on the Theotokos

By Archbishop Dmitri of the South

The piety of the Church gives a rather prominent place to the one whom we call the Theotokos, she who gave birth to God, the ever-virgin Mary. On August 15th, we celebrate the major feast day known as the Dormition or Falling-asleep of the Mother of God. Three weeks from that date, on September 8th, we celebrate her birth. There are, of course, other feasts in her honor, and no service of the Church fails to make reference to her. Prayers are addressed to her and hymns to her glorification are sung. In them we call her “more honorable than the cherubim and without compare more glorious than the Seraphim…”

Most Orthodox never question the propriety of these practices and practically all of us have a deep devotion to the Mother of our Lord. Surprisingly, however, the younger generations to which we have the great responsibility of passing on our Orthodoxy, have in some instances, been left with almost no piety of the Theotokos. It is not uncommon to find among our people nowadays, and especially among those who have been born and educated in America, the feeling that devotion to the Virgin Mary is some unnecessary, superfluous adornment of old-country Orthodoxy, with which we can easily dispense in our new environment. (Curiously, at the same time, we see American evangelicals taking an interest in the role of the Theotokos in the Christian faith.) For these reasons it behooves us to understand what we are doing in relationship to Mary and why.

The central event in human history is still the Incarnation of the Son of God, no matter what startling things science and technology may have accomplished or have in store for us. The central and most crucial question for all mankind since the living God made His most personal and intimate intervention into the life of humanity has been “What think ye of Christ?” (Matthew 22:42) Who is this Person who has had such an enormous impact on civilization? It is the question around which the entire religious dilemma of the 20th century revolves. All thinking, sensitive people must at some time at least consider the matter. Modern secularist theology is struggling with the problem because it is the product of a Christology, a doctrine about Christ, (foreign to Orthodoxy) that has ignored the Theotokos.

Orthodox theology has kept its thinking clear concerning Christ. It insists that Jesus Christ was the incarnate Word of God, God made flesh, with a perfect divine and a perfect human nature, and that He was born of the Virgin Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit. Attention and devotion to the Theotokos have contributed to the Church’s being able to maintain this balanced and essential doctrine of the God-Man. His divinity is manifest in the e
xtraordinary circumstances of His birth, and particularly in the preservation of the virginity of the Theotokos, and His humanity is guaranteed in that He was born of a woman, a real historical person.

She was the fulfillment of Israel’s calling, in reality, the reason for Israel’s being the chosen race. They were a race that was chosen specifically in order to produce a holy humanity that was capable of cooperating with God in bringing about man’s salvation. She became, through her own perfection, the new Eve, and the fulfillment of God’s promise to woman when she was punished for first yielding to the temptation of godlessness. She was central in the life of her Son, from Cana of Galilee to the Cross. Her death or falling-asleep which we celebrate every year in August was a perfectly normal one, but was followed by her resurrection, her passage to eternal life. In her we see the promise of the general resurrection fulfilled.

She had predicted, upon first hearing the announcement of the great thing that would happen to her from the Archangel Gabriel, that she would be honored by all generations that followed, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. For He hath regarded the humility of His Handmaiden, and behold, henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed.” (Luke 1: 46-48)

The kind of honor and praise that we give Mary is really determined by the Archangel at the Annunciation, “Rejoice, O thou who art full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women.” (Luke 1:28)

Her own cousin Elizabeth, not even knowing of the Annunciation, reacted in a totally new and different way when Mary visited her house after she had been told of what would happen. It was a great honor to Elizabeth for her cousin Mary to visit her: “How is it that the Mother of my Lord, (my God) should come to me?” (Luke 1:43)

At the marriage feast of Cana of Galilee, where we first see mother and Son together, she intercedes for the people before Him, and although He was not yet ready to embark on His public ministry, He granted their request because she had presented it.

On the Cross, Christ told the disciple John, “Behold thy mother.” (John 19:27) John and all Christians from that day have regarded her as their mother.

Here we have the perfect type of the Church, redeemed humanity, a person whose life is lived in complete harmony with God’s design for man. Her’s was the Eucharistic existence, one of thankful offering to God, the kind of existence that Adam forfeited in Paradise, because he became attached to things as ends in themselves. Her obedience was perfect. “Be it unto me according to thy will.” (Luke 1:38)

It is difficult to understand a Christian piety that does not include the most Holy Theotokos. A faith that does not include Christ’s Virgin Birth and the veneration of His mother is another faith, another Christianity from that of the Orthodox Church.

Our devotion to the Theotokos, our remembrance of the events in her life, our hymns and our prayers are faithful to the New Testament attitude toward her. She provided the perfect example of one who loves God and is totally committed to Him. (Thus the liturgical year begins with a major feast dedicated to Mary on September 8th and ends with our ‘consideration of the outcome of her life,’ (Hebrews 13: 7) on August 15th.) At the same time her place in our theology keeps that theology from losing its balance.

