This past week, we celebrated the last Great Feast of the Liturgical Year in the Dormition of Mary, with a beautiful pilgrimage to the monastery. In a few weeks, after the start of the Liturgical Year on September 1st, we remember how the first of the 12 Great Feast of the year is that of the Nativity (or birth) of the Theotokos on September 8th. The Early Church, in it’s Wisdom, begins and ends the year with the beginning and the end of the life of the Virgin Mary. Why? Because if we want to know and learn about the Love of the Lord, than we need to learn and follow the example of the one who loves Him, and who He loves the most…His Mother.
The veneration of Mary has been a spiritual reality that has been lost in the swirling thoughts and opinions circulating in modern day Christian and Secular thinking. There are so many misconceptions about this Saint of Saints, that Mary has been removed from the life of so many Christians, whose only exposure to her might come from that catchy but completely unbiblical song they sing during Christmas: “Mary did you know?” (Yes dummy, open a bible!) So as we are in the midst of these book end Marion Feasts, I wanted to offer some clarifications on the many misconceptions surrounding Mary, the Mother of God.
Misconception #1: The Orthodox Church Worships Mary
The Church has never, is never, and will never worship Mary. Why? Worship (Latria) can best be defined as a total giving of oneself to God…and Mary is most definitely not God…to whom scripture says “Worship is due to Him Alone”
The Christian Church however, since the very beginning, does venerate and honor the Mother of God. We try to emulate her obedience to God. We remember her tender care of the Savior of the World. We learn how to Love Christ, because who can have a greater love for someone than a mother for her son?
We ask in the services for Mary to pray for us. Can we go directly to God with our prayers? Yes, and we absolutely should! But it does us no harm to us to ask Christ’s mother to intercede on our behalf (look what she did at the wedding of Cana when Jesus wasn’t too keen on turning water into wine at first!).
Misconception #2: Mary is the Mother of Jesus, not the Mother of God, and Therefore only plays a minor role.
There was an early heresy in the 5th century by a man named Nestorius, who tried to spread the idea that Jesus’s Human and Divine natures were separate. One of the ways he did this, was to try to refer to Mary as “Christotokos”…or the mother of Christ the man. The entire Christian Church fought against Nestorius, and ultimately condemned him at the 3rd Ecumenical Council in Ephesus. It was there that they defined in writing what the Church had taught since the beginning, that Mary was Theotokos, or “bearer of God”.
It wasn’t the Orthodox or Roman Catholic Church that put Mary on a pedal stool…it was God Himself, who waited for millennia for the right woman to come along who would be worthy enough to hold God within her. The Church has always understood this…even in the midst of the turmoil of the protestant reformation!
“She became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man’s understanding. For on this, there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal…”
This is the only time you will hear me quote Martin Luther in a homily! I do it to underscore that like the entire Christian Church since the beginning, even reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin understood the importance and veneration that we should have for the Mother of God. Why is it lost now? What happened to this important part of our faith? That is a question that no one seems able to answer with any credibility…
Misconception #3: Mary had Other Children After Jesus
The unbroken and unaltered teaching of the Church from the very beginning, was that Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ.
There are many Old Testament images pointing to this, with perhaps the most popular one coming from Ezekiel that we read in the Vespers services for Marion Feasts, which speaks about the Temple:“This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut.”
Despite the fact that the Old Testament Readings that been assigned for centuries for Marion Feasts point to her ever-virginity, we can also look at Church History and see how early attempts to discredit the ever virginity of Mary were violently disregarded and defeated by the entire Christian Church. Even the Protestant Reformers that we mentioned before, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, understood this beautiful reality about Mary being Ever Virgin.
Many of the modern misunderstandings come from mis readings of scripture. For example, from the first chapter of Matthew where we read: “…he (Joseph) knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:25). The word “until” in both the Greek and Hebrew has several different meanings. We find that same word used in other places like in 2 Samuel: “Michal, the daughter of Saul had no children until the day of her death” or at the end of Matthew when Christ says: “Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age”. Obviously, the use of the word until in these passages don’t imply that Michal had a child “after” her death, or that Christ will suddenly leave “after” the end of the age. By the same token, the word “until” doesn’t mean there was a sexual union after Christ was born.
Side Note: If anyone wants to learn more about the early church’s teachings and interpretations of Mary’s Ever-Virginity, St. Jerome wrote a beautiful treatise on the subject in the 4th century called: “The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary”
As we end the Liturgical Year and begin a new one, let us all embrace and emulate the Theotokos. She is called:
“The Second Heaven” where God dwelt in her womb…
“The Mother of the True Light” and “The Golden Lampstand”, because she carried Jesus who is the True Light…
“The Burning Bush”, who carried the fire of Divinity within her womb and was not consumed…
“Aaron’s Rod”, because she was a virgin who gave birth to God the Word, like Aaron’s Rod in the OT which brought forth buds and produced almonds without being planted or watered…
“Jacob’s Ladder”, because it was through her that God descended from heaven to the earth
“The Golden Manna Pot”, who carried the True Manna…the bread that came down from heaven…to nourish the faithful.
“The Ark of the Covenant”…who carried within her the Word of God.
She is the Most Blessed, Full of Grace, Ever Virgin Mary…the bride of God. As we have been doing throughout this month of August, let us continue to magnify her in song!