Follow the Light: Dormition, Church New Year, & the Birth of the Mother of God

We celebrated the Dormition of the Mother of God in the Orthodox Church on August 15. This means we’re celebrating the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus. But we’re not just a bunch of macabre weirdos! This feast marks the end of the yearly cycle of feasts, since church New Year is September 1st. We begin with the birth of Mary, on September 8th, and end with her death, every year. As Christians, we follow the life of the Mother of God--the first Christian. 

Why is it that the death of Mary completes the liturgical year? For an answer, we can turn to the icon. We see Mary in death on the bier, with the disciples gathered around, mourning, singing the funeral hymns, and burning incense. Behind the bier, we see Christ, and he is holding a small, child-sized figure. This is the soul of Mary, which Christ is carrying to heaven. 

It’s also the inverse of the typical image of Mary holding baby Jesus. Rather than the human mother holding and protecting the divine-human child, the God-man holds the human soul of his mother. She is also our mother, the universal mother of all human beings and especially of all Christians. By ascending to heaven with her son, she becomes not only our mother and example but our intercessor. We turn to her as we would our own human mothers--”Mama, help!” 

At the Ascension, Christ the God-man sat down at the right hand of the Father. At the Dormition, the first Christian ascends to heaven, showing us our ultimate destiny. As the "mother of life," as the hymn says, she was translated to life. Death cannot hold her.

There is so much to say about this feast, but today I thought about the way that young women, especially, are the ones to defeat chaos in fairy tales and myths.

Recently, I’ve been reading with my kids a collection of fairy tales from around the world, each one with a central heroine. It’s called The Serpent Slayer: and Other Stories of Strong Women by Katrin Tchana and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (of course). The title story is one of our favorites. It’s about a small Chinese village that is being attacked by a horrible serpent. The people demand that the magistrate do something so that the worm won’t eat all the wild animals, livestock, and humans in the community. He goes to a corrupt sorcerer, who demands rich lodging, luxurious food, and a generous stipend. In return, he communes with the serpent for three days in his dreams. The result is that the worm will be satisfied and leave the community alone as long as one young girl, chosen by lottery, is sacrificed to him once a year. The villagers do not like this solution, but they don’t have another, so they go along with it. 

The awful situation continues for nine years until young Li Chi turns 14, the age at which maidens are sacrificed. She decides she has had enough of watching her cousins and neighbors go off to die, so she goes to the sorcerer and offers herself as the annual tribute. He agrees, since it’s getting hard to find families to bribe into sacrificing their daughters. He also agrees to Li Chi’s strange request. She wants a faithful dog, a sharp sword, some food, and a fire-starting flint. 

Li Chi starts up the mountain. She can smell the foul stench of the serpent, and her dog becomes frightened. However, they are both brave, so they make it all the way to the serpent’s cave. There, Li Chi brings out the sweet food she has brought with her and sets it on the ground. Around it, she starts a roaring fire. 

The serpent smells the food and comes out of its cave. As it dives for the food, it is badly burned by the fire. This gives the dog the chance to bite out one of its eyes and claw deeply at the other. Once the serpent is disabled, Li Chi brings out her sword and chops its head off. 

She returns to the village, and after showing some of the bravest young men that the serpent is really dead, is celebrated as a hero. The sorcerer runs away and the magistrate falls into disgrace. Li Chi herself marries, has several children, and many grandchildren. Her village remembers her brave deed for generations to come. 

Li Chi, the young girl, looks at the dragon that is consuming her community and is determined to stop it. The adults are all complicit on some level, with the magistrate and the sorcerer the worst of all. If anyone is to remedy the horrible situation with the serpent, it will be a young person with plenty of courage. 

I think we see something similar with Mary. She was very young when she gave her fiat to Gabriel. In the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), she explicitly praises God for casting the mighty from their thrones and exalting the lowly. The old order is only sliding further into chaos. Humanity is incapable of saving itself. So, instead of a king or a wise man or a priest, God chooses a young woman to subvert the corrupt system and indeed the whole order of nature. A virgin conceives not just a baby but the God-man. She gives birth without travail, healing the pronouncement to Eve that she would bring forth children in pain. Mary gives birth to the promised child, who will crush the head of the serpent, the devil. 

The brave "fiat" of the Virgin sets off the entire process whereby sin and death are defeated. The serpent's head is crushed by Christ, and the gates of Hades are broken. 

Nothing about the scheme of salvation looks like it should work. God calls on this young girl; some traditions say she was 14, just at the developmental cusp between childhood and adulthood. God puts the entire plan in the hands of a girl, living in a volatile backwater province of the Roman Empire. 

It is precisely this disruptive energy that is necessary to defeat chaos. The usual hierarchy is incapable. Sometimes it's too corrupt or cowardly. Sometimes it's occupied with shoring up whatever stability remains. It is the young people of the community, full of liminal energy, full of courage, who have the capacity to take on the forces of chaos and conquer. 

In an archetypal sense, the virgin young woman (or the unmarried man) is full of potential energy--she is whole, and the light of her soul burns bright and true. 

May we have the courage to follow the path she has hewn for us.