“Today, the Church does not mourn a death, but celebrates a translation from death to life; the Church does not lament a separation, but rejoices in the passage from the temporal to the eternal, from earth to heaven, from corruption to incorruption, and from the vanity of this world to the true life. For this reason, the Dormition of the Theotokos is for all of us a feast of hope, consolation and joy, since we feel that, through her translation from death to life, Panagia is even closer to us and remains beside us. As the Apolytikion of the feast proclaims: ‘In your Dormition, O Theotokos, you did not abandon the world.'