Mother Mary

Every once in a while the writer of another blog holds his or her nose, takes a leap of faith and links to this one. A courageous move: when this page opens one never knows what kind of foolishness will appear. Still, I always like to see the link, and I like reading what other people have to say.

Recently a very interesting blog, titled Little Lights, took the plunge. Written by Lisa, a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, it is thoughtful and fun, an unusual combination I haven’t been able to pull off. In particular, however, I was interested to read her discussion about the Virgin Mary. As she points out, it is an odd fact that Mary, so humble and grace-filled, could become such a bone of contention. And, as she also points out, the point of contention, after all the dust settles, is the particular brand of Christology that a person subscribes to.

Of course, being Orthodox, I am interested in Christology. Right belief is of the utmost importance, and so it comes as no surprise that I hold fervent opinions, Christologically speaking, regarding the Virgin Mary. Sadly, however, there was a period of time when my devotion to the Theotokos consisted wholly of those opinions, when it was all head and no heart, so to speak. Orthodox Christology leads one to the inescapable conclusion that Mary must be venerated, and so I did. That was all intellectual, however, and since my former tradition did not hold such views, I struggled with the notion in a heart sense. It was right, my head said, but my heart insisted that it did not feel it.

Thankfully, time has corrected that. Part of that is the result of a more complete understanding of Mary’s life, as provided by the tradition of the Church. The stories in the Protoevangelion of James or those surrounding her later life and Dormition give us context and substance which rounds out the character of the young woman we meet in the Gospels. That alone, of course, is quite enough to stagger the imagination. To contain within a womb the Creator of all, to nurse the Logos, to submit oneself utterly and completely to the will of God: really thinking about all of that produces a wooziness similar to the kind a person encounters when you try to imagine the full extent of the unspeakable depths of outer space. It cannot be fully held within the mind. She is a woman who participated in the miraculous, who held in her arms the Ineffable, who suffered grief and hardship as great as any on earth. Who can contemplate her tale without murmuring to oneself: This is a woman beyond all women — or men for that matter. No one confuses her with God, mind you, but no one thinks of her as being ‘just like me’.

For most of us, intellectual understanding is important, and is probably a vital first step for anyone approaching Orthodoxy. In the end, however, a true understanding of the Virgin is achieved only experientially. It is inevitable, as a person lives an Orthodox life, that he or she will gradually find that love for the Theotokos arises as naturally as flowers in the spring. There is no other way to describe it. It simply is.

So now I find that my devotion to the Theotokos is primarily one of the heart. I remember the Christological aspects, of course, but that is secondary. I am simply smitten. During the Divine Liturgy, after the first Little Litany, I stand in front of her icon to the left of the Royal Doors. As the Hymn of the Incarnation is sung, I look into her face, searching for understanding. I cannot find it; I cannot imagine myself being as full of grace as she. All I do know is that she is far greater than I, and I content myself with that. I bow to her as the Hymn ends, and move back in front of the Doors for the second Little Litany.

It is appropriate to think about all this, since those of us on the new calendar are about to enter the Dormition Fast. Fasts are good, regardless of the particular reason, but I have always liked that of the Dormition. I love the story: how Christ Himself returns for her upon her death, and how when the Apostles enter the tomb to show Thomas the body (he having been late for the funeral, predictably enough) the crypt is full of flowers. Even before they open the door, they smell the sweetness, so obviously not of death, but of life. It is no surprise that Christ would do nothing less for His own mother.

I have a dream that some day, after this life has ended, that I may see Mary. I can’t imagine sitting down for a chat or having tea with her. I just want to see her, to be in her presence. That would be a lovely thing, to be in the presence of a truly grace filled person. I can only imagine the sweetness, the scent of true humility and grace.

