Word I. On the Most Glorious Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God

September 8, 1907.

«Universal joy has shone forth upon us from the righteous Joachim and Anna, the all-hymned Virgin, who, through her surpassing purity, becomes the living temple of God, and alone is known in truth as the Mother of God». (Stikhera at the Aposticha, forefeast service).

Before I begin my humble word on the nativity of the Mother of God the Word, I pray this Pre-Eternal Word to grant me understanding, to glorify, as far as my powers allow—or rather, as far as the grace of God allows—this present great Christian feast, the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, foreordained by the Creator of the ages to be the Mother, according to the flesh, of the Son of God.

I set side by side in my thought two virgins: the first-created virgin Eve, while she had not yet known union, and the present Most Pure Virgin and Ever-Virgin Mother of God, Mary.

The first virgin became the willing cause of the sin of the whole race, of the curse and of death, and of all the misfortunes to which we are subjected to this day and from which we suffer so terribly; the second, after God, became the cause of righteousness, blessing, and life, with which God the Word, born of Her according to the flesh, has blessed us.

The first was made from Adam’s rib, for the sake of the unity of origin of the human race from one blood; the second Virgin, the Cause of our present celebration, was born, by faith, fervent prayer, and almsgiving, of aged, barren parents, the righteous Joachim and Anna, for the destruction, by the goodness of God, of sin, the curse, and death—for God the Word, born of Her according to the flesh, destroyed in believing men the all-malicious sin, and drove out the curse and death, granting blessing and eternal life.

Here, then, are two opposites—Eve, the foremother of the human race, and Mary the Ever-Virgin, the Intercessor of Christians! Wondrous are the works of God’s providence for the human race! Wondrous too are righteous men, bringing forth in the world, by the grace of God, righteousness, peace, blessing, and eternal life, among whom the Most Holy Virgin Mary holds the first place. Wondrous is the mercy of God toward the human race, which has raised it up from its fall. The Most Holy Virgin Mary, by Her nativity, united God the Word with mankind, joined our nature, cast off by sin, in kinship with heaven, brought the human race into communion with the angelic, bright, all-blessed world, and made earthly men dwellers of heaven.

Through the incarnation of God the Word from the Most Holy Virgin, mankind was found worthy, as a free gift from God, of countless blessings, which, sunk in every impurity of sin, it had not even dared to think of. Men have been given, by the Lord who voluntarily suffered for the sins of the world—the bath of regeneration (baptism), all-saving repentance, the all-enlightening word of God, teaching every godliness; the Church has been established, with consecrated pastors; there has been given communion of the Most Pure Body and Blood of the Lord, cleansing every sin and renewing our nature, corrupted by sin, adorning and perfuming believing and humble souls.

The salvation of man is made to depend on man’s own faith, repentance, and good works, and without faith in Christ, the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, and without sincere, fruitful repentance, salvation is impossible; and to believers has been given an all-powerful Intercessor and Advocate.

I look upon the world, lying in wickedness, or, more closely, upon Russia, which received from God the precious inheritance of Her ancestors—the Orthodox faith—and has, through inconceivable thoughtlessness, fallen away from her faith and sunk into every kind of misfortune: and I am filled with horror and with sorrow, seeing how she suffers, and will suffer yet more, unless she turns with her whole heart to the ancestral faith and to the Orthodox Church, through which so many righteous people have been saved. On unbelief, drunkenness, and debauchery there follow misfortunes upon misfortunes, the greatest and most immeasurable misfortunes: a shameful war, the impoverishment of the people, revolution, famine, cholera, two rebellious Dumas, the second of which, through some of its own representatives, very nearly destroyed the Tsar’s family.

These are the punishments of God for falling away from the faith and for wholesale debauchery.

Even our own holy feasts, which ought to lift our minds and hearts to heaven, have turned into satanic feasts, feasts of flesh and blood and of every senseless and harmful passion. As once He abhorred the Hebrew feasts, so the Lord abhors our feasts too.

Your festival gatherings I cannot endure—iniquity and the festival together (Is 1:13), says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah.

Let us fear God. Let us ponder the meaning of our feasts, and lift up our minds and our hearts on high—to God, to heaven, to our homeland above.