An Exposition of the Teaching of the Orthodox Church Concerning the Mother of God (Part 4)

After the Ascension of the Lord, the Mother of God, as we see from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, lived inseparably with the Apostles in one house, constantly exercising herself in prayers. The holy Evangelist Luke calls these prayers “prayers and supplications” (Acts 1:14), by which he shows that all the occupations of the Mother of God and the Apostles were concentrated in various kinds of prayer, that all their time was devoted to prayer. In the midst of such exercise and manner of life, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples of the God-man, who always requires most careful and constant preparation through prayer from the disciple of Christ before He will descend upon him and overshadow him. The Mother of God received at this time the most abundant gift of the Holy Spirit, which illumined not only her soul but her body as well. Both her soul and her body became themselves sources of light. Thus testifies the Holy Spirit; thus testifies the holy Church; thus testifies spiritual understanding! For those who wish to hear historical testimony, we offer here the testimony concerning the Mother of God from her contemporary during her earthly life, the holy Denis the Areopagite, the famous and learned Athenian who was converted to Christianity by the holy Apostle Paul. When three years had passed since the Areopagite’s acceptance of faith in the Redeemer, he visited the Mother of God, who after the Ascension of the Lord had permanent residence in Jerusalem, in the house of the Evangelist John. We transcribe the following from the letter of the holy Denis to the Apostle Paul: “It seemed to me incredible, as I confessed before God, O our excellent guide and chief! that besides the highest God Himself anyone could be so filled with Divine power and wondrous grace; no man can grasp what I saw and understood not only with the eyes of the soul but also with bodily eyes. I saw with my eyes the God-like and holier than all celestial spirits Mother of Christ Jesus, our Lord, whom the grace of God, the condescension of the chief Apostle (John) and the inexpressible goodness and mercy of the most compassionate Virgin herself granted me to see. Again and again I confess before the almightiness of God, before the grace of the Saviour and before the glorious honour of the Virgin, His Mother, that when I was led before the God-like, most holy Virgin by John, the chief of the Evangelists and prophets, who, dwelling in the flesh, shines like the sun in the heavens, there shone upon me such great and immeasurable divine light, not only from without, but illumining even more within, and I was filled with such wonderful and varied fragrance that neither my weak body nor my spirit were able to bear such and so many signs and foretastes of eternal blessedness and glory: my heart fainted, my spirit fainted within me from her Divine glory and grace. I testify by God, who dwelt in the most honourable womb of the Virgin, that if I had not kept in my memory and in my newly-illumined mind your Divine teaching and commandments, I would have recognized the Virgin as God and honoured her with worship fitting only for the one true God, because the mind cannot imagine greater honour and glory for a man glorified by God than that blessedness which I, unworthy, was deemed to taste, having become then wholly blessed and prosperous. I thank my most high and most good God, the Divine Virgin, the most illustrious Apostle John, and also you, the chief and triumphant head of the Church, who in mercy showed me such a blessing.” The gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit with which the Apostles abounded, the Mother of God possessed more abundantly and more than they. She possessed the gift of prophecy, the gift of clairvoyance, the gift of working miracles, and countless other gifts known to the Giver of gifts and to the receiver of the gifts. Touch from her healed incurable sicknesses. Her virginal body, sanctified by God, became a receptacle and source of miracles. As the icon of the Apostle Peter, depicted on earth by his shadow, worked miracles (Acts 5:15), so the icons of the Mother of God work miracles throughout the earth, preach, testify, seal with signs the truth of the teaching of Christ. The painters of the miraculous icons of the Apostle were the rays of the sun; the painters of the miraculous icons of the Mother of God were the rational rays of the Sun of Righteousness, God and the Son of the Ever-Virgin—His Apostles and His holy saints.

