Preached as an address before Compline (Night Prayer, the prayer before sleep) on the 15th August, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Western Church knows this as the Assumption and in the Eastern Church it is known as the Dormition, the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God (Theotokos).
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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| 'Jesse Tree' icon, Guildford Cathedral |
St John of Damascus calls Mary New Eve. This title is used to ‘correct’ the action of the first
Eve. So, as Kallistos Ware says, ‘where Eve is disobedient, Mary is obedient.
Where Eve is unguarded and inconsiderate, listening all too readily to the
deceitful words of the serpent, Mary is watchful and prudent, only accepting
the Archangels’ message after she has carefully questioned him’.[1] So for
John, Eve brings the ‘sleep of death’ upon humankind, but Mary is, ‘initiator
of life for the whole race’.[2]
Mary’s is the ‘unwedded bride’ or ‘Bride without bridegroom’ she is the Wise
Virgin who watches for, and points out, the bringer of the New Wine (John
2.5)and resists the Eve-like sleepy behaviour of the foolish bridesmaids in the
gospels who fall asleep yet wake unprepared.
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| Dormition of the Theotokos, the Mother of God |
It can now be said:
The virgin of the Magnificat, on whose lips is placed the message that God is
exalting the humble and casting down the powerful, finds her life confirmed and
glorified by the Father of Jesus. Mary’s assumption – seen in the light of
Jesus’ resurrection – is hope and promise for the poor of all times and for
those who stand in solidarity with them; it is hope and promise that they will
share in the final victory of the incarnate God.[4]
For John of Damascus Mary is ‘Ladder of Jacob’. She is the
ladder whose two extremities touch earth and heaven whilst Jacob, and humanity,
sleeps. She was awake and alert, though fearful at first, of an angel who
stepped off the ladder to call her to be mother of the Saviour.
Mary is not a goddess, not immortal, but as John of
Damascus teaches emphatically, she who fell asleep was raised as expression of
love.[5] It is
out of this love, and echoing Song of Songs that, John places on the lips of
Mother and Son these words, ‘Into your hands my child, I commend my spirit,
says the Mother to her Son as she dies; and her Son replies, ‘Come, my blessed
Mother, into my rest…Arise, come, my beloved, beautiful among women’.[6]
At
the coming of sleep we entrust ourselves into the hands of God and pray that we
will sleep in peace ready to be raised to the life of the new day, as Mary in
her Dormition was swept up, like Elijah (2 Kings 2.1-12), to the very presence
of God. Hence why the Church for centuries has associated sleep with the
maternal care of Mary.
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| Monks at prayer |
At the very end of
Compline, it has become a custom for the Abbot to bless the whole community by
sprinkling them with holy water, a sort of evening dew. The monks then file
into the Lady Chapel for a final hymn to Mary. This hymn changes with the
seasons. For most of the year it is Salve
Regina; at other times, there are Marian antiphons like the Regina Coeli or the Alma Redemptoris Mater, jewels of chant.
This custom has always reminded me
of children being tucked up in bed at the end of the day by their mother. It
brings a smile to my face to think of all those monks sweetly singing at day’s
end to their Mother, opening themselves to the anima realm of their psyche, and entrusting themselves to the
infinite darkness as maternal. Thus the part of the monastery indelibly linked
for me with Compline is the Lady Chapel, where we return to our spiritual womb
to be reborn again next morning.[7]
Jean-Luc Nancy’s words could almost have been written as a
meditation to be placed on Mary lips as she gazed upon the Christ-Child, the
Bread of Life, in whom all our hungers are satisfied:
Tomorrow morning, God willing, you will awake
again: sleep my child, sleep my soul, sleep my world, sleep my love, sleep my
little one, the child will sleep soon, already he’s sleeping, look he goes to
sleep with the first night of the world, the divine child who plays with the
dice of the universe and of all its centuries, he sleeps with every night that
rocks anew, tirelessly the repetition of the first, of the initial nocturnal
lullaby where the first day fell asleep with the first sleep.[8]
The new day will come, before which we sing,
‘Ave Regina caelorum’:
Hail, Queen of
Heaven, beyond compare,
To whom the angels
homage pay;
Hail, Root of Jesse,
Gate of Light,
That opened for the
world’s new Day
Rejoice, O Virgin
unsurpassed,
In whim our ransom
was begun,
For all your loving
children pray
To Christ, our
Saviour, and your Son.
As we prepare now to lay ourselves down to
sleep let us close in prayer before
sleep with the words of St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) entrusting us to
the care of Jesus Christ, Blessed Mary and the angels.
Jesus Christ my God, I adore you and thank you for all the graces you
have given me this day. I offer you my sleep and all the moments of this night,
and I ask you to keep me from sin. I put myself within your sacred side and
under the mantle of our Lady. Let your holy angels stand about me and keep me
in peace. And let your blessing be upon me. Amen.
May we say, with Our Lady, ‘I sleep, yet my
heart wakes’ (Song of Songs 5.2)
© Andrew Bishop, 2018
[1]
“‘The Earthly Heaven’ – The Mother of God in the Teaching of St John of
Damascus” in McLoughlin, W, & Pinnock, J,. 2002. Mary for Earth and Heaven: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism. Leominster:
Gracewing. p. 358.
[4]
Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer, Mary,
Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, trans. Phillip Berryman, (Maryknoll
N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989),119.
[5]
Ware, ‘The Earthly Heaven’, 364.
[7]
David Steindl-Rast and Sharon Lebell, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through
the Hours of the Day. (Berkeley CA: Ulysees Press, 1998, 2002), 109.
[8]
Nancy, The
Fall of Sleep, 32-33.
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