A reading from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians (15:44b-49)
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. As it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being; the last Adam has become a lifegiving spirit. But the spiritual body did not come first. Rather the natural body came first, and then the spiritual.
The first man was formed from the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven. The man formed from dust is the pattern for earthly people; the heavenly man is the pattern for those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man formed from dust, so shall we also bear the likeness of the heavenly one.
For this perishable body must be clothed with the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
From aHomily on the Dormition of Our Supremely Pure Lady Theotokos Ever-Virgin Maryby St. Gregory Palamas
The death of the Theotokos was also life-bearing, translating her into a celestial and immortal life and its commemoration is a joyful event and festivity for the entire world. It not merely renews the memory of the wondrous deeds of the Mother of God, but also adds thereto the strange gathering at her all-sacred burial of all the sacred apostles conveyed from every nation, the God-revealing hymns of these God-possessed ones, and the solicitous presence of the angels, and their choir, and liturgy round about her, going on before, following after, assisting, opposing, defending, being defended. They labored and chanted together to their uttermost with those who venerated that life-originating and God-receiving body, the saving balsam for our race and the boast of all creation; ... All the while the Lord Sabaoth Himself, the Son of the Ever-Virgin, was present, into Whose hands she rendered her divinely-minded spirit, through which and with which its companion, her body, was translated into the domain of celestial and endless life, even as was and is fitting. In truth, many have been allotted divine favor and glory and power, as David says, “But to me exceedingly honorable are Thy friends, O Lord, their principalities are made exceeding strong. I will count them and they shall be multiplied more than the sand” (Ps. 138:17). And according to Solomon, “many daughters have attained wealth, many have wrought valiantly; but she doth exceed, she hath surpassed all, both men and women” (cf. Prov. 31:29). For while she alone stood between God and the whole human race, God became the Son of Man and made men sons of God; she made earth heavenly, she deified the human race, and she alone of all women was shown forth to be a mother by nature and the Mother of God transcending every law of nature, and by her ineffable childbirth - the Queen of all creation, both terrestrial and celestial. Thus she exalted those under her through herself, and, showing while on earth an obedience to things heavenly rather than things earthly, she partook of more excellent deserts and of superior power, and from the ordination which she received from heaven by the Divine Spirit, she became the most sublime of the sublime and the supremely blest Queen of a blessed race.
Hence, the body which gave birth is glorified together with what was born of it with God-befitting glory, and the “ark of holiness” (Ps. 131:8) is resurrected, after the prophetic ode, together with Christ Who formerly arose from the dead on the third day. The strips of linen and the burial clothes afford the apostles a demonstration of the Theotokos’ resurrection from the dead, since they remained alone in the tomb and at the apostles’ scrutiny they were found there, even as it had been with the Master. There was no necessity for her body to delay yet a little while in the earth, as was the case with her Son and God, and so it was taken up straightway from the tomb to a super-celestial realm, from whence she flashes forth most brilliant and divine illuminations and graces, irradiating earth’s region; thus she is devotedly venerated and marveled at and hymned by all the faithful . Willing to set up an image of all goodness and beauty and to make clearly manifest His own therein to both angels and men, God fashioned a being supremely good and beautiful, uniting in her all good, seen and unseen, which when He made the world He distributed to each thing and thereby adorned all; or rather one might say, He showed her forth as a universal mixing bowl of all divine, angelic and human things good and beautiful and the supreme beauty which embellished both worlds. By her ascension now from the tomb, she is taken from the earth and attains to Heaven and this also she surpasses, uniting those on high with those below, and encompassing all with the wondrous deed wrought in her. In this manner she was in the beginning “a little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:6), as it is said, referring to her mortality, yet this only served to magnify her pre-eminence as regards all creatures.
Musical Selection (John Michael Talbot)
Come my love, pass through my will As through a window Shine on my life as on a meadow Like the grass to be consumed By the rays of the sun On a late summer's morning
Come my love, all through the night I lay longing eagerly to wait for love's union Like dawn's flower awaits for the wedding with the sun Consummated in the light
Your light, my love is stealing my heart As a secret I'm left Like a vanishing form that leaves no shadows Exposed, naked, alone between The heavens and the earth Lifted high on the cross with the Savior
Oh life-giving tomb Prepared through the night for dawn's dying Like a womb, like the mansions of Heaven Await the rebirth of a child, New Jerusalem So come to my life, light of Heaven
Come my love, pass through my will As through a window Shine on my life as on a meadow Like the grass to be washed In the rays of the sun On the late summer's morning
Prayer
Gracious God,
you chose the Virgin Mary
to bear your incarnate Word,
and at her life’s end
you brought her in body and spirit to heavenly glory.
Grant that like Mary
we may hear your word and keep it
and one day share with her
the risen life of Christ your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,