Sermon on the Day of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God

For He who is mighty has done great things for me (Lk 1:49).

We celebrate today, beloved brothers, the Protection of the Mother of God. This feast was established by the holy Russian Church for the solemn, thankful remembrance and glorification of the Mother of God’s benefactions, wondrously shown to the Orthodox Christians of Constantinople at the beginning of the tenth century after the Nativity of Christ, in the year 910, under the Greek emperor Leo the Wise. It was a hard time then for the Greeks: the Saracens attacked the unarmed capital of Greece with great forces and threatened it with utter destruction. Seeing help from nowhere, the inhabitants of the capital streamed in great numbers into the Blachernae church, in which the robe of the Mother of God was kept, and prayed fervently to God and to the Mother of God. In the church, among others, were two servants of God—St. Andrew, the fool for Christ’s sake, and Epiphanius, his disciple. Suddenly a wondrous, God-befitting vision appeared to St. Andrew: he saw, beneath the very vaults of the majestic church, the Queen of heaven and earth, with a multitude of Angels and saints, standing in the air, shining like the sun, with a veil in her hands that likewise shone, praying to her Son and God for the whole world and for the salvation of the city and its inhabitants. The seer of the vision pointed out this divine spectacle to his disciple and said to him: «Do you see, brother, the Queen of the world, praying for the people?» He answered: «I see her, father, and I am struck with awe.» Word of this vision was at once carried to the emperor and the patriarch; the news swiftly flew through the whole church, all rejoiced and were filled with great hope of help from the Mother of God. A thanksgiving service was at once offered to the Lord and His Most Pure Mother, first in the church, and afterward by many in other places as well. The enemy was scattered the very next day without any bloodshed, and the Greeks won a complete victory through the intercession of the Mother of God. Such is the wondrous intercession which the holy Church celebrates today, and with her, we, her children. Let all Christians know, then, of every age and sex, simple and noble, rich and poor, learned and unlearned—of the great intercession of the Mother of God, not only that which took place and is now celebrated, but also her intercession that continues without ceasing through every age and generation, everywhere her holy name is faithfully and constantly honored; and let everyone take refuge in her intercession with earnestness, with repentance, and with faith.

For our common edification, let us speak today of the divine greatness of the Mother of God, of the greatness of her humility, her love, and her mercy toward the human race, and especially toward the Christian race; of her holiness and righteousness, incomparable next to God’s own; of her boldness before God; her divine power, her knowledge of hearts, and her wisdom. The contemplation in her of all these wondrous qualities ought to increase in us reverence and love for her, trust in prayer, piety and the fear of God throughout our whole life, mutual love, mercy, humility, patience, submission, and the other Christian virtues. How great her humility was may be judged from the loftiness and greatness of her divine calling, for it is by the greatness of humility that the Lord exalts the chosen to the summit of greatness. It was chiefly for humility that she became the Mother of God: He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden (Lk 1:48), she said to Elizabeth by the Holy Spirit. This humility was in her, one might say, the seed of all her most exalted virtues, of all her divine beauty, of her most ardent love for God, her gratitude and unceasing devotion to God, her patience, her uncomplaining endurance of sorrows, her incomparable purity, her matchless condescension toward sinning people. How great her love and mercy toward the human race, and especially toward the Christian race, all the ages of Christianity that have passed down to us bear witness. The history of the Church, across nearly nineteen centuries, hands down to us many deeply moving, tearful examples of her intercession and protection of sinful people, deserving of the great wrath of God, yet shown mercy only through her prayerful intercession. Not to speak of the many other examples of her intercession, let us say only how many times Constantinople, under the reign of the Greek emperors, was saved by her manifest intercession; how many priceless benefactions the Mother of God has shown to Russia, both at the beginning, in the planting of the Christian faith in Russia and especially in the building of the church of St. Sophia in Kiev, and afterward, under the dominion of the Tatars over Russia and since the overthrow of their yoke down to our own day—these it is impossible even to number. The shortness of time does not now allow us to enter into the details describing her many mercies to our fatherland, to its various places and people. The great number of different names given to the wonderworking icons of the Mother of God, after the places of her merciful appearances, testify only in part to the multitude of her benefactions to our fatherland; but all her benefactions, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, are truly beyond counting. Glory, O Russia—let every faithful son of the Church glorify his heavenly Protectress, the Mother of God, for her motherly, unceasing mercies toward Russia and toward you. Only through her intercession has Russia to this day remained whole, mighty, and glorious. One may say boldly that if Russia had always held firmly to piety, if the Russians had all been steadfastly devoted to their faith and to the Orthodox Church, her greatness and prosperity would have grown from year to year, and her peace would have known no end, according to the word of Scripture: and of His peace there shall be no end (Is 9:7). What, then, should we fear, having such a Protectress, whose love and might know no bounds? But our sins, our passions, our unfaithfulness, our impiety, often make us unworthy of her holy protection, and we grow weak and feeble from our own passions and iniquities. She, all-holy and all-righteous, cannot patronize lawlessness or lawless people, but gives her protection only to sincerely repentant sinners and to those who live piously. Oh, if we truly pictured to ourselves the greatest holiness of the Mother of God and Queen, how we would fear and guard ourselves from sin, which she immeasurably hates! How zealous we would be for virtue! Let us set forth here a depiction of her holiness and divine fragrance, in the account of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the apostles’ disciple, who was granted to see her in Jerusalem, three years after his conversion to Christianity. «When I was led before the presence of the God-formed, most radiant Virgin, so great and boundless a divine light shone about me, without and within, and there poured out around me so wondrous a fragrance of manifold sweetness, that neither my feeble body nor my very spirit had the strength to bear such great and abundant tokens and first-fruits of eternal blessedness and glory. My heart fainted, my spirit within me fainted, from her glory and divine grace. The human mind cannot conceive any glory or honor higher than that blessedness which I, unworthy, then tasted, yet was accounted worthy of, by mercy, and was blessed beyond every understanding!» Such was the holiness, such the glory that dwelt in the Mother of God while she was still on earth, before her passage to heaven!

Let us more often set before ourselves her boundless holiness, and strive ourselves to live holily, as the Lord God requires of us: be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy (Lev 19:2). What shall we say of the boldness before God of the Most Pure Mother of God? If the boldness of Moses before God was great, the boldness of the prophets Samuel and Elijah, or of the New Testament servants of God—the Forerunner, the apostles, the martyrs, the hierarchs, and especially St. Nicholas—then the boldness of the Mother of God is incomparably greater still. Standing face to face before her Son and God, as the Mother and Queen of heaven and earth, she ever intercedes for the whole Christian race, and her intercession is never in vain, for it is always pleasing to God. And so let us, O Christians, always turn sincerely, in repentance, with good hope, to the intercession of the Mother of God on behalf of us sinners, as the Church herself does every day. As for her power and might, she, as the Mother of the Creator of heaven and earth, can accomplish all things, and there is no limit to her might, for she is wholly clothed with divine power. Finally, let us not pass over in silence the greatness of her wisdom and her knowledge of hearts! Clothed forever, unto the ages of ages, in the Sun of Righteousness—Christ God, who knows all the secrets of human hearts—she too knows the hearts of all; and her knowledge is boundless, as God’s knowledge is boundless; and her wisdom, enlightened by the divine wisdom, embraces all things, sees all saving ends, and all the wisest means to those ends. Let us all, then, with pure heart, ever take refuge in the protection of the Most Pure Virgin Mother of God, that through her we may receive from God every good thing, and the final end of all good things—life eternal in God and with God. Amen.