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Three scenes depicting Our Lady in body, in soul, and in glory, are before your eyes today in this icon.

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‍First of all, we have the Virgin Mary lying in repose at her funeral led by St Peter who stands censing her body. All the other apostles assist, as well as the early vested bishops St. Denis the Areopagite, who was the first to describe this scene in his work On the Divine Names, Saints Timothy, and Hierotheos whom in the same work he says were present there as well.

‍Secondly, we know that Our Lady has undergone death, since above her Jesus her Son stands cradling her soul represented as a little baby girl in white, while an angel stands ready holding out a blanket to receive her. A marvelous Madonna in reverse, as it were, with the Son cradling the Mother.

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But thirdly, above we see the ultimate focus of these events: The Mother of God now reunited in soul and body enters the gates of heaven in her Assumption to eternal glory.

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Although the last scene at the top of the icon is the common dogmatic belief of the Church defined by the Venerable Pius XII in 1950, the two earlier scenes remind us that all the basic mysteries of faith were lived out by concrete people with the variety of details and experiences any human life entails. Such details rarely form part of the Church’s solemn teaching, but we know that very many of them have been passed down reliably.

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As St John, Our Lady’s adoptive son tells us at the end of his gospel, in words applicable to the life of Mary and the Apostles as well:‍ But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.

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