by Fr. Jonathan H. Cholcher
The term dormition is one of those words commonly used in the Orthodox Church which is very uncommon anywhere else. Other examples include Theotokos (lit., Birthgiver-of-God, a title of the Virgin Mary) and consubstantial (of the same essence, referring to the three Persons of God the Holy Trinity).
Dormition comes from a Latin root – dormio – meaning “asleep.” Thus the English word dormitory means “a place for sleeping”; it’s English equivalent from a Greek root is cemetery (lit., koimētērion, from koimēsis = dormition). The difference between a dormitory and a cemetery, at least in English usage, is that a dormitory is a place where people still alive in this world sleep for a nap or for the night only to rise the next day, whereas a cemetery is a place where the life (soul) of person’s body has departed and that inanimate body sleeps in the ground or mausoleum only to arise on the Last Day.
Dormition is the normal way the Orthodox Church refers to the bodily death of a human person. “Again we pray for…the Orthodox departed this life before us, who here and in all the world lie asleep in the Lord” (petition at the Litany of Fervent Supplication). “Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of thy servant who hath fallen asleep…” (hymn at memorial/funeral services). “For thou art the Resurrection, and the Life, and the Repose of Thy servant who is fallen asleep, O Christ our God…” (exclamation at the final Prayer for the Litany of the Departed).
Dormition is the language of the Word of God. “Jesus said, ‘Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.’ And they ridiculed Him, knowing that she was dead” (Lk. 8:52-53). “Jesus said to them, ‘Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up’…Jesus spoke of his death” (Jn. 11:11, 13). “After that [Jesus] was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6). “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep” (1 Thes. 4:15).
As is clear from Scripture, the sleeping of the body in physical death refers to the departure of the soul, or spirit (breath), from the body. Elijah prayed for the widow of Zarephath’s son: “O Lord my God, let the soul of this child come back to him” (3 Kgm. 17:21). When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, “her spirit returned, and she arose immediately” (Lk. 8:55). Solomon writes about bodily death: “Then the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7; see Gen. 2:7; 3:19). Regarding the bodily death of our Lord on the Cross, we read: “Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit/breathed His last” (Matt. 27:50; Mk. 15:37; Lk. 23:46; Jn. 19:30).
Once the soul, or spirit (breath), departs from the body, the body sleeps; it becomes completely inactive. For sinners, the state of dormition accelerates corruption in the process of physical decay. No longer animated by the soul, the body ceases to function by staying alive and resisting death; the body begins to quickly break down. The separation of the soul from the body is unnatural and contrary to God’s original design, just as the separation of the grace of God from the soul due to sin. The death of the body (dormition) is a direct result of the death of the soul.
“As the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death…Thus the violation of God’s commandment is the cause of all types of death, both of soul and body, whether in the present life or in that endless chastisement. And death, properly speaking, is this: for the soul to be unharnessed from divine grace and to be yoked to sin…Life of the soul is union with God, as life of the body is its union with the soul. As the soul was separated from God and died in consequence of the violation of the commandment, so by obedience to the commandment it is again united to God and is quickened.” (St. Gregory Palamas, To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia)
Importantly, by referring to bodily death as a falling-asleep, a dormition, Christians understand bodily death serving two crucial functions. One, mortality puts a limit on the time sin can flourish in a body. God does not allow human beings to live forever in sin; instead, their bodies, the instruments of a sinful soul, fall asleep in death (Gen. 3:22; Job 14). Two, bodily death as sleep is a temporary, conquerable condition. “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light” (Eph. 5:14). The body as an integral part of the human person is intended by God to live forever, and it will be resurrected on the Last Day (Jn. 5:28-29). The doctrine of dormition teaches us that God in Jesus Christ overcomes death even now by His indestructible life, first by raising the soul fallen in sin, and in turn raising the body re-enlivened with the soul.
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). The Lord told Lazarus’s sister Martha before calling forth her decaying brother’s body from his tomb: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn. 11:25-26).
Jesus’s own Body slept in the tomb after His crucifixion, yet He rose on the third day, sinlessly joining us mortals in bodily death that we might participate in His incorruptible power of life. This same grace is communicated to sinners through faith in Christ resulting in the cleansing of the soul and body from sinful passions and hope of the resurrection. God confirms among the faithful that this grace is real by imparting to the bodies of some of the saints power of healing and incorruption even after their dormition.
The bones of the prophet Elisha caused the revival of the corpse which touched them (3 Kgm. 13:20-21). The relics of many departed saints, for instance, fragments of their bones, are instruments of healing and blessing. Bodies of certain departed saints – St. Demetrios of Thessalonica, St. John the Russian, St. Seraphim of Sarov, etc. – remain incorrupt after their dormition, that is, they do not decompose over time, and some exude a miraculous fragrant oil (myrrh).
The Orthodox doctrine of dormition has its ultimate expression in the peaceful falling asleep of the Virgin Mary Theotokos celebrated on August 15, the final major feast day of the Church year. Here we commemorate the bodily death of the Mother of God and subsequent translation of her body to heaven three days later, having been witnessed by the 12 apostles gathered to her incorrupt body. A tomb of the Virgin Mary does not exist, neither any bodily relics, because her body does not remain on this earth.
The assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven without dying bodily, based on the false teaching of her immaculate conception (conception without sin), is a non-Orthodox fiction. The truth is that the Virgin Mary was conceived and born as we merely human mortals all are. Thus she died a bodily death. However, because of her exemplary conformity to the will of God by grace through faith, God demonstrated in her immediately after her falling asleep what will happen to all believers on the Last Day, namely, the raising of the body reunited with the soul to lead the choir of the saints in prayer and intercession before her Son in the eternal Kingdom of God.
“In giving birth, you preserved your virginity! In falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos! You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death!” (Troparion [hymn of the day] for the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary) This is the template for all the faithful in Christ of whom the Virgin Mary Theotokos is the foremost.