The Mother of God on the third day after her blessed dormition rose again and now dwells in the heavens in soul and body. She not only dwells in the heavens—she reigns in the heavens. She, as the Mother of the King of Heaven, has been proclaimed Queen of Heaven, Queen of both the holy Angels and holy men. She has been given special power and special boldness to intercede before God for mankind. The holy Church, in bringing supplications to all the greatest saints of God, to all the angels and archangels, says to them: “pray to God for us”; to the Mother of God alone does she use the words: “save us.” The Mother of God is the greatest intercessor and helper of all who labour to please God, of all who have devoted their earthly life to the service of God. Having appeared to a certain holy monk, she healed him of a grievous sickness and called him one belonging to her family. She is the swift consolation of the sorrowful and weeping; she is the intercessor for the repentant; she is the sure refuge for sinners desiring to turn to God; she is the most fervent intercessor for them before God. Standing before the Mother of God in deep reverence to her greatness, in sacred awe and wonder, in rapture of faith and love, the children of the Orthodox Church bring to the Ever-Virgin a joyful hymn of praise. Receive, O Lady, these childlike voices, this childlike lisping, striving because of the warmth of heart to describe your greatness and yet unable to describe it due to weakness of mind, weakness of word, because of the immensity of your greatness. Rejoice, dwelling-place of God-Word! Rejoice, Holy of Holies! Rejoice, throne of the Almighty! Rejoice, vessel containing the uncontainable God! Rejoice, chariot of Him who rides and proceeds upon the cherubim! Rejoice, temple worshipped and hymned by the seraphim! Rejoice, O height inaccessible to human thoughts! Rejoice, O depth unattainable to angelic minds! Rejoice, uncertain hearing of the faithless! Rejoice, known and true praise of the faithful! Rejoice, who makest wise men appear as fools; from the clever-spoken takest away both cleverness and speech! Rejoice, who have shamed the curious, shameless, senseless, and malicious seekers! Rejoice, who have filled the fishermen’s nets of faith with spiritual knowledge! Most holy Mother of God, glory to you! Most holy Mother of God, save us! Amen.

This exposition was composed in Stavropol in the Caucasus at the request of certain persons in society who were then discussing the new dogma of the Papists.

The holy John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 4, Chapter 14

That faith destroys carnal and soulish reason and gives birth to spiritual reason, see the blessed Isaac the Syrian, Homily 28

“Those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word”

“Taking bread in his hands, the traitor secretly stretches it forth and receives the price of Him who with his own hands formed man.” Kontakion, Tone 2 on the Great Thursday

“O Lord, the Jews condemned You to death, O Life of all.” Troparion of Tone 3 on the Great Friday.—“Seeing the Robber the Ruler of life hanging upon the cross, he said: If God had not been incarnate, He who is crucified with us, the sun would not have hidden its rays, nor would the earth have trembled in fear: but patient at all things, remember me, O Lord, in Your Kingdom.” Troparion of the Ninth Hour

The holy John of Damascus. An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Chapter 2

According to the unanimous opinion of all the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church who have written on this subject. The holy Gregory the Theologian. Oration 38

An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Chapter 2

An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 4, Chapter 14

Thus Adam lied when he wished to be God, and did not become. Man becomes God, that God might make Adam become a god. The Akathist to the Mother of God, Fourth Sticheron

Saint John of Damascus. An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Chapters 28 and 16

Passions are named for the properties of human nature in their diseased state, produced by the Fall. Thus the capacity to eat has been perverted into an inclination toward gluttony and greed; the force of desire—into lusts and cravings; the force of anger or spiritual energy—into irritability, fury, malice, and hatred; the property of sorrow and grief—into pusillanimity, despondency, and despair; the natural property of recoiling from sin that degrades our nature—into contempt for our neighbors, pride, and so forth. From the Venerable Isaiah the Hermit, Discourse 2

Here by spiritual is meant that which has been sanctified by the Holy Spirit according to the meaning given to the word spiritual by the holy Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 2:15) and the meaning given to it by all the holy writers of the Orthodox Church

The Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 4, Chapter 3

“You wast transfigured on the mount, O Christ our God, revealing to Your disciples Your glory as much as they could bear.” “Upon the mount wast You transfigured, and as much as they could endure, Your disciples beheld Your glory, O Christ our God: so that when they see You crucified, they might understand that Your passion was voluntary and proclaim to all creation that You art indeed the Radiance of the Father.” Troparion and Kontakion of the Transfiguration

