The Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 15th August 2024
Today we celebrate what we call the ‘Falling asleep’, in other words the death, of the Virgin Mary. It set me wondering – why celebrate her death? And indeed the deaths of all the other saints? We don’t celebrate many birthdays except those of Mary, John the Baptist and Jesus, whose births have very particular stories around them. Other births don’t seem to signify. Our graveyard also points to the significance of death, not birth, in that our grave crosses give only the date of death of the sister so we are left with no indication of her age or years in community. Each one of us will be remembered in this community on our date of death, not our birthday or name day – do you, like me, find yourself wondering which date that will be?
So, does this celebration of death mean that our lives are irrelevant? I find a clue in the iconography of this feast. Mary is portrayed lying on a bier after her death and above her the risen Jesus is holding her ‘new born’ soul, swaddled like a baby (or is it perhaps grave-clothes?) carrying her up into heaven. Death is a birth into a new life and so perhaps we should see our grave crosses as marking birthdays not death days. (and just an aside, is that why 28th December is called the ‘Birthday of the Holy Innocents’ in our martyrology? Something that has rather puzzled me.) Perhaps this life we live now can be seen as a kind of gestation preparing for the new life that we will live after death?
For mammals gestation is a very important time during which the foetus develops and prepares for a new existence independent of its mother. There are complex debates around when the new being can be considered to exist in its own right through the gradual coming into life as the body develops. This process of coming into life continues after birth and indeed throughout our lives. Birth is of course a significant change for the infant but there is also a continuity. Increasingly it is being recognised that experiences in the womb can have profound influence on the subsequent life of a person. And in the same way, how we live in this life will be of great significance in shaping how we shall be in our new life, being born after death into the fullness of who we are in Christ. I don’t doubt that this process of growth and change will continue in our life after death, as our wounds are gradually healed and transformed so that we can fully allow ourselves to be embraced by God’s love.
But it is also true that for Christians this is not the only death & birth we go through – for a start there is baptism, seen as a death and rebirth that occurs during this life. And there are repeated little deaths and births as we grow in our faith and embrace the challenge of taking up our cross and denying ourselves day by day. Life is a constant cycle of death and rebirth, which we see of course in the natural world. Without death there could never be new life – things change, grow and then dissolve away to make space for something new.
In this life as we learn to surrender ourselves into God’s hands and relinquish our own ways we practice the surrender that will be asked of us at our physical death. Yet in this surrender that points towards our death we become more and more able to embrace life in its fullness here and now. Those who have gone through near-death experiences often emerge with a transformed perspective on this life, able to live with a freedom and hope that comes with no longer clinging to this life at any cost.
Mary is an example to us of that need for the life-long practice of surrender to God’s will. She was called to accept the death of her ideas about the life she would live as a devout Jewish girl. She accepted God’s call to become the unmarried mother of the incarnate Christ, to give birth to the new thing that God was doing. As her son’s life unfolded she had times of perplexity, of not knowing what he was about, and finally had to see him suffer a cruel death. Yet she was there at the foot of the cross and then with the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection as the church came to birth. She was faithful to her call to the end of her life on earth and beyond.
Referring to Mary’s ‘falling asleep’ rather than ‘death’ points to the continuity between this life and the next for those who surrender to God’s will. In our Magnificat Antiphon at Vespers this evening we sing ‘Death shall not triumph over you, O Mary, for you have borne Life itself’. The Life that she bore, through his willing obedience to his Father, has opened for all of us who follow him the way into eternal life. Death will not triumph over us either and I pray that in that knowledge we can enter without fear into whatever challenges life throws at us.
Mother Anne - 1st Vespers, 14th August 2024