“In giving birth thou didst keep and preserve thy virginity; and in thy falling asleep, thou hast not forsaken the world; for living thou was translated, being the Mother of life. Wherefore, by thine intercessions, deliver our souls from death.” (Troparion for the feast)

on Christian Love

It is love that again constitutes the theme of “Meatfare Sunday”.  The Gospel lesson of the day is Christ’s parable of the Last Judgment (Matt 25:31-46).  When Christ comes to judge us, what will be the criterion of His judgment?  The parable answers: love-not a mere humanitarian concern for abstract justice and the anonymous “poor”, but concrete and personal love for the human person, any human person, that God makes me encounter in my life.  This distinction is important because today more and more Christians tend to identify Christian love with political, economic, and social concerns; in other words, they shift from the unique person and its unique personal destiny, to anonymous entities such as “class”, “race”, etc.  Not that these concerns are wrong.  It is obvious that in their respective walks of life, in their responsibilities as citizens, professional men, etc, Christians are called to care, to the best of their possibilities and understanding, for a just, equal, and in general more humane society.  All this, to be sure, stems from Christianity and may be inspired by Christian love.  But Christian love as such is something different, and this is difference is to be understood and maintained if the Church is to preserve her unique mission and not become a mere “social agency,” which definitely she is not.

Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself.  For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power that transcends the accidental and the external in the “other” -his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity- and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal “root” of a human being, truly the part of God in him?  If God loves every man it is because He alone knows the priceless and absolutely unique treasure, the “soul” or “person” He gave every man.  Christian love then is the participation in that divine knowledge and the gift of that divine love.  There is no “impersonal” love because love is the wonderful discovery of the “person” in “man” , of the personal and unique in the common and general.  It is the discovery in each  man of that which is “loveable” in him, of that which is from God.

In this respect, Christian love is sometimes the opposite of “social activism” with which one so often identifies Christianity today.  To a “social activist” the object of love is not “person” but man, an abstract unit of a not less abstract “humanity”,  But for Christianity, man is “loveable” because he is person.   There person is reduced to man; here man is seen only as a person.  The “social activist” has no interest for the personal, and easily sacrifices it to the “common interest”.  Christianity may seem to be, and in some ways actually is, rather skeptical about the abstract “humanity,” but it commits a mortal sin against itself each time it gives up its concern and love for the person.  Social activism is always “futuristic” in its approach; it always acts in the name of justice, order, happiness to come, to be achieved.  Christianity cares little about that problematic future but puts the whole emphasis on the now-the only decisive time for love.  The two attitudes are not mutually exclusive, but they must not be confused.  Christians, to be sure, have responsibilities toward “this world” and they must fulfill them.  This is the area of “social activism” which belongs entirely to “this world”.  Christian love, however, aims beyond “this world”.  It is itself a ray.  A manifestation of the Kingdom of God; it transcends and overcomes all limitations, all “conditions” of this world because its motivation as well as its goals and consummation is in God.  And we know that even in this world which “lies in evil”, the only lasting and transforming victories are those of love.  To remind man of this personal love and vocation, to fill the sinful world with this love- this is the true mission of the Church.

-Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, pg 24-26.

the need for community

Seraphim has an excellent post taken from the Sunday Gospel.  It relates a lot to what a friend and I were recently discussing:

When I look at today’s Gospel, I see two such characters that I instantly identify with. From these nameless people, I learn something important about our faith and about the Church, something that I think is important for all of us to understand. That is because these characters teach us two crucial things. The first is this: that Christianity is not a solo project. There is a reason that Christ created the Church, and did not leave us as free agents, seeking salvation outside of community. Yet paradoxically, the second is this: our faith is intensely personal, that we carry within ourselves the seeds of our own destruction, which we must confront and struggle against.

It is in the nameless friends of the paralytic that we learn of community. The story is compelling. Jesus has been out of town for a few days, and His return home has people excited. St. Mark tells us that a huge crowd came to the house to hear Jesus, so big that they spilled out into the street. It was impossible for even a healthy person to push through the excited people into the house where Jesus was, much less four nameless men who are carrying their ill and crippled friend on his bed.

A lot of people would have given up and gone home. A lot of other people would decide that the best thing they could do would be to stay outside the house and hope that they could get Jesus’ attention if He ever came out. But these four men were not to be denied. Pushing their way through the crowd, they climbed to the roof of the house, and actually broke a hole through the ceiling, and lowered their friend inside the house, to the very feet of Jesus.

We ask ourselves:
Could the paralytic have made his own way to Christ? No.

Read the rest of his post at Ancient Church

a thought…

Thirst for Jesus, that He may inebriate you with His love.
—St Isaac of Syria