Priest Ioan Istrati
In giving birth you preserved your virginity, / in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. / You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, / and by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death.
The troparion of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God synthesizes theologically the entire essence of holy values of the Holy Mother of God.
Pure Virgin and mother of a divine infant, Mary defeats by her purity the boundaries of nature showing the greatest miracle of history, the Birth of God as a Man from her.
This miracle of the ages is not an ontological accident but the fruit-bearing full of light of humanity who by perseverance in holiness advanced on the path of resemblance with God. The Holy infant Mary cultivated so much in her heart divine holiness and purity that she became to resemble so much God that Christ in person willed to resemble her.
In the life of the Holy Mother of God it is seen in full the overwhelming power of the tenderness of a mother who gives birth to Christ, the power of the loving fragility, the mysterious profoundness of human loyalty, the purity of the praying thought, the light of the human maternity, the inexpressible union between humbleness and glory, between earth and sky, between human and God.
The Dormition of the Holy Mother of God is the theological act of supreme reciprocity of love, the eternal Son being held in her arms by His Mother now receiving in His arms the virginal soul of Mary in the form of a baby. The natural answer of God of embracing the soul of His mother comes out from a life of endless love, of quiet suffering and of deep humbleness of His Mother.
Her Dormition means the return to the parental arms of her Son, the mysterious encounter between those who never separated, the fulfillment of the maternal vocation and the finality of the union between man and God.
The Holy Mother of God fed at her virginal breast the Feeder of All and washed the One who purifies all creature and taught to walk the Guide of galaxies and taught to speak the Logos of the whole universe. Now she receives the gift of approaching the Throne of glory and the stay on the right of God.
The words of the troparion: `in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos` shows the mystery of the future age, of ontological simultaneity in love, of total communion through prayer, of spiritual presence in compassion and of living in the bosom of God.
Although with her body and soul in the skies the Holy Mother of God remains closer of any man, closer of the mother of anyone of us. Nobody and nothing can stop her listen to the prayers and tears of the whole world. Her yearn, her pain – to see her Son dying on the Cross – now turns into a wondrous power which listens carefully to the pains of the world, passes them through the wider than the skies heart of the Holy Mother and reaches the heart of the Lord. So the Holy Mother doesn`t need to pray Him anything as he Listens all the whispers of her heart, all the sighs of pain she receives and He loves her so much that fulfills them as He did in the Cana of Galilee
