... and for five days made an unceasing singing of praise."
-The Book of St.John Concerning the Dormition of Holy Mary.
It offends and scandalises, I know, but I enjoy reading these devotional/apocryphal accounts of the Assumption, and I base my prayers on them. For the five days before the feast of the Assumption, I say the Crown of Twelve stars with the collect of the vigil, added to my novena prayer.
And go to that site and read some of the other ones.
3 comments:
Yes, I love these accounts. They're so wonderful. I enjoy the slight differences as well, such as the story of the sash, which is mentoned in some accounts, and those later accounts which menton St Thomas arriving characteristically late and demanding to se before he believed. One thing that sometimes appears in icons of the Dormition but which I have never been able to find out more about other than in these accounts is the story of Athonius, the Jewish priest who sought to overturn the funeral bier and had his hands severed by the Holy Archangel Michael, only to have them restored to him when he confessed faith in Christ. The story (from memory) says that he was martyred by his former peers, yet I have not found him in any kalendar. :-(
Do you know any more about this?
I do know that tradition, but I don't know if he's on a kalendar.I could check the martyrology and see. (Lots of obscure and semi-obscure saints are there, like St.Simon the Cyrenian, St.Didymus,St.Cornelius, etc.)
Sometimes, the more fanciful accounts or sacred legends illuminate truths in a ways that are both instructive and humorous, often unlike the canonical traditions of the Churches of both East & West.
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