Dormition of the Virgin

According to Church tradition, Mary’s soul went directly to Heaven, without waiting for the Resurrection (the ‘Dormition’). According to another theological belief—the ‘Assumption of Mary’, a belief that prevailed in Catholicism and became a dogma in 1950—Mary was assumed body and soul into the celestial world. This icon of the Dormition shows the Virgin lying in the centre, and Christ, in a mandorla, is holding her soul in the form of a young child. The deceased is surrounded by the Apostles: to the left, St Peter scatters incense on the body; to the right, St Paul is bowing in respect. The Apostles and Christ are surrounded by a harmonious choir of angels. Below is a scene from the Apocrypha: an angel is cutting off the hands of the incredulous Jephonias, who has shown a lack of respect for Mary by touching her catafalque[1]. This icon, with its divine human aspect in the form of great saints, is an example of an indirect form of the representation of God. It is impossible for men to represent God as He Himself is. Religious traditions also prefer to transmit accounts from men and women inspired by God, and who are inhabited by Him and have even become divine. The words and actions of these people demonstrate and clearly illustrate the transcendent dimension that each religion attempts to represent in its rites and dogmas. The icon of the Dormition provides us with a unique example of the ‘theomorphism’ of humankind. For the Christian believer, Christ is not only the manifestation of the divine Word, but the divine Word made flesh. This has had an impact on the destiny of other people, who have also been summoned to be ‘divinized’ (St Paul, Rom. 8:12–30). Early Christians pondered over the nature of Jesus’s mother. The icon shows us the paradox of Mary: she is born again, but this time with the help of her own son: in the centre of the icon, Jesus is taking his mother, who’s become a child again, in his arms. This is an excellent illustration of the belief in the ‘second birth’. And also immediately evident is that all the believers (in this case, the apostles who are present) participate in some way in Mary’s destiny. Bathed in the same glowing light of divine love, with Christ and the angels, they’re leaning towards the centre of the icon, where Mary’s earthly body is undergoing a mysterious transmutation. Through this union of Christlike love, they too become the children of God, committed to the eternal communion between man and God, called ‘Paradise’.

Remarkably, the idea of a supernatural human being manifested by Jesus and his mother isn’t entirely absent from Islamic tradition. The Qur’an (3:35) refers to the liberation of Mary even before her birth: ‘Behold! A woman [the mother, who was pregnant with Mary] said: O my Lord! I do dedicate unto Thee what is in my womb for Thy special service, so accept this of me, for Thou hearest and knowest all things’. According to an authoritative work (sahīh) from the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Every new-born child is touched (var. ‘struck’) by Satan, and therefore begins to cry loudly, with the exception of Mary and her son’. Sufism developed the idea of a second, spiritual birth, through which the man of God actually becomes completely human, thereby completing the Creator’s initial project when, in the beginning, He made Adam.