st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

132 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
carried with angelic and apostolic psalmody, with
funeral rites, was deposited in a coffin at Gethsemane.
In this place the chorus and singing of the angels
continued three whole days. But after three days,
on the angelic music ceasing, those of the apostles
who were present opened the tomb ;
as one of them,
Thomas, had been absent, and on his arrival wished
to adore the body which had borne God. But her
all-glorious body they could not find but
; they found
the linen clothes lying, and they were filled with an
ineffable
odour of sweetness which proceeded from
them. Then they closed the coffin. And they were
astonished at the mysterious wonder ;
and they came
to no other conclusion than that He who had chosen
to take flesh of the Virgin Mary, and to become a
man, and be born of her God the Word, the Lord
of Glory and had preserved her virginity after birth,
was also pleased, after her departure, to honour her
immaculate and unpolluted body with incorruption,
and to translate her before the common resurrection
of all men." 1 The special day (Aug. i5th) to be
kept in memory of this passing of the Mother of the
Lord, is said to have been fixed by the Emperor
Maurice (A.D. 582-602).
The reader will now be in a position to understand
the general drift of these homilies, and to
anticipate
1
The passage is at p. 748 of vol. iii. of Migne
s ed. It
"
should be added that in the De Divinis Nominibus" of the
Pseudo-Areopagita, cap. iii., mention is made of some of the
apostles being assembled to witness the Virgin s decease, and
that Hierotheus, the teacher of Dionysius, surpassed all the
others in the divine hymns to which he then gave utterance.