Reflections on the Dormition Fast

Again, by the grace of God, we enter the Dormition Fast.
This post is the shortest and sweetest.
It begins with the consecration of honey, then there will be the consecration of fruits.
And this fast is the easiest, because the Mother of God makes sure that the yoke of Christ is easy for us.
And he cares about our body as well as about our soul.

Fasting begins with the consecration of honey, so that we know not only about the sweetness that the Lord gives for the body, but also about spiritual sweetness.
So that the sweetness that comes from the Cross of Christ is revealed to us during the fast.
As once in the Old Testament, a tree sank into the bitter waters of Marah, and they became sweet, pleasant.
So let it be with our whole life - from the touch of the Cross of Christ to her, let her bitterness change into sweetness.

We begin the fast with the worship of the Cross of Christ, because the Assumption Fast is a meditation on the mystery of death and on the mystery of life, earthly and eternal. So that this secret becomes sweet for us, so that it will be revealed deeper with this post.
... Do you know that martyrs are always depicted on icons with a cross?
And the life of every person also ends with a cross. There will be a cross over our grave if we are worthy of this mercy.
God grant that the cross grows out of our whole life. That it was a tree of life that we also nourish, taking part in what Christ has done.

The entire Assumption Lent is a godfather. The beginning of the Dormition Lent is the Cross, and in the middle of it is the Cross, the Transfiguration of the Lord, with its light announcing the exodus that the Lord must accomplish in Jerusalem. And the feast of the Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which is, as it were, the end of our path, is also a feast of the Cross. Because the Lord “was not received as having the form of one going to Jerusalem” (Luke 9, 51), and His most pure face shines on us against the background of the Cross. The Church prepares us with the Cross to accept the mystery of the exodus of the Mother of God. Because Her Assumption is the revelation of the victory of the Cross of Christ, inseparable from His Resurrection.

prot. Alexander Shargunov