The Dormition is the Orthodox feast celebrating the death of the Virgin Mary and her being taken up into heaven. We celebrate it on August 15.
The word itself means “falling asleep.” That’s not just a nice way to talk about death. It’s how the early Church understood what happens when Christians die, we fall asleep in Christ and wake up to life with God. Mary’s death wasn’t the end. It was a passage into the fullness of life with her Son.
What Happened
According to Orthodox tradition, Mary actually died. She didn’t just vanish or get whisked away. The Apostles gathered around her (some accounts say they were miraculously brought from wherever they were preaching). They prayed with her. She blessed them. Then she fell asleep.
They buried her body in Gethsemane. But when Thomas arrived late, three days after the burial, and wanted to venerate her body, they opened the tomb. It was empty. Her body hadn’t decayed. She’d been taken up into heaven, body and soul.
The Antiochian Patriarchate puts it plainly: “She died, she did not disappear.” That matters. We don’t believe Mary was exempt from death. We believe she went through death and came out the other side, showing us what Christ’s victory over death looks like for those united to Him.
Why It Matters
This feast is one of the Great Feasts of the Church, right up there with the Nativity and Transfiguration. We prepare for it with a two-week fast from August 1 to 14. Some parishes here in Southeast Texas keep the full fast, some keep it lighter depending on work schedules and the August heat. But the point is preparation, getting ourselves ready to celebrate something huge.
What’s huge about it? Mary’s dormition shows us theosis in action. She’s the first human being after Christ to experience the fullness of what we’re all being saved toward. Her body didn’t rot in a grave. Death didn’t get the last word. She’s alive, fully alive, in the presence of God.
And she hasn’t stopped caring about us. From heaven she intercedes for the Church. She prays for us. The Dormition isn’t the end of her relationship with humanity, it’s when that relationship becomes even more powerful because she’s standing before God on our behalf.
How This Differs from Catholic Teaching
Catholics celebrate the Assumption of Mary on the same date. Both traditions agree that Mary was taken into heaven body and soul without corruption. But there’s a difference in emphasis.
The Catholic dogma, defined in 1950, deliberately leaves open whether Mary actually died. It says she was assumed into heaven but doesn’t require belief that she experienced death first.
We’re more direct. Mary died. The hymns of the feast sing it plainly: “In your falling asleep, O Theotokos, you were translated to life.” She tasted death like we will. But for her, death was already transformed into sleep, into passage, into life.
That’s not a small difference. It matters because we need to know that death itself has been changed by Christ. Mary didn’t avoid death, she went through it and found it was no longer what it used to be.
The Feast Itself
The services for the Dormition are beautiful. We sing hymns that sound almost like funeral hymns, but they’re full of joy. Some parishes bring out an epitaphios, a cloth icon showing Mary on her deathbed surrounded by the Apostles and Christ receiving her soul (depicted as a small child in swaddling clothes, reversing the Nativity icon).
The troparion says: “In giving birth you preserved your virginity, in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. You were translated to life, being the Mother of Life, and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death.”
There’s often an all-night vigil on the eve of the feast. Some parishes bless flowers and herbs, an old custom that’s stuck around in many Orthodox cultures. It’s a way of connecting Mary’s dormition to the renewal of all creation.
What This Teaches Us
First, about Mary. She’s not just a figure from the past. She’s alive and active now. Her dormition didn’t end her role as Theotokos, it fulfilled it. She’s the first among the redeemed, the one who shows us where we’re all headed if we stay united to Christ.
Second, about death. We don’t have to be terrified of it. I’m not saying it’s easy, losing someone you love is brutal, and grief is real. But death isn’t annihilation. It’s not the end. For those in Christ, it’s sleep before waking. Mary proves it.
Third, about our bodies. We’re not trying to escape our bodies like some kind of Gnostic fantasy. Salvation includes the body. Mary was taken up body and soul. So will we be, at the resurrection. The Dormition is a preview of what’s coming for all of us.
If you’ve never been to a Dormition service, come this August. Stand in the church while we sing those hymns about death becoming life. Venerate the icon. Ask Mary’s prayers. Let the feast teach you what we believe about where all this is going, not away from the body, not away from the world, but into the fullness of life with God.
