, and honour a Saint so great who gave birth to the Word of God?” I answered his question with another question, a response from first instinct.

“Of course,” he said, “but there has be more to just THAT. Why is it important, theologically speaking?”

He’s absolutely right again. So now I ask myself the same question: why is the Feast of Dormition theologically important? I turned to the liturgical texts – the hymns and prayers of the Church – for answers, because it is in liturgical celebrations that the faithful are nourished and taught, that theology comes alive and becomes meaningful life.

What I learned was that at the heart of every Feast, even the Dormition of the Theotokos, radiates the Pascha of Christ and the assured salvation of humanity. Like a ray of light of its own colour, the Dormition cannot be separate from its very source of brilliance. Listen to this hymn sung at the Vespers on the Eve of Dormition:

O strange wonder, great and marvellous! For the fount of life is laid within a sepulchre; a ladder to Heaven’s heights doth the small grave become. Be glad, O Gethsemane, the sanctuary of her that gave birth to God. Ye faithful, let us cry out, possessing as our commander great Gabriel: Maiden Full of Grace, rejoice, with thee is the Lord our God, Who abundantly granteth His great mercy to the world through thee. (Verse 6 after “Lord I have cried”)

The hymn brings to mind other Feasts of the Church. The archangel Gabriel, who cried to her, “Rejoice, Full of Grace” at the Annunciation, now leads again the choir of angels and men in salute. The other time we are asked to behold “the strange and marvellous mystery” is at the Nativity of Christ: the cave is a heaven, and the virgin the cherubic throne; and now the “fount of life” – she who gave birth to Life – is laid in a tomb, and a “ladder” that connects heaven and earth now in a grave. “Gethsemane” brings to mind the beginning of her son’s Passion, and the “sepulchre” empty on the third day echoes the news of Christ’s own rising from the dead.

Indeed, her Dormition cannot be understood apart from the death and resurrection of Christ. As we sing in the opening verse of the Lamentations of the Dormition: “In a grave they laid you yet, O Christ, you are life and they now have laid the Mother of Life as well: both to angels and to men a sight most strange!” (Stasis 1). And indeed, the Theotokos has become the first human being who has followed Christ the trailblazer from death to life, and from earth to heaven. Like Christ, she died and lied in a grave; like Christ, she receives the singing of Lamentations from her children at her burial – I mean the “Lamentations” we sing after the Dormition Vespers; in the manner of Christ, she was raised on the third day, and her tomb was empty; and following Christ, she was taken up, witnessed by the apostles, and, through the uplifted gates of heaven in the amazement of angels, was seated on the right hand of God. As St Gregory Palamas reminds us in his Dormition homily:

Today she has moved from earth to heaven, and now has heaven too as a fitting dwelling place, a palace meet for her. She has stood on the right hand of the King of all, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in divers colours, as the Psalmist and Prophet says of her; and you should take this garment interwoven with gold to mean her divinely radiant body adorned with every type of virtue. For at present, she is the only one who has a place in heaven with her divinely glorified body in the company of her son. (“On the Dormition,” Homily 37.8)

She is the only one – so far. In cases of other Saints we venerate their relics, but in the case of the Theotokos, we are shown an empty tomb on earth and a powerful intercessor in heaven, a human being more honourable and beyond compare more glorious than the hosts on high. She is that “seed of David through whom we have been deified” (Verse 2 of the Aposticha for the Dormition), the seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth are blessed, the offspring of Eve who crushed the head of the Serpent (Gen 3:15), indeed, the new Eve, who is truly Life, “the Mother of all living” (Gen 3:20).