Dreaming of Diveyevo

Pilgrims to Diveyevo, 1904 It has never been any secret that I have a strong tendency toward being a spiritual tourist.  I go to Greece, and visit nary a beach, but happily wander through countless monasteries and churches.  I go to San Francisco, but enter not a bar or club, but seek out relics and churches. In the same fashion, I have always wanted to go to Russia, but the desire has been unfocused.  Russia is a huge country, with attractions for a traveler like me in every nook and cranny of the place.   If I had gone, I would not have known where to begin.  But now I have a notion– a dangerous state of affairs, as my family well knows. I have just finished reading St. Seraphim: Wonderworker of Sarov, by Helen Kontzevitch.  Saint Seraphim, a 19th century Russian saint, is who I am named after.  He lived the sort of life which makes people sit, jaw gaping, as they read about him.  He even has a devoted following among non-Orthodox:  the Archbishop of Canterbury is a fan, as are many Roman Catholics. The Saint was clairvoyant to an astonishing degree, immensely humble and loving, and had a habit of addressing visitors as “My joy!”.  While St. Seraphim lived in a monastery in Sarov, he was responsible for the establishment of a monastic community for women, Diveyevo, some 60 miles from Sarov.  The nuns he called “his orphans”, and he promised never to leave them bereft.  He also left a great number of astounding prophecies, many of which have happened just as noted.  Even though he reposed in 1833, he left a letter for Tsar Nicholas, which the Tsar received unopened in 1903 when he came to Sarov for the ceremonies in which the humble monk Seraphim was officially made a saint.  The letter, written in Seraphim’s own hand, apparently informed Nicholas of what lie ahead for Russia and the Royal family.  The Tsar, by all reports, was grief-stricken. After the Russian Revolution, the communities in both Sarov and Diveyevo were closed.  Many of the monastics were arrested and sent to the Gulag.  Others were dispersed into surrounding villages, where they lived in poverty, maintaining their monastic vows and meeting secretly for services.  Nonetheless, they persevered, perhaps in part because of a prophecy left by the saint, that the two communities would re-open.  True to his word, they in fact were re-established in 1991.  They have grown tremendously:  in Diveyevo there are over 500 nuns in residence. At the present time, Sarov is a city closed to foreigners.  The Russians have located nuclear facilities there which make it impossible for a tourist to visit.  Perhaps partly for that reason, and partly due to his unceasing watchcare over the Diveyevo convent, the saint’s relics have been moved to one of the churches there. Lithograph of Diveyevo Convent, ca 1904 Now I ask you:  how can I not go visit the one I am named after?  As best I can tell, Diveyevo is about 200 miles from Moscow, and is reached by train, followed by a bus or cab ride.  Does the fact that I know absolutely no Russian dissuade me?  Of course not.  I don’t know any Greek either to speak of, but that was a great trip. I don’t know when I might go, but I’m resolved to do it, some day.  Now I just have to break the news to my wife.

A meditation on the Annunciation

Among the hymns of the Feast of the Annunciation, we sing of the strange tidings: “that God as man would be born a child of her without seed, fashioning again the whole human race!  Proclaim, people, the good tidings of the re-creation of the world!”

These are strange tidings indeed.  God conceived of a virgin?  The re-fashioning of the whole human race?  The re-creation of the world?  Our hymn reminds us that the Annunciation was an event that did more than change history.  It was an event that affected all of Creation; that in fact made the entire human race new once again.  It was an event that is so astonishing, so unexpected, that it shaped our entire understanding of God.  It gave us Christ, the new Adam.  It gave us the most Holy Theotokos, the new Eve.

The Annunciation is an event that draws us in, that raises questions of enormous significance.  It is far more than a meeting of an Archangel and a young woman, even though that in itself is nothing to treat in an offhand way.  Rather, it is a event with ramifications that extend through all time and through all the universe.  It is a feast that offers us great depth and meaning; a seemingly simple conversation on which the salvation of the world turns.  For us today, as Orthodox Christians, it is important to remember at least a few of the consequences.  We need to ask ourselves what the Annunciation tells us about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We need to ask ourselves what it tells us about our Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God.  And equally important, what does it say to you and to I, as ordinary Christians, struggling to work out our salvation.  The common thread that answers all three of those questions is this: put in its simplest terms, it is a story of self denial, of self emptying, of what the Fathers called kenosis.  It is, purely and simply, a story of love, a story we should never tire of hearing.

First, the Annunciation reminds us of the meaning of the Incarnation, of the very purpose and meaning of the work of Christ.  Why was it necessary that He come, that He take flesh, that He live, die and be resurrected?

After the Fall of our ancestors, Adam and Eve, the image of God that was contained within humans was dimmed and defaced.  Adam and Eve lived in innocence and without sin.  Their identification with God was complete.  In them, the image of God could be seen clearly and strong.  That image was not found in their looks or their mannerisms.  It was found in their intimate communion with God Himself.

After the Fall, and their expulsion from the Garden, that communion was destroyed, and it was further destroyed for their descendants.   It is not that our ancestors after Adam and Eve were guilty of the sin that led to the Fall.  Instead, they became subject to the consequences of that sin.  Without the communion and closeness to God, their minds became darkened.  They replaced the desire to please and know God with a desire to please themselves.  They became slaves to those desires and to evil.   They were separated from God.  And as that separation became more and more complete, men and women became increasingly subject to passions, to the darkening of their souls.  As time went on, the gulf between humans and God, the damage wrought by the passions and by evil, became so great that the image of God, which is stamped upon us in creation, became darkened, virtually unrecognizable.   And in that desperation, we were subject to death.  Worse, we were its slaves.  Where Adam and Eve were created immortal, after the Fall both they and their descendants died, were buried, and went to Sheol: a place of shadows.  It was not hell as we think of it, but it was a place of sorrow and imprisonment.  St. Athanasius described our plight in this way,:

Men, [he said] bowed down by the pleasures of the moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up their heads toward the truth.  So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemed rather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word.

But the terrible circumstances of men and women did not mean that God had abandoned us.  How could He abandon His creation?  He had formed us out of immeasurable love, and so cherished us that He made us in His very image. Nothing else in creation bore the image of God.  Nothing.  Not angels.  Not the Cherubim, not the Seraphim.  Not the principalities and the Powers.  Only humans.  Only men and women.  God would no more abandon us than a king would abandon his subjects, or a mother her children.  The question was not so much whether we would be abandoned in our despair, but by what means the rescue would take place.

