Source: Boutique Orthodoxe
August 17, 2026
There is something paradoxical about the Dormition Fast. It is the shortest of the four great Orthodox fasts — only fourteen days. And yet it is one of the two strictest of the year, equal to Great Lent in its ascetic demands. It is a summer fast, in the middle of August, when the natural world is at the height of its warmth and abundance. And it prepares a feast that the Orthodox tradition calls the "Pascha of Summer" — the Dormition of the Mother of God, the greatest of all Marian feasts. Fourteen days of intense sobriety to reach the greatest Marian joy: this is the logic of the Dormition Fast.
For Orthodox Christians in the English-speaking world — Americans, Canadians, Britons, Australians, whether lifelong faithful or recent converts — the Dormition Fast is often the least familiar of the four great fasts. It falls in summer, when attention is elsewhere. It lacks the cultural scaffolding of Great Lent. And it prepares a feast — the Dormition of the Theotokos — that Western Christianity barely knows. This guide presents it in full: its fixed dates, its historical origins, its theological meaning, its defining liturgical service (the Paraklesis), its detailed fasting rules, and the particular experience of keeping it in the English-speaking world.
... Read the rest at Boutique Orthodoxe.
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