But we celebrate her glorification not only because she is truly worthy to be magnified beyond human capacity of praising, but also because she is given to us by God as a reassuring sign of hope, the precursor to the eschatological glory awaiting all her children who follow her example. There is only one Theotokos, the “Birth-giver of God,” but we are all called to become the Bearer of Christ, to bear fruit to the divine Word. In the Gospel reading during the Divine Liturgy for the Dormition feast, St Luke depicts for us another Mary, the sister of Martha, who abandons everything and simply sits at the Lord’s feed and listens to His teaching. This, Jesus says, is the “one thing” that is “needful.” When a woman shouts to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that Thou didst suck!”, Jesus says, “Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:38-42; 11:27-28). Contrary to the misunderstanding of many modern readers that Jesus seems to be downplaying the importance of His own mother, the Lord is in fact exhorting us to closely follow the example of her, who first conceived the Logos at the archangel’s words even before the conception in her womb.

Yes, my friend was right that the Gospels say nothing about the Dormition of the Theotokos, but it doesn’t mean that scriptures give us no inklings at all. In the above quoted words of St Gregory Palamas, the presentation of the Holy Virgin before her Lord and King as the Bride of God and Queen of Heaven was prophesied in a mystical vision of the Psalmist:

Hear, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house; and the King will desire your beauty. …

The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; in many coloured robes she is led to the King, with her virgin companions, her escort, in her train.

With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the King.

Instead of your fathers shall be your sons; you will make them princes in all the earth.

I will cause your name to be celebrated in all generations; therefore the peoples will praise you for ever and ever. (Psalm 45; LXX 44)

For St Gregory Palamas, the psalm is describing not only a historical royal matrimony in the life of David or Solomon, as many modern readers naturally think, but the mystical wedding in heaven. Indeed, at Matins, David is called upon to confirm the truth:

Call out, O David, what is this present feast? He said, “verily, she whom I praised in the Psalms as daughter, Maiden of God and Virgin, hath been translated by Christ, Who was born of her without seed, to yonder abodes. (First Kathisma hymn of the Dormition)

Using Psalm 45 (LXX 44) and St Luke’s Annunciation, the unnamed holy hymnographer composed “A Good Word” which we sing at Marian feasts. The Psalmist, the Archangel, the hymnographer, and worshippers who sing join their voices to praise her:

My heart hath poured forth a good word. … My tongue is the pen of a swiftly writing scribe. … Rejoice, O Queen of Angels, Sovereign Lady of the world … O hope of those without hope, and help of the embattled, … O Mother of Life. … Rejoice, O most holy paradise; rejoice, thou Bride unwedded. … I shall commemorate thy name in every generation and generation. … (“A Good Word”)

But let’s again not forget that the psalm is not merely about praising the glory of one woman, no matter how great she is, but about the vision of the glorified Church as a whole, the Body of Christ, because her Head and King, Christ Himself, became a servant, so that the one “down-trodden” and “poor” now became Queen and stood at His right hand, according to St John Chrysostom (“On Eutropius,” Homily 2.6; PG 52:402). St Basil the Great likewise identifies the “daughter” in the psalm as the Church, saying that the Psalmist is addressing the Church to listen and to keep the King’s commandments, so that each and every believer and thus the whole Church may be fully joined to Christ (“On Psalm 44,” PG 29:408C-412D).

I think how I can give a better answer to my friend’s question, why the Dormition is theologically important. But again how can it ever suffice to merely understand mentally and intellectually? One must also marvel and wonder, together with Angels, Saints and all Creation, at this mystical paradox: how was it possible that “the bounds of nature are overcome in thee, O immaculate Virgin; for thy childbirth is virginal, and thy death is the espousal of life”? And one must also join in the cry: “O Theotokos, ever save thine inheritance” (The Ninth ode of the First Dormition Canon in Tone One).

About the Author

Dr Lydia Gore-Jones Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies (Old Testament) Lydia Gore-Jones is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies (Biblical Studies) at St Andrew’s. Her doctoral thesis completed at Macquarie University dealt with two Jewish apocalyptic works as response to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70. She has taught subjects related to biblical history and Hebrew language at tertiary level. She had previously worked as radio journalist, translator, and teacher of English as a Second Language... Read author's full bio here..

⇒ Back to Blog Main page