The Assumption of the Virgin Latin Narrative of Pseudo-Melito | ጥያቄኽ ምንድነው ሳትሄድ ፈልገው

The Assumption of the Virgin
Latin Narrative of Pseudo-Melito


Melito, servant of Christ, bishop of the church of Sardis, to the venerable brethren in the Lord appointed at Laodicea, in peace greeting. I remember that I have often written of one Leucius, who, having along with ourselves associated with the apostles, turned aside through alienated feekings and a rash soul from the path of rectitude, and inserted very many things in his books about the acts of the apostles. Of their powers, indeed, he said many and diverse things; but of their teaching he gave a very false account, affirming that they taught otherwise than they did, and establishing his own impiouis statements, as it were, by their words. Nor did he think this to be enough, he even vitiated, by his impious writing, the assumption of the blessed ever-virgin Mary, the mother of God, to such a degree that it would be impious not only to read it in the church of God, but even to hear it. When you ask, therefore, what we heard from the apostle John, we simply write this, and have directed it to your brotherhood: believing not the strange dogmas hatched by heretics, but the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, while the threefold person of the Godhead and undivided substance remains: believing not that two human natures were created, a good and a bad, but that one good nature was created by a good God, which by the craft of the serpent was vitiated through sin, and restored through the grace of Christ.

Therefore, when the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was hanging on the tree fastened by the nails of the cross for the life of the whole world, He saw about the cross His mother standing, and John the evangelist, whom He peculiarly loved above the rest of the apostles, because he alone of them was a virgin in the body. He gave him, therefore, the charge of holy Mary, saying to him: Behold thy mother! and saying, to her: Behold thy son! From that hour the! holy mother of God remained specially in the care of John, as long as she had her habitation in this life. And when the apostles had divided the world by lot for preaching, she settled in the house of his parents near Mount Olivet.2. In the second year, therefore, after Christ had vanquished death, and ascended up into heaven, on a certain day, Mary, burning with a longing for Christ, began to weep alone, within the shelter of her abode. And, behold, an angel, shining in a dress of great light, stood before her and gave utterance to the words of salutation saying: Hail! thou blessed by the Lord, receive the salutation of Him who commanded safety to Jacob by His prophets. Behold, said He a palm branch — I have brought it to thee from the paradise of the Lord — which thou wilt cause to be carried before thy bier, when on the third day thou shalt be taken up from the body. For, lo, thy Son awaits thee with thrones and angels, and all the powers of heaven. Then Mary said to the angel: I beg that all the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ he assembled to me. To whom the angel said: Behold, today, by the power of my Lord Jesus Christ, all the apostles will come to thee. And Mary says to him: I ask that thou send upon me thy blessing, that no power of the lower world may withstand me in that hour in which my soul shall go out of my body, and that I may not see the prince of darkness. And the angel said: No power indeed of the lower world will hurt thee; and thy Lord God, whose servant and messenger I am, hath given thee eternal blessing; but do not think that the privilege of not seeing the prince of darkness is to be given thee by me, but by Him whom thou hast carried in thy womb; for to Him belongeth power over all for ever and ever. Thus saying, the angel departed with great splendor. And that palm shone with exceeding great light. Then Mary, undressing herself, put on better garments.