August 31 · Placing of the Cincture
The Placing of the Cincture (Sash / Belt) of the Most Holy Theotokos
O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.”
Today is the last day of the Church year.
Tomorrow the Church will begin again. Tonight she does not hurry past the Mother of God in order to start the new work. She stops. She remembers a sash.
Not a crown. Not a throne. A sash — a belt, a cincture — the kind of thing a woman ties about herself when she is at work. The Most Holy Theotokos wore it. The Church has kept it. And on this day she remembers how that holy sash was placed, and placed again, in the house of God.
This is not the feast of her Robe.
In July the Church keeps another placing: the honorable Robe of the Mother of God, laid up at Blachernae by the sea. That is a different holy garment, and a different church. In October she keeps still another day: the Protection, when the Mother of God spread her veil over the people at prayer. That is not this day either. Today the Church is looking at the sash — the belt — and at the hour it was set in its place.
What is a cincture? It is a sash. It is a belt. The Church uses all three names because she is talking about one thing: the girdle of the Mother of God, the band that belonged to her own body.
The Church's tradition is simple, and we will not make it larger than it is.
After her Dormition — after she had fallen asleep in the Lord — the Most Holy Theotokos entrusted her sash to the Apostle Thomas. The OCA life says that plainly: entrusted to Thomas by the Mother of God herself. We will not invent the words she spoke. We will not invent the hour, or the road, or a speech for Thomas. We only say what the Church has said: the sash was given, and it was kept.
Pious Christians kept it at Jerusalem.
Years later the holy relic was brought to Constantinople, the city of the emperors, and placed in a church in the Chalcoprateia — the district of the copper-workers, west of the Great Church. The OCA life sets that first placing in the reign of the emperor Theodosius the Younger.
Some of the Church's old books also remember Zela — a diocese in Pontus, near Amasia — as a place where the sash was kept, or found, before it was laid up in the capital. The old books do not all tell that part the same way. We will not invent a journey from town to town. We will only say that the Church has more than one memory of where the sash was guarded, and that the memory she sings today is the placing in Constantinople.
They laid it in a coffer. They sealed it.
Think of that for a moment. A holy thing can be kept so carefully that a whole city almost forgets it is there. The Gospel appointed for this very day asks, "Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?" The sash was not trash. It was treasure. But treasure that is never opened can become a secret. The Church would not leave it a secret forever.
Then came the second placing.
In the reign of the emperor Leo the Wise — the OCA life gives the years 886 to 911 — his wife Zoe was afflicted with an unclean spirit. The emperor prayed that God would heal her.
The empress had a vision: she would be healed of her infirmity if the Belt of the Mother of God were placed upon her.
We will not invent her words. We will not invent a dream-speech, or a palace conversation. The Church says she was shown what to ask for. The emperor asked the Patriarch to open the coffer.
The Patriarch removed the seal.
He opened the coffer in which the relic was kept.
And the Belt of the Mother of God appeared completely whole, undamaged by time.
That is the sentence the Church wants us to hear. Years had gone over it. Seals had held it. The sash had not fallen to dust. The Mother of God's own girdle was still itself.
The Patriarch placed the Belt on the sick empress.
Immediately she was freed from her infirmity.
They sang hymns of thanksgiving to the Most Holy Theotokos.
Then they placed the venerable Belt back into the coffer and resealed it.
The Church did not keep the sash out as a show. She opened it for mercy. She gave thanks. She laid it up again. That is how a holy thing is treated: not as a prize to display, and not as a secret to hide, but as a mercy to be asked for and then kept with honor.
In commemoration of that healing, and of the twofold placing of the venerable Belt, the Feast of the Placing of the Venerable Belt of the Most Holy Theotokos was established. That is why we are here tonight. Not because we have a new story. Because the Church would not let the second opening be forgotten, and she would not let the first placing be lost.
The appointed Epistle sounds like the hour in the coffer. Paul says, "for when I am weak, then am I strong." Zoe was not strong. The emperor's prayer was not a speech that could heal her. The strength was the Mother of God's, and the Lord's. Weakness was the door.
The psalm we read is the Church's old song for the Mother of God: "The queen stood by on thy right hand, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in divers colours." The sash is not the queen. The sash is a sign that the queen was real — that the Mother of God had a body, and clothes, and a life among us, and that God did not let even this small thing of hers be thrown away.
The hymns appointed for this very day tell us what the Church is doing when she keeps a sash.
The troparion calls her Ever-Virgin, protectress of mankind. It says she has given her people a powerful legacy: the robe and sash of her most honored body, which remained incorrupt throughout her seedless childbearing. Through her, time and nature are renewed. Then the hymn asks what we are still asking: "Grant peace to your people and to our souls great mercy."
The kontakion is shorter, and it is enough. "Today your flock celebrates the enshrinement of your precious sash, and it earnestly cries out to you: 'Rejoice, O Virgin, boast of all Christians!'"
That is the cry of the day. Not a history lesson. A greeting.
The OCA life adds one more sentence, and we will add only that. Parts of the holy Belt are in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, in Trier monastery, and in Georgia. We will not make a travelogue of how each part went. The old accounts of those later translations do not all agree, and this feast is not a map. It is a placing. The Church still knows where the sash is honored. That is enough.
On this same date the Church also remembers other holy people — Cyprian of Carthage, Gennadius of Constantinople, Aidan of Lindisfarne, Eanswythe of Folkestone, and the restoration of a church of the Theotokos at Neorion. We will not tell their lives tonight. We only say that the last day of the year is not empty. The lamp is wide enough for them.
And today, so many hundreds of years later, on the last evening of the Church's year, we say the Mother of God's name once more, out loud, together — Most Holy Theotokos — and we remember the sash she left, and she is praying for us still.
The coffer was opened. The sash was whole. The weak were made strong. The year is ending, and the Church's last word is not worry. It is the word the kontakion still teaches a family to say:
Rejoice, O Virgin, boast of all Christians.
you have given your people a powerful legacy:
the robe and sash of your most honored body which remained
incorrupt throughout your seedless childbearing;
for through you time and nature are renewed!
Therefore we implore you: “Grant peace to your people and to our souls great mercy!”
and it earnestly cries out to you:
“Rejoice, O Virgin, boast of all Christians!”
- Sit by the lamp. Take a simple ribbon, a cloth strip, or a sash from a robe — nothing fancy.
- Fold it and place it in a small box, or cover it with a cloth. Say together, slowly, "Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel?"
- Keep a short silence — long enough to count to twenty. Remember the years the coffer was sealed, and the people who did not forget what was inside it.
- Open the box together. Look at the ribbon. Then say the kontakion line: "Rejoice, O Virgin, boast of all Christians."
- Give each person a scrap of paper. Write one person who needs the Mother of God's help, or one weakness you will not hide from her. Fold the papers and set them under the lamp with the ribbon. Leave them there until next Sunday.
save us.”
on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. Amen.