Reflection: The Church hymns Mary as the "animate city of Him Who is Lord over all" and the "ark all of gold". Just as she contained the Uncontainable God, Christians are called to become temples of the living God.
Practice: Contemplate your body as a temple for the Holy Spirit. How does this eternal reality change your temporal actions?
Menaion, August 14, Prefeast of the Dormition, at “Lord, I have cried,” : “Let us sound the cymbals, let us cry out in hymns, celebrating the feast of the Virgin's departure; and let us give utterance to funeral hymnody with splendor, for the Mother of God, the ark all of gold, bound for splendor, maketh ready today to pass over from earth to the heavens, to a new and divine life.”
“O choir of the apostles, assemble today most gloriously from the ends of the earth, for the animate city of Him Who is Lord over all departeth gloriously from the earth to that which is higher, to join chorus with the King, her Son. With the heavenly armies chant ye the hymns of parting with oneness of mind, for her divine burial.
Come ye now forth beforehand, O company of priests, ye kings and princes, together with the ranks of the virgins! Assemble together, all ye people, sending up funeral hymns! For she who is Mistress over all, bound for the mansions of heaven, desireth to commit her soul into the hands of her Son on the morrow.”
The Orthodox Faith - Volume II - Worship - The Church Year - Dormition of the Theotokos - Orthodox Church in America: “Finally it must be stressed that, in all of the feasts of the Virgin Mother of God in the Church, the Orthodox Christians celebrate facts of their own lives in Christ and the Holy Spirit. What happens to Mary happens to all who imitate her holy life of humility, obedience, and love. With her all people will be “blessed” to be “more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim” if they follow her example. All will have Christ born in them by the Holy Spirit. All will become temples of the living God. All will share in the eternal life of His Kingdom who live the life that Mary lived.”
Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos, “Ikos 8
Wholly present was the Inexpressible Word among those here
below, yet in no way absent from those on high; for this was a
divine condescension and not a change of place, and His birth was
from a God-receiving Virgin Who heard these things:
Rejoice, container of the Uncontainable God:
Rejoice, door of solemn mystery!
Rejoice, report doubtful to unbelievers:
Rejoice, undoubted boast of the faithful!
Rejoice, all-holy chariot of Him Who sitteth upon the
Cherubim:
Rejoice, all-glorious temple of Him Who is above the Seraphim!
Rejoice, Thou Who hast united opposites: …”
also The Orthodox Faith - Volume IV - Spirituality - Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving - Fasting - Orthodox Church in America: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (1 Cor 6.12–13).
Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains, pass judgment on him who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?”