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The Dormition Fast

The two-week fast anticipating the Dormition of the Theotokos begins with the Procession of the Cross.

The Dormition Fast begins with the feast of the Procession of the Honorable Cross, a service that originally carried the wood of the Cross processionally through the districts of Constantinople each day until the feast of the Dormition. It was the high season of contagious diseases in the hot, humid eastern Mediterranean summer, and the Romans poured out into the streets to share in the purification of the air, praying to be either delivered or preserved from illnesses.

The other side of the feast has to do with the inauguration of a fast which, on Mount Athos and in the other great monastic centers of the eastern world, is taken as seriously and observed as intensely as is the Holy Forty Day fast before Pascha.

August was always – as it is today – a season of intense labours in the agriculturally-based empire of the New Romans. Long as the days are, there is never enough time to finish the work of the day and the level of physical exhaustion was high. And yet, coming just at the center of these hard months is this great 15 day fast. The surviving literature from the period attests to the seriousness with which all parts of society fasted and prayed.