Last day after the great Christian Orthodox feast
The Dormition of the Thetokost (sending the feast away the
feast)
On 15th of August we celebrated in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church,
as well as the other Orthodox Churches around the world, the
celebration of
the Great
Feast commemorating the "falling asleep" e.g. physical death of the
Theotokos (Virgin Mary)
We believe in the Orthodox Church that on this date the Mother of
God Virgin Mary has passed away. The church tradition says that on
that date it's our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself that come
from heaven to gather her soul.
We use to say that Virgin Mary has fall asleep because her physical
death happened without any pain or suffering.
God bestowed Our Lady with such a death because of her humility and
sinless life she choose to left while being on Earth.
The Church tradition also teaches that her bodily resurrection
occured in a close similarity to Christs by Christ himself and she
resurrected in the body was taken up to heaven after her death. The
two weeks before dormition of the Theotokos occurs are being
preceded by a two weeks fasting period. The dormition fast is one
of the strictest fasts in the Church life, it's one of the 4 major
fasts periods that occur within the Church life every the year.
It's an interesting fast that a little while before Virgin's Mary
"fall asleep", she has prayed to her son and our God Jesus Christ
to let her see the Holy Apostles once again.
The Lord heard her prayer as she is the most venerable among the
ones who lived in this earth and in a miraculous way transported
the St. Apostles in the house of St. apostol John where the
Theotokos was living. All the apostles were transported to see
Virgin Mary except st. Apostol Thomas whose transport has been
delayed a bit. He is been said to have arrived three days after her
death, when he asked the other apostoles to see her grave so that
he could bid her good bye, when all the 12 apostles went to Mother
of God's grave they found no body and a sweet fragrance was filling
the tomb air. As I said earlier Christ has taken her body to
reunite it with the soul he had accepted 3 days earlier. Therefore
theology teaches that Virgin Mary has undergone the second
resurrection already, a resurrection that is about to come for all
who currently abide at this earth with the
Second Coming of
Christ
An spiritual elder and a brother and Christ has mentioned to me
that it is the sending away of the feast which apparently which's
commemoration lasts for 8 days, quite an interesting fact I decided
to share herein
A
good account about
the Dormition of the Holy Theotokos is found here and I suggest
you read it up if you have some time.
There is another reason that the feast is so venerated it's being
said by many people that Virgin Mary the mother of God blesses
abundantly and protects everybody who keeps the fast before the
feast of her Dormition.
Another practice within the Church is that flowers are being
blessed on the date of the Dormition of Virgin Mary. In some
Churches even there is a special shroud depicting the Theotokos's
sleeping body after her death.
I've been to an interesting Liturgy where the
Shroud or
(Plashtenica) as better known in the Slavonic Eastern Orthodox
world is being placed and is exhibited for a veneration of the
layman and Church clergy. On the third day similarly to the
resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ this
Plashtenica is being put away by the priest in order to show
off that the body of the Mother of God was taken to heaven and has
miraculously been resurrected and taken to heaven by God.
In Bulgaria the feast is known under the name
Uspenie
Bogorodichno - "The Dormition of the Theotokos". Uspenie
derives from old slavonic and literally translated means "falling
asleep".
Let the Holy Mother of God pray her son and our God Jesus Christ to
have mercy on us the sinners.