In this article I have been sharing information about the establishment of the major feasts of our Church. I have reached a point where I have been sharing information about the Marian Feasts in our Church. In the last issue I shared information about the feast of the Presentation or the Purification of Mary.

The Dormition is clearly a Marian feast. It marks the “falling asleep” and bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven. The existence of this wholly Marian feast in the cycle of the twelve becomes intelligible only in the context of the heresies and schismatic doctrines at the time of this feast’s establishment. Contrary to a foremost author, Dix, who sees the Twelve Feasts as a life cycle of Christ, we are totally unable to account for the Dormition and can only explain it as a “sort of afterthought.” The Dormition is an increasingly bold declaration of Marian thought that makes perfect historical sense, however, when one realizes that the Twelve Feasts are not merely a life cycle of Christ but a series of doctrinal statements using Christ’s life and also Mary’s, as the basis of their authority.

The Dormition was first celebrated (c. 450) in Jerusalem under Bishop Juvenal as a feast of the Memory of the Theotokos, on August 15th. According to Karl Holl, Juvenal instituted this feast both to affirm the title Theotokos and to assert his independence from Nestorian Antioch at a time when he was trying to establish Jerusalem as a patriarchate. (I would have my readers note that again it was the Emperor that prescribed that a feast be established. The emperor was the head of the Church at that time).

Although it has not yet been definitely proved, it appears that Juvenal established the feast even before the Council of Chalcedon took place. During the Council, in an act of monumental insincerity, Juvenal, at the last minute, abandoned the Monophysite party he had been supporting for many years in order to join the party that would prevail, namely the True Church. The Dormition’s true pro-Monophysite inplications did not lessen its appeal to the True Church as a weapon against Nestorianism.

As, hopefully, it has become much more apparent from the information that I have been sharing, the Twelve Major Feasts of our Church were really established as a means of reinforcing the True Faith as expressed by the Church through the major Councils of the Church. Each feast reinforces the true faith and, because of the prayers of the feasts, reinforce that faith.