Troparion at the Hours of Holy Pascha

A narrative extracted from the Gospel, known by the title: Passion douleureuse de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ par Ecaterine d’Emerich

Saint John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Chapters 28 and 16. The Lord took upon Himself, solely according to His good pleasure, the infirmities of fallen human nature, such as hunger, thirst, weariness, and bodily death itself, which consists in the separation of the soul from the body. To all of this His body was subject before His resurrection and ceased to be subject after the resurrection. By itself, the flesh of the Lord was deified from the very moment of conception; it was conceived already as divine. “It,” says Damascus, “became united with God, and became God—not through addition or transformation, not through change or mingling of nature. One of the natures—according to the reference to Gregory the Theologian’s Discourse 42—deified, the other was deified, and, I dare to say, became united with God; and that which anointed became man, and that which was anointed became God. And this not through change of nature, but through a providential union toward salvation, that is, a hypostatic union, by which the flesh was inseparably united with God-Word, and through the mutual interpenetration of natures, a like example of which we see in the heating of iron by fire.” As Divinity always possesses the same dignity, being eternally equal to itself and unchangeable, so too the dignity of the soul and flesh of the Lord in relation to their divinity was always the same. This dignity was uniform throughout all the changes according to the human age of the God-man: it was uniform when the incarnate God lay as an infant in a manger, when He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and when He manifested Himself in unspeakable glory on Mount Tabor; when He rose from the tomb, when He ascended to heaven. This dignity was uniform in all the circumstances to which the God-man was pleased to submit according to His humanity: this dignity was the same when the Lord stood bound before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, when He was pelted with insults, slapped, and spat upon, and when He sat, according to His humanity, at the right hand of God the Father, when all the angels and archangels bowed and fell at His feet

Ibid.

(Jn. 8:59) According to the interpretation of the blessed Theophylactus of Bulgaria

The Akathist to the Most Sweet Jesus. Heirmos 7

The Canon of Pascha, Ode 6

Sunday Troparion, Tone 2, Theotokion

Sunday Troparion, Tone 7, Theotokion

The Service for the Sunday of Orthodoxy

Saint Cyprian of Carthage, as cited by Saint Dimitry of Rostov. The Menaion Reader, 25 December. Homily on the Nativity of Christ

The Life of the Venerable Gregory of Sinai, written by his disciple, the most blessed Patriarch of Constantinople, Callistus. Manuscript

Heirmos of the Canon of the Forerunner

Homily of the holy John Chrysostom on the Gospel of Matthew; also The Commentary, an explanation of the passage cited from the Gospel of Matthew. “A certain humanness—a mother’s authority over her son—” remarks the blessed Theophylactus of Bulgaria, considering the circumstance described by the Evangelist, “—the Mother of God showed: she did not yet understand all the greatness hidden in the God-man. And therefore, at the time when He was teaching the people, she interrupts Him, summons Him to herself, wishing from Him as from a son respect and obedience. For this reason, Christ, knowing her heart’s thought, said: ‘Who is my mother? And who are my brothers? And stretching forth His hand toward His disciples, He said: Behold, my mother and my brothers: for whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.’ He said this, not to dishonor the Mother of God, but to draw her away from vainglory and from the perspective of the old man.”

The Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 7, Chapters 11, 12

Bergier. Dictionnaire de Theologie. Article “Marie”

The Spiritual Alphabet, Book 1, Chapters 7 and 8

According to the explanation of the blessed Theophylactus of Bulgaria

The Venerable Gregory of Sinai, Chapters 110 and 114. Philokalia, Part 1

Homily 15, Chapter 3

The Canon of the Akathist to the Mother of God, Ode 1, Troparion 1

“The Commentary”, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith; The Menaion Reader and others

An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 4, Chapter 14

This account and the other historical information are drawn from the Menaion Reader, in which is set forth a detailed ecclesiastical tradition concerning the Mother of God—that is, there are included accounts and reflections of very many holy Fathers