23.

 Summarize the reasons for the veneration of the Theotokos.

            Holy Scripture shows that it is most proper to venerate the Most Pure Mother of God. The Archangel Gabriel venerated her, saying, “Rejoice, thou that are highly favored, the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women” (Lk 1:28). St. John the Forerunner, as a babe in his mother's womb, leaped at the mere sound of the voice of the Theotokos (Lk 1:41,44). St. Elizabeth also venerated Mary, saying, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb: and whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to Me?” (Lk 1:42-43). Likewise did the followers of Christ venerate Mary. One of them, after hearing Christ's words, said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked” (Lk 11:27).

            Elder Epiphanies Theodoropoulos (+1989) gives further reasons for the veneration of the Theotokos. To the above quoted words of St. Elizabeth, the Mother of God replied that from henceforth, all generations would call her blessed (Lk 1:48). Who was the Theotokos, then? Fr. Epiphanios answers:

An unknown girl of Nazareth. Who knew her? Despite this, from then on, empires have been forgotten, bright names of women have vanished, wives and mothers of generals have been forgotten. Who knows or remembers the mothers of Napoleon... or the mother of Alexander the Great? Almost no one. However, millions of lips in all the lengths and widths of the earth, and in all the centuries, hymn the humble daughter of Nazareth, “more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim. “ Are we or are we not, the people of [modern times], living the verification of this prophetical saying of the Panagia? [Counsels for Life, pp. 196-97].

The Mother of God, the daughter of the aged Joachim and Anna, and a descendant of the royal line of David, is a real person who walked this earth. To understand who she is, one need only to look to the Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition of the Holy Orthodox Church, which have remained unchanged since Apostolic times.

            The Theotokos was chosen from among all generations to become a bridge so that salvation could come into the world. Her selection to be the Mother of God took five and a half millennia after the fall of Adam and Eve before there arose a woman who was so completely “holy both in body and spirit” (1 Cor 7:34) that, through the creative action of God's Holy Spirit, God fashioned from her all-pure blood the flesh that was taken by Jesus, the Son and Word of God. Through a life of holiness, Mary became a pure vessel to contain the Uncircumscribable One, giving birth to Him, raising Him, and protecting Him in His youth.

            The Holy Fathers have always taught that “God became man so that man might become divine,” that is, that people might share God's nature (2 Peter 1:4). However, God did not wish to become incarnate without Mary's consent, for He always respects human freedom. Mary's response was completely voluntary. There was the chance for her to say no. However, her faith and obedient submission to God's will that she become an active participant in the Mystery of the Incarnation counterbalanced Eve's unbelief and disobedience in Paradise. Mary loosened the knot which Eve had bound, and Mary is therefore referred to as the New Eve, which means that she is the Mother of the new human race which is to share in the life of God. Had it not been for Mary's cooperation, there would have been no Incarnation, and consequently no redemption. Through Eve came sin; through the Virgin, salvation. The Theotokos, the Holy Church teaches, is the supreme example of synergy (cooperation) between God's purpose and the will of man. The Mother of God is, as the Archangel Gabriel called her, “full of grace.”

            St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco writes that the Jewish slanderers of the Mother of Jesus soon became convinced that it was almost impossible to dishonor her. On the basis of the information which they themselves possessed, it was much easier to prove her praiseworthy life. Therefore, abandoning their slander, which as Origen writes had already been taken up by the pagans (cf. Against Celsus I), they strove to prove at least that Mary had not been a virgin when she gave birth to Christ. They even maintained that the prophecies concerning the birth-giving of the Messiah by a virgin had never existed, and that it was therefore entirely in vain that the Christians thought to exalt Jesus by the fact that a prophecy was supposedly being fulfilled in Him.

            Jewish translators were found (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) who made new translations of the Old Testament into Greek. In these, the well-known prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, was altered. In place of the word virgin, the translators substituted a young woman. Through this altered text, the translators hoped to make people believe that Christians thought to ascribe to Mary something completely impossible — a birth-giving without a man, while actually the birth of Christ was not in the least different from other human births. However, the evil intent of the translators was clearly revealed. Indeed, not only the Jews, but even the pagans, on the basis of their own translations and various prophecies, expected the Redeemer to be born of a virgin.

            The Gospels clearly state that Christ had been born of a virgin, and from antiquity the Christian Church has always confessed Christ “incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” This truth was denied, though, not only by the Jews, but also by those who denied the Gospel, and by those who did not wish to humble themselves and lead a pure life. For the latter, the birth of God from the Ever-Virgin proved a stumbling block, and Mary's pure life was a reproach to them. Therefore, in order to present themselves as Christians, they began a new attack against the Mother of God. They did not deny that Christ was born of a virgin, but they began to maintain that Mary was a virgin only “until she brought forth her firstborn Son, Jesus” (Mt 1:25).

            In the fourth century, the false teacher Helvidius (and likewise many others before and after him) held that after Christ's birth, Mary entered into conjugal life with St. Joseph the Betrothed and had from him children, who are called Christ's brothers and sisters in the Gospels.

            In the fifth century, St. Jerome pointed out that the term brethren of the Lord does not necessarily infer the first degree of consanguinity. As the Semitic language lacked a word for cousin, the word achim (brethren) was used, and it had a very wide meaning, from that of siblings to cousins, and also stretching to members of the same tribe. Thus Genesis 14:14 states that Lot was Abraham's brother, when he was actually Abraham's nephew. Likewise, Genesis 29:15 describes Jacob as the brother of his uncle Laban. In many other places, the term brethren could be used to describe people not related either by blood or tribe (vide Jer 34:9, Deut 23:7 and Esd 5:7).

            Of further note, in no place in the New Testament are any of the “brethren” explicitly referred to as Mary's son or sons — a systematic omission that additionally shows that Jesus was indeed her only son. Jesus is always referred to as “the son of Mary,” not “a son of Mary.”

            Moreover, as St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco goes on to explain, the word until and words similar to it often signify eternity. In Sacred Scripture, it is said of Christ: “In His days shall shine forth righteousness and an abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away” (Ps 71:1). This passage does not mean that when there shall no longer be a moon at the end of the world, God's righteousness shall no longer be; rather it means that precisely than it will triumph.

            Sacred Scripture likewise states: “For He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor 15:25). This passage does not mean that Christ is to reign only until the time His enemies are put under His feet, for He will reign forever.

            Again, King David writes: “As the eyes of the handmaid look unto the hands of her mistress, so do our eyes look unto the Lord our God, until He takes pity on us” (Ps 122:2). David will have his eyes toward the Lord until he obtains mercy, but having obtained it, he will not direct them to the earth.

            Still another example is Christ's remark to the Apostles that: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Mt 28:20). It cannot be supposed that after the end of the world, when the Apostles judge the twelve tribes of Israel, that they will not have the promised communion with the Lord.

            Moreover, it is not correct to maintain that the brothers and sisters of Christ were the children of His Most Pure Mother. As the same St. John points out, the names of brother and sister have several distinct meanings. These designations signify a certain kinship between people or their spiