In the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit!
Today the Holy Church commemorates the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today we are going to talk about the meaning of the assumption. The transformation of the death of the Mother of God into sleep, repose, Her ascent in the flesh to heaven is the experience of the resurrection, which Christ began. Thus, the Blessed Virgin was the first to make full use of the gifts of the resurrection of Her Son and the gifts of His miraculous Ascension into heaven. Thus, She is the pledge of the very Christian death for which we pray at every service. The very desire for life is a thirst for an unearthly spirit, it is a thirst for a heavenly dwelling. People deceive themselves when it seems to them that the lust for life is the lust for the preservation of biological existence. This is not true. The thirst for life is the thirst to get closer to the true source of life, which is God, about whom the Bible says that “in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This is also confirmed by the fact that when a person sees the good in the earthly, in the transient, he can never find satisfaction for himself. This is called the inevitable contradiction of human life. A person all the time strives for the good and happiness, but at different moments of his life he understands in different ways what good and happiness are. When you are a child, you think that goodness and happiness is a good education that you will receive at school. And in this you see the meaning of your existence. This is your goal, and this is your good and happiness. But when you achieve this goal, you lose it as a goal and as the highest good. Now your goal and highest good is a good job. And you strive for this goal and for this good. But gaining, you lose it as a goal and as a blessing. Then you say to yourself, maybe this is the family that I will create. And you see in the continuation of your own kind the purpose and good. But beauty fades, children grow up and leave the family nest. And then a person says to himself, maybe the goal and the good is a good old age, a good old age with a good pension, with the support of children. And it seems to a person that this relaxation will not stop. But then death comes. What we did not strive for, what we did not consider our goal and in which we definitely did not see our good. This is the inevitable contradiction of human life. And the Blessed Virgin Mary finds a solution to this contradiction. At the age of 14, She accepted the action of the Holy Spirit into Her young life. At the age of 15, she became the Mother of Christ the Savior. We are called to do the same. The New Testament tells us that “Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith” (Eph.3:17). Having found this true meaning of life in Christ and with Christ, the Virgin Mary no longer lost it, She lived with this feeling. God-child Jesus, Jesus the youth, Jesus the young man, Jesus the mature man, Jesus the man and God. In Her womb, She united the incompatible – the earthly with the heavenly, the human with the divine, calling us to follow the same path. After all, in the Orthodox Christian understanding, salvation is deification, that is, the restoration of the image of God in man, that which was defiled by the fall, the recreation in a person’s life of the likeness of God. The Virgin Mary miraculously became like God. As you and I often remember, neither an angel, nor an archangel, nor a cherub, nor a seraphim can love the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, with parental love. This is the privilege of God the Father and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Neither the archangel, nor the cherub, nor the seraphim, nor the principles, nor the strengths, nor the powers, nor the dominions can address the Second Person of the Holy Trinity with the words My beloved son. This is the priority of God the Father and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thus, She most fully and inaccessibly for us restored the likeness of God, in which we see the meaning of salvation. After all, God created man from the beginning in His own image and likeness. By Her Assumption, She breathes hope for a quiet, serene Christian life for us and for a Christian death. Man is born to die, but dies to live. That’s what people said in the days of Jesus Christ. This is from the Mishnah treatise “Pirkei Avot” (“Teachings of the Fathers”). Indeed, as soon as a person is born, he goes to death. Sometimes death comes too quickly, consuming the youngest and even babies. And sometimes life stretches out and becomes something unbearable, heavy, oppressive. Like the life of the righteous Simeon, who is tired of it. And when he saw the fulfillment of the prophecies, he exclaimed with relief: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” (Luke 2:29). The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is a new format of human departure from this earth. And we sing the Virgin on this day: How wonderfully the Virgin ascends from earth to heaven. And we don’t call it death. On the one hand, because there is no death. For, as the New Testament says, Christ brought us life and life in abundance (John 10:10). Abundant life is a life that, having begun in this temporary life, never ends. It doesn’t start beyond the grave. When you come to the cup of Holy Communion, you are communed for the remission of sins and eternal life. Here it is eternal life – in the Eucharistic union with Christ. And for the first time this union by the definition of Chalcedon, inseparably, unchangingly, inseparably between the divine