Falling Asleep Into Life – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
The Dormition of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Today we celebrate the feast of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Specifically, we celebrate her “dormition,” that is, her “falling asleep” in death. “Dormition” isn’t just a pious euphemism, but speaks to the peaceful quality of Mary’s death that tradition records, unlike the martyrdoms of so many other followers of Jesus.
The phrase, though, captures something more. The eighth-century patriarch of Constantinople Germanos writes that Mary “had to undergo [her] passage from this world as an awakening to [her] own reality as Mother of Life.”1 Mary’s death wasn’t just a passing away, but a falling asleep into life and a waking up into joy.
Mary is a witness to the joy of the gospel. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47). Joy lies at the heart of Mary’s response to God, her witness to God’s working in the world and her hope of the world to come.
Joy for all that God has done personally for her. “For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. … for the Mighty One has done great things for me” (Luke 1:48-49). She rejoices. But we don’t ever read that Mary was simply happy. Her actions in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles are varied: she was perplexed, pondered, treasured in her heart, set out with haste, searched, waited outside the door, stood near the cross, and was devoted to prayer. Hers sounds like a very human life, with uncertainty, fear, disappointment, and loss doled out alongside contentment and resolve. It sounds very much like our lives. Her rejoicing is an important model for us: of joy less as an emotion than a response.
Joy, crucially, isn’t about simple happiness, but has the quality of resilience that comes from deep certainty in the presence and faithfulness of God. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” Saint Paul is able to write from prison; “Rejoice … The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4-5). The psalmist writes similarly: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion … then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:1-2).
Our mouth; our tongue. Mary is a witness, too, to this joy, the communal joy in the restoration of God’s people. Our reading from Isaiah this morning closes chapter 61. Its beginning verses are quoted by Jesus at the beginning of his own ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2).
Mary’s yes to bear God to the world is fundamental to this work – Jesus’ work – which will “cause righteousness and praise to spring up” (Isaiah 61:11). This is restoration for the whole people, beautifully described in the prophecy of Jeremiah we heard last night: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built. … Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. … I will turn their mourning into joy” (Jeremiah 31:4-5, 13). With Mary, we rejoice not only in all that God has done for us individually, but for us communally as the people of God. We can rejoice in all that God has done not least because we believe – we trust, we have faith – that God will be faithful, that God will continue to restore a world that still so desperately needs healing.
Finally, Mary’s witness is not only to the joy we find in this life, but the joy we find in life eternal. “‘It is time, my Mother,’” Patriarch Germanos imagines Jesus saying, “‘to take you to myself. Just as you have filled the earth and all who dwell within it with joy … come, make the heavens joyful once again.’”2 Mary’s falling asleep into life alerts us to the continuity of life in this world and in the next: that both are a response to God, a pilgrimage further into the infinite mystery that is God’s very being.
Twice a day, we Brothers entreat Mary in the Angelus, the devotion of the Incarnation: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” These two points – now and the hour of our death – are “the meeting points with God”3 that will eventually converge at the time of our own death, when Christ takes us to himself, and when we will continue our pilgrimage into the heart of God. Pray for us, Mary, that at that time we, like you, will fall asleep into life and wake up into joy unending.
Amen.
1 Germanos of Constantinople, “Homily I,” in On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies, trans. B. E. Daley SJ (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 158-159. ↩
2 Germanos of Constantinople, “Homily II,” in On the Dormition of Mary, 170. ↩
3 Phrase of theologian Yves Congar, quoted in Charles Cummings OSCO, Monastic Practices, rev. ed. (Liturgical Press, 2015), 198. ↩