Friday, August 13, 2004
Dormition Fast Maximos the Confessor
1st Vespers of Dormition: Genesis 28:10-17 Epistle: 2 Cor 4:12-18
Gospel: St. Matthew 24:27-33, 42-51
Genesis 28:10-17, especially vs. 17: "How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." When the future
Disciple and Apostle Nathanael approached the Lord Jesus the very first time (Jn. 1:47), he was
awestruck at the Lord's capacity to "see" him under a fig tree "before Philip called" him to come
and meet the Lord Jesus (Jn. 1:48). As a result, he blurted out a confession of Jesus as the
Messiah: "You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (Jn. 1:49). The Lord then
confirmed Nathanael's declaration by associating the Divine ladder of Jacob's dream (Gen.
28:12) to Himself: "hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of Man" (Jn. 1:51). It is a reference no devout Jew would miss.
Additionally, by applying the ladder to Himself, the Lord revealed His Incarnate Person as the
unique link uniting heaven and earth, for, as the Genesis account says, the "ladder [was] set up on
the earth, [but] the top of it reached to heaven" (Gen. 28:12).
The Genesis reading reports that when Jacob awoke from the theophany of the ladder, he
recognized the awesomeness of the place where he had been sleeping (vs. 17). The Divine ladder
that he had seen in his dream, upon which "the angels of God were ascending and descending"
(vs. 12), was "set up on earth" and from "above" it, God Himself had spoken to him (vs. 13).
Later, as he reflected on this experience, Jacob named that place, "Beth-el" (Gen 28:19), which in
Hebrew simply means, "the house of God" (Gen. 28:17).
As we celebrate the falling asleep in the flesh of the most holy Virgin Mary and the
circumstances of her burial, including the gathering of the Apostles from across the face of the
earth to her deathbed, the burial of her body in the tomb, the late arrival of the Apostle Thomas,
and the discovery that the virginal body was absent, our minds are directed by this reading for the
Feast to consider her hallowed body from which the humanity of the Lord Jesus was "set up on
earth" (vs. 12). She herself is to be identified as "the house of God and...the gate of heaven" (vs.
17), the most awesome Saint of God who contained the Uncontainable in her womb.
The account of the revelation of the Divine ladder, the first of the Vesperal readings for the Feast
of the Dormition, especially helps us to understand how it is that the Virgin Mary is "More
honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim." The
Lord's Incarnation was a fully human and Divine action, a complete cooperation between Mary,
the devout handmaid of the Lord, and the All-holy Godhead, whereby the eternal Son of God,
according to the will of God the Father, by the overshadowing of God the Holy Spirit, became
man in every respect exactly as we are, fully "set up on earth" (vs. 12). She became the house of
God for our salvation, precisely chosen of the Lord because of her holiness and purity.
Notice that the Patriarch Jacob, the ancestor of God in the flesh, received a promise from God at
Beth-el, in connection with a place which he rightly perceived as the house of God: "your
descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the
east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of
the earth bless themselves" (vs. 14). Do you see, Beloved of the Lord, that in Him upon Whom
the angels of the Lord ascend and descend, upon our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Ladder Who
unites heaven and earth in His own Person, that this promise is already much fulfilled? There is
no continent on earth now where His blessing for the families of the earth is not now established.
Blessed is "the house of God" who of her free will enabled Him to be "set up on earth."
O thou, in whom the Bliss of future life dwelt, beseech thy Son and God to save us.