and the human, takes place in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the Mother of the Church. Because the Church is also a divine-human organism. And we all Christians in the person of John the Theologian were adopted to Her at the cross of Calvary, when Christ, looking at the Virgin Mary, then at John, said to His Mother: “…behold thy son“. And to John:”… Behold thy mother“(John 19:26–27). That’s where we are adopted to the Virgin Mary – at the cross of the Lord. This is the place where we, in the streams of the blood of the Son of God, acquire a new affinity. We become members of a new family, the family of the children of God, the people of the Church. On this day, the Virgin ascends from earth to heaven. But we are not pure enough to live through it now. Our body will go through death, through decay in the earth, in order to return to the state of pre-existence, when God created man from the dust of the earth. As it is said, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”(Gen. 2:7). But then, when the sound of the trumpet of the archangel Gabriel will be the resurrection of the dead and when we are resurrected, we will experience the ascension. For the meeting of Christ the Bridegroom with His bride the Church will be in the air in the expanse of the open sky. The Virgin Mary opened heaven for us through Her womb. We honor Her womb Be the most spacious of heaven. What does it mean? About God it is said in the Bible that “heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (3 Kin. 8:27). God is the creator of matter. But matter does not exist without space and time. And as the Creator of matter, he is the Creator of space and time, and the heavens of heavens cannot contain Him. But the womb of the humble Virgin of Nazareth, a fourteen-year-old Virgin, contains the Uncontainable. Her Dormition is a new format for leaving this earthly life and the coming ascent from earth to heaven. Therefore, we honor this event again and again. If you like, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is our personal Pascha. For death is not here, death is overcome by Her purity. And we speak of dead people as asleep, and this is correct. And Christ, seeing the dead girl, said “… the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth” (Mark 5:39). That night we had dreams, that night you were walking in your sleep, talking. And the ancients taught that in human sleep there is 1/10 of death, 1/10 of death. We act, speak in a dream, experience, and this is 1/10 of death, as if our very nature prepares us for this, so that we do not doubt the existence of another life, in fact, deeper and more real than that illusory life, in which we are now. The great merit of the Blessed Virgin Mary She was able to build the correct hierarchy of values. What should be in the first place in a person’s life, what is in the second, what is in the third and what is in the fourth. The New Testament begins with the words of the Virgin Mary, when She says to the servant of the Lord: “…Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word“(Luke 1:38). After all, a covenant is a covenant between someone and someone. And God makes a covenant with the human race through the archangel Gabriel from the divine side and through the Virgin Mary. And if She had not answered the voice of the Archangel with these words of the Lord’s servant “…Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word“(Luke 1:38), then the New Testament would not have started. Just as the Old Testament is not conceivable without Abraham, who believed God and God imputed this to him as righteousness. Thus She is the ladder from earth to heaven, Jacob’s ladder, on which angels ascend and descend. She is the house of God not made by hands, a pledge of future blessings for every believing Christian. She is our Mother, and in one ancient Christian prayer there are such words Never was and never will be, so that someone, turning to the Virgin Mary, would not be heard. And Her presence, Her actions we feel in this life. How? When we do something terrible, something sinful, and it seems to us that now the consequences of sin, sinfulness will fall on us and smear us, and nothing will remain of us. But suddenly, instead of a curse is a blessing, instead of an illness – healing, instead of anxiety – unexpected joy. It always means one thing – She again prayed for us. And she again begged her Son. Once the apostles asked themselves the question Who is on the right, who will be on the left of Jesus Christ in His Kingdom? To which Christ answered: Those for whom my Father has prepared. And look at the iconostasis: to the right of Jesus Christ is the Blessed Virgin Mary – the beginning of the New Testament, to the left is John the Baptist – the performer of the Old Testament. The Assumption of the Mother of God is what helps us overcome the fear of death in the hope of the resurrection. The Assumption of the Mother of God is an Easter testimony that there is no death. And there is only life in Christ and with Christ, which, having begun in this temporal life, does not stop beyond the grave. The Assumption of the Mother of God. Before this Assumption, She received a heavenly branch, which shone with an inexpressible light. Thus, the Assumption of the Mother of God is the light of heavenly life, which already through the miracle of Her Dormition penetrates into our lives. And we feel this light as it spreads warmth over our souls. This is a joyful holiday, there is no sorrow in it, there is no despondency in it, there is no despair in it. There is hope, there is life and trust in God. Happy feast to you!
Translated from Russian