Here is where the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, undertakes the needful task.  Why Christ?  St. Athanasius again explains, saying that:

Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels, for they are not the images of God.  The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image.

It was no accident, the Saint tells us, that creation was renewed by the very same Word of God who first made it.  The Exapostilarian is precisely right.  Creation was corrupted, it was careening toward destruction.  A new creation was required.

But you might ask, why was it necessary that the Word take human flesh?  After all, the original creation was accomplished without that requirement.  The answer is found in death.  Death entered the World through Adam, and it would take a new Adam to remove it.  Humans must regain the deification that they had at creation, the spark of the divine.  Only a fitting death could accomplish that.  But the Word could not die unless he assumed human flesh.  Only then, by being ransomed for all, could He remove the curse of death that mankind had labored under for so long.  For our sake and for our salvation, Christ must assume humanity.  He must empty Himself of every divine prerogative, of every royal characteristic, of His own will.  He must walk in the flesh.  He must die.  As the Apostle Paul exclaimed, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant…He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death upon a cross.”

But how was that to happen?  God is not material, He does not walk about among us in any physical sense.  The answer to that riddle is found in the Theotokos.  On the one hand, she is utterly human.  She was born subject to the same corruption and decay that mark us all.  It would be wrong to say that she was born in an immaculate conception, because if she were somehow born differently from the rest of us, already freed from the passions and from corruption, then how could Christ have been fully human?  He would have been something other than human, and would not have achieved our salvation.  It was vital that Christ be one of us, and for that reason, the Virgin Mary was one of us.  So no, the Virgin Mary was not someone made artificially sinless, made and born to be different from us so she would be fit to be the Mother of God.

But on the other hand, it is also wrong to go too far and say that the Theotokos was just like any other young woman, like any teenage girl you might pass on the street.  Either extreme only serves to downplay how extraordinary the Theotokos truly is.

When the Archangel Gabriel visited her, the Virgin Mary was already full of virtue.  From her youngest days, she had been filled with the love of God, and sought Him in all ways, in all things and at all times.  St. Gregory Palamas tells us that she “kept all the powers of her soul and her bodily senses far above any defilement.  This she did authoritatively, steadfastly, decisively and altogether inviolably at all times, as a closed gate preserves the treasures within, and a sealed book keeps hidden from sight what is written inside.”

How did she do this?  Like her Son, the Mother of God is an example of kenosis, of emptying oneself.  She had free will, she could have pursued her own desires, her own goals.  But in all things she pursued her boundless love for God; she sublimated her own will to that of God.

Some of the Fathers tell us that when Gabriel sought out Mary, all of the righteous of the Old Testament, indeed, all of creation, waited breathlessly to hear her reply, fearful that they would hear her refuse God.  Others, like St. John of Damaskos, think differently.  Pointing at the Virgin’s complete kenosis, they tell us that she could only have given the answer that she gave.  She had, they tell us, perfect natural will, completely attuned to God, and allowing only one answer: yes.  In contrast to that, most of us have what is called “the will of choice”.  It is that will, that frame of mind which allows more than one choice, that allows us to waver and to fret.  We have that will when we are so burdened with our passions and desires that we do not recognize the will of God, or if we see it, we do not wish to assent to it.  My will is the will of choice.  It is the kind that virtually all of us have.

But not the Mother of God.  Yet she did not achieve natural will by some magical means, or by divine grant.  She achieved it by dedicating all of her young life, unceasingly, to the worship and contemplation of God.

So is it possible that the average person would have responded affirmatively to God as the Theotokos did?  It is actually very unlikely.  We might refuse from fear.  We might refuse because our plans do not include that baby, divine or not.  We think: how will this effect me?  Is it good for me?  The Virgin, however, has no such thoughts.  God asks, she assents.  As with Christ, in the Virgin we see the enormous rewards, the awe inspiring love that only the voluntary abandonment of self can bring.

And it is in that voluntary abandonment of self that we find our final lesson for the Annunciation, because that abandonment is the key to salvation, the key to selfless love of God and our neighbor.  While you and I cannot physically bear the God-man, while we cannot be the Theotokos, we can participate in our own Annunciation.  The word of God is the seed, and our nous, our hearts, are a spiritual womb.  By saying yes to God, by our faith, the word of God is sown in our hearts, and we are gifted with the fear of God.  In the fear of God – more accurately, in the fear of remaining far from God – we begin our struggles to purify our hearts and defeat our passions.  What happened physically in the Panagia can happen spiritually in us.  Christ always wishes to live in our hearts, but He cannot unless we give him room, unless we move our stuff – our passions and pride – out, and give way to Him.

The Theotokos bore him who created the universe, contained Him who cannot be contained.  Our goal, our destiny if we will but grasp it is to likewise hold within us the Divine fire, that we may, now and for eternity, burn with the love of God.