- Learn about it:Access the Bozhi Dity (God’s Little Children) lesson on the Edmonton Eparchy Website. You will learn about this amazing day in the life of the Church and have fun making a wreath of flowers to frame an icon:
https://eeparchy.com/children/ Read the story. See below.
We honour the Mother of God (the Theotokos) by bringing flowers to her and presenting them in church to be blessed. With the children, choose some from your garden or buy some to take to church to be blessed.
Plant flowers (either plants or seeds) to be placed in front of your icon at home. You can purchase small clay pots that the children can paint to put them in. As the flowers grow the children will be excited to see their work growing and changing and honouring the Theotokos.
- Celebrate:
Designate one person hold the icon of the Dormition and have the others follow in a procession, holding flowers (picked, created, or purchased). Process through your yard, singing & praying
Rejoice, Mother of God, Virgin Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb; for you have borne Christ the Saviour and Redeemer of our souls.
Place the icon in your icon corner and end with a prayer. See below.
- Pray together:
Pray a decade of the rosary, meditating on the Glorious mystery of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Assumption of Mary in the west).
Or
Pray the Troparion for the Feast, as you stand in your icon corner facing the icon:
In giving birth you retained your virginity,* in falling asleep you did not abandon the world, O Mother of God.* You passed into life, for you are the Mother of Life,* and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death. (3X)
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Now and for ever and ever. Amen.
The Dormition of the Holy Mother of God for Younger Children
After Jesus ascended to heaven, his mother Mary, prayed to Him and asked that when she died, He would take her to heaven to be with Him. When her time came to die, a miracle happened and all of the Apostles were brought from all over the world, by the Holy Spirit.
They stayed by her side and together they sang hymns and prayed. Mary also prayed and worshipped God.
Suddenly Jesus came to her, surrounded by a multitude of angels singing hymns and praising God. It was a moment of beauty and joyousness! Jesus received Mary’s soul and took it to heaven.
Then the Apostles carried her body and laid it in a tomb. For three days angels and saints singing beautiful hymns could be heard. A beautiful perfume like flowers came from the tomb. On the third day her body was taken to paradise.
Mary, the Theotokos, Jesus’ mother and our mother is forever with Him in heaven.
Adapted from: The Apocryphal Works on the Assumption of Mary https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0832.htm
