Tag Archives: Dormition

Woman Clothed With the Sun

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The woman clothed with the sun attacked by the seven-headed red dragon depicted in a 17th-century fresco in a Mt. Athos monastery.

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman robed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth …. Then a second sign appeared in heaven: a great red dragon with seven heads …. (Apocalypse 12:1-6)

The woman clothed with the sun is one of my favorite characters or episodes in the New Testament. In the earliest commentaries, she is understood to be the Church, the New Israel, and the baby she gives birth to is the new Christian–at this period, typically an adult–who emerges newborn from the baptismal font. The red dragon with seven heads is the Roman imperial system who attacks the Church and slays the martyrs. The woman and her baby–the Church and the newly baptized–escape to safety in the wilderness, which is where the early ascetics and first monastics fled to pray and fast.

One of my favorite patristic texts–one of the first I ever read in its totality, as a freshman in the Sterling Library at Yale–is The Banquet by St. Methodius of Olympus. The Banquet is the one of the first and is the most extensive of the early Christian discussions of the woman clothed with the sun.

In the third century, commentators begin to see the woman clothed with the sun as the ever-virgin Mother of God who gives birth to Christ. They are attacked by Herod and flee to safety in Egypt. The importance of this interpretation of the Mother of God grows in importance as she becomes a model for the ascetics and monastics in the desert-wilderness, usually in Egypt but also near the Jordan River.

The image of the woman clothed with the sun becomes associated with the “falling asleep” (the Dormition or Assumption) of the Mother of God. She is taken into eternal glory in the Kingdom of God because she is the Mother of God who gives her flesh to the Word. Everything human about the Word-made-flesh came from her; his DNA is her DNA. She is the first believer to be taken into glory as a pledge of what all members of the Body of Christ will experience.

The woman clothed with the sun is one of the most frequently depicted figures in the New Testament. If the Apocalypse is a multi-valent and many layered text, the woman clothed with the sun is one of the most multi-valent and many layered figures in the New Testament.

The woman clothed with the sun in an illumination from the Beatus manuscript of the Apocalypse.
Another medieval manuscript illumination depicting the woman clothed with the sun escaping from the great dragon.

The Harvest of Death

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The Dormition of the Mother of God, commonly called the “Assumption” by Western Christians, celebrates the falling-asleep of the Mother of God on August 15 and her translation into glory at the right hand of her Son. This deathbed scene is often depicted in Orthodox icons and medieval Western paintings with Mary dying as the apostles surround her deathbed and Jesus gathers her soul into His arms like a new-born child (similar to the way He is depicted in swaddling bands at Christmas). It has been said in at least a few sermons that, “If Christmas is God’s birthday into humanity, then Dormition is humanity’s birthday into divinity."

The Dormition of the Mother of God, commonly called the “Assumption” by Western Christians, celebrates the falling-asleep of the Mother of God on August 15 and her translation into glory at the right hand of her Son. This deathbed scene is often depicted in Orthodox icons and medieval Western paintings with Mary dying as the apostles surround her deathbed and Jesus gathers her soul into His arms like a new-born child (similar to the way He is depicted in swaddling bands at Christmas). It has been said in at least a few sermons that, “If Christmas is God’s birthday into humanity, then Dormition is humanity’s birthday into divinity.”

One of the classic prayers for the dead in both Latin-speaking and Greek-speaking Christianity is a psalm about the harvest. Psalm 64/65 begins:

“You are to be praised, O God, in Zion:
to you shall vows be performed in Jerusalem.
To you that hear prayer shall all flesh come…
Our sins are stronger than we are,
but you will blot them out.”

The psalm goes on to describe God’s power to erect mountains and calm the roaring of the sea, to call the sun to rise and set, and then concludes:

“You prepare the grain,
for so you provide for the earth.
You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges;
with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.
You crown the year with your goodness,
and your paths overflow with plenty.
May the fields of the wilderness be rich for grazing,
and the hills be clothed with joy.
May the meadows cover themselves with flocks,
and the valleys cloak themselves with grain;
let them shout for joy and sing.”

The psalm celebrates both death and harvest as two sides of one mystery, the resurrection of both human corpses and the seeds that are cast into the earth to die and rise again — and be harvested, thus continuing the cycle.

As part of the mid-August celebration of the Dormition (“falling asleep”) of the Mother of God, flowers and fragrant herbs are brought into the church to be blessed. This aspect of Dormition celebrates the harvest going on in the fields outside the churches and the “harvest” of each human life on their deathbed. This harvest and gathering into glory of each human life to await the End Times or Last Judgment gives the practical duties of farmyard duties a very apocalyptic or eschatological flavor. (Apocalypse and eschatology relate to “End Times” and “Last Things.”) This human harvest is celebrated again at the end of the farmyard harvest season with Halloween and the Day of the Dead in November.

The flowers and herbs blessed on August 15 are thought to disperse devils by their fragrant scent and to keep devils from trapping the soul of a dying person if they are placed around the deathbed.

Dormition

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Fra Angelico painted this depiction of the Dormition of the Virgin in 1431-2.

Fra Angelico painted this depiction of the Dormition of the Virgin in 1431-2.

The Dormition of the Mother of God, commonly called the “Assumption” by Western Christians, celebrates the falling-asleep of the Mother of God on August 15 and her translation into glory at the right hand of her Son. This deathbed scene is often depicted in Orthodox icons and medieval Western paintings (such as Fra Angelico’s seen above) with Mary dying as the apostles surround her deathbed and Jesus gathers her soul into His arms like a new-born child (similar to the way He is depicted in swaddling bands at Christmas). It has been said in at least a few sermons that, “If Christmas is God’s birthday into humanity, then Dormition is Humanity’s birthday into divinity.”

As part of the Dormition celebration, flowers and fragrant herbs are brought into the church to be blessed. This aspect of Dormition celebrates the harvest going on in the fields outside the churches and the “harvest” of each human life on their deathbed. This harvest and gathering into glory of each human life to await the End Times or Last Judgment gives the practical duties of farmyard duties a very apocalyptic or eschatological flavor. (Apocalypse and eschatology relate to “End Times” and “Last Things.”) This human harvest is celebrated again at the end of the farmyard harvest season with Halloween and the Day of the Dead in November.

The flowers and herbs blessed on August 15 are thought to disperse devils by their fragrant scent and to keep devils from tripping the soul of a dying person if they are placed around the deathbed.