When our Lord Jesus Christ willed to take unto Himself His own Mother, then, three days beforehand, He revealed to her through an Angel — said to have been the Archangel Gabriel — her translation from earth to Heaven. And when the Angel came to her, he said: “Thus says your Son: the time has come for Me to receive My Mother to Myself. Therefore, be not troubled at this, but accept the message with joy, for you are passing over into immortal life.” Learning this, the Mother of God rejoiced with great gladness. Moved by the longing to go to her Son, she went with haste and readiness up to the Mount of Olives to pray. (For the All-Hymned one had such a custom, to ascend to that mountain often.) Then a wondrous miracle followed: when the Theotokos ascended there, the trees growing upon the mount bowed down their tops, as if they were living and rational beings, and thus they venerated and offered due honor to the Lady and Mistress of the world.
After the All-Immaculate had prayed sufficiently, she returned to her house, and — O wonder! — immediately the whole place was shaken. Then the Lady lit many lamps, and giving thanks to God, she called her kinswomen and neighbors. Sweeping her house, she prepared the bier and made ready all things suitable for her burial. She also told the other women the words spoken to her by the Angel concerning her departure to the Heavens. And to confirm and assure them of the truth, she showed them the joyful and triumphant sign that the Angel had given her — a branch of palm. The women, hearing this sorrowful message, wept and washed their faces with tears, lamenting with pitiful cries. Yet ceasing from their mourning, they besought the Lady not to leave them orphans. The Mother of God reassured them that even after she would be taken up to Heaven, she would guard not only them but the entire world. Thus, with such comforting words, she calmed their excessive grief.
Then the All-Pure arranged for her two garments: that the two widows known to her and supported by her should each receive one. While she was giving these directions, O wonder again! — suddenly there was the sound of a great thunderclap, and immediately many clouds appeared, which, taking the Apostles from the ends of the inhabited world, brought them to the house of the Mother of God. With the Apostles came also Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint Hierotheos his teacher, the Apostle Timothy, and other God-inspired Hierarchs, borne upon the clouds. Learning the reason for their sudden and miraculous gathering, they said to the Theotokos: “O Lady, while you lived and remained in the world, we were comforted as though seeing your Son and our Master and Teacher. But now, since by the will of your Son and God you are going to the Heavens, we, as you see, grieve and weep. Yet in another sense, we rejoice for the things being accomplished in you.” Saying this, they wet their faces with tears.
The Theotokos replied to them: “O friends and disciples of my Son and God, do not turn my joy into mourning and sorrow. Instead, bury my body as I shall arrange it upon the bier.” When these words were finished, behold, the wondrous Apostle Paul, the chosen vessel, arrived; falling at the feet of the Mother of God, he venerated her. Opening his mouth, he praised her with many heavenly encomiums, saying: “Rejoice, O Mother of Life, and subject of my preaching; for although I did not see your Son in the flesh upon earth, yet seeing you, I thought I beheld Him Himself.” Afterwards, the Virgin bade farewell to all. She lay upon the bier, arranged her All-Immaculate Body as she willed, and offered prayers and supplications to her Son for the preservation and peace of the whole world. She filled the Apostles and Hierarchs with the blessing of her Son, given through her to mankind, and thus she entrusted her all-radiant and All-Holy soul into the hands of her Son and God.
Then Peter, the foremost of the Apostles, began to speak funeral praises to the Theotokos, and the other Apostles lifted the bier. Some went before, bearing lamps and candles, chanting hymns; others followed, escorting to the tomb the God-receiving body of the Mother of God. Then angels were heard from Heaven singing, and the voices of the bodiless Powers filled the air. The envious rulers of the Jews, unable to endure these sights and sounds, stirred up some of the people, persuading them to cast down to the ground the holy bier bearing the life-originating Body of the Theotokos. But divine justice anticipated and punished those who dared this, blinding their eyes. One of them lost not only his sight but also his hands, for he had more boldly than the rest seized the sacred bier; his daring hands were left hanging upon it, cut off by the sword of divine justice. He thus became a pitiable and tearful sight. Yet later, believing with all his soul, he was not only healed and restored whole as before, but also became an instrument of healing and salvation to those who had been blinded. For taking a small portion of the garment of the Theotokos and placing it upon the blind, O wonder! he healed them both of blindness and of unbelief.
When the Apostles reached the place of Gethsemane, they buried the All-Immaculate Body of the Theotokos, and remained there for three days, hearing unceasingly during that time the hymns and voices of the Holy Angels. By divine dispensation — as tradition says — one of the Apostles (Thomas, as most hold) was not present at the funeral of the life-originating body of the Theotokos, but arrived on the third day. He grieved greatly that he had not been deemed worthy to see what the others had seen. Therefore, by common decision, all the Apostles opened the tomb so that the latecomer might venerate the Body of the Theotokos. Opening it, they were all astonished: they found the tomb empty of the body, having only the shroud, which remained as consolation to the Apostles and as an undeniable testimony and proof of the Mother of God’s translation from the tomb. Even to this day, her tomb, hewn into the rock, is seen and venerated as empty of the body. Her Synaxis and feast are celebrated in the venerable church of Blachernae, and also in all the churches everywhere.
Here we note that our Lady Theotokos, after her three-day repose in the tomb, was not only translated but also resurrected from the tomb and taken up into Heaven — that is, her all-radiant soul was reunited with her God-receiving body, and thus she arose from the tomb. After her resurrection, she was immediately taken up bodily into Heaven, indeed above the heavens. That these things are true is confirmed by the Spirit-inspired mouths of the holy Theologians.
For the divine Andrew of Crete, in one of his three encomia on the Dormition — the one beginning “The present feast is a mystery” — writes thus:
“How could the translation be untrue, since all other things concurred? The separation of the soul from the body; the dissolution of the composite; the parting of the elements; the dissolution, the rejoining (that is, the union of the soul with the body), the reconstitution (that is, the resurrection), and the withdrawal to what is unseen.”
Saint John of Damascus, in one of his three homilies on the Dormition — the one beginning “It is customary for those who are in love with anyone” — says:
“It was fitting that, just as gold, casting off the earthly and dim burden of mortality, in the furnace of death, the flesh (of the Theotokos), incorrupt and shining with the radiance of immortality, should arise from the tomb. Today, the Theotokos receives the beginning of a second existence (which is the resurrection) from Him who granted her the beginning of her first existence.”
With these agrees the holy Kosmas, chanting in one troparion of the first ode of his Canon for the Dormition:
“Therefore, though dying, with your Son you are raised, eternal in being.”
Most clearly and explicitly, the divine Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, in his homily on the Dormition, proclaims:
“She alone now, together with her God-glorified Body, has with her Son the heavenly dwelling… For if the soul, having the grace of God dwelling in it, ascends to Heaven when released from things here, how could that body which not only contained within itself the pre-eternal and only-begotten Son of God, the unceasing Fountain of grace, but also was shown to be His generating body, not be taken from earth to Heaven? Therefore, the body that gave Him birth is, fittingly, glorified together with Him who was born of it, with divine glory, and rises with Him, as the prophetic song says, with the three-day risen Christ, the Ark of His holiness. And the proof given to the disciples of her resurrection from the dead is that only the shrouds and grave-cloths remained in the tomb, found there by those who came seeking her, just as it was earlier with her Son and Lord. Nor was there any need for her, like her Son and God, to remain yet a little while on earth; therefore, she was immediately taken up from the tomb to the heavenly place above the heavens.”
Likewise, Theodore the Studite confirms this in his homily on the Dormition. And similarly, the divine Mark of Ephesus, in his Octoechos Canons for the Dormition, says in one troparion of the ninth ode in the grave mode:
“Let the All-Pure be magnified with praiseful songs, let the All-Blessed be rightly called blessed, for she has died and risen again as the Mother of the Lord, for the confirmation of the final resurrection which we hope for.”
And in another troparion of the sixth ode in the plagal fourth mode, he says:
“The Mother of Life accepts death, and being laid in the tomb, after three days she rises in glory, reigning forever with her Son, and asking for the forgiveness of our sins.”
I pass over to say that even in the common Horologion it is written regarding the exaltation of the All-Holy, that the disciples, coming to the tomb and not finding the All-Holy Body of the Theotokos, were truly persuaded that, living and bodily, and risen on the third day like her Son, she had been taken up into the Heavens.
If anyone should propose that verse which says: “To the Heavens your spiritual soul, to Paradise your holy Tabernacle,” we answer: first, that this verse is by an anonymous poet, not by John of Damascus; and second, that in the manuscript books it is written thus: “To Paradise your spiritual soul, as divinely commanded, O immaculate Mary, was delivered to the Apostles in voice, O All-Holy.” And from disputed writings, nothing certain is concluded. Moreover, Paradise is also understood in a noetic sense, and is taken as synonymous with Heaven, as Saint Theophylact says in interpreting the words “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”
Why then is the resurrection and ascension of the Theotokos not publicly proclaimed in the Church, but only her “Translation” is spoken of? Some answer thus: First, because the resurrection and ascension of the Theotokos are not testified in the divine Scriptures, as is the resurrection and ascension of her Son and God. Second, because the resurrection and ascension of the Theotokos are a mystical dogma, recorded only in the writings of the Fathers, and not a public proclamation. Therefore it is kept silent, for, according to Saint Basil the Great, “Dogmas are kept in silence, proclamations are made public” (Canon 91). They also answer thirdly that Translation is a more comprehensive term than resurrection and ascension, for everything that is resurrected or taken up is also translated to another place. Therefore, the term “Translation” used of the Theotokos includes both her resurrection and her ascension.
From what has been said, it is clear that those who think that the Theotokos did not rise — that is, that her most holy soul was not reunited with her immaculate body, and that her body is not alive in Heaven but dead, separated from the soul that gives it life — do not think rightly.
(Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite)
Apolytikion of Dormition of the Theotokos
First Tone
In birth, you preserved your virginity; in death, you did not abandon the world, O Theotokos. As mother of life, you departed to the source of life, delivering our souls from death by your intercessions.
Kontakion of Dormition of the Theotokos
Second Tone
Neither the grave nor death could contain the Theotokos, the unshakable hope, ever vigilant in intercession and protection. As Mother of life, He who dwelt in the ever-virginal womb transposed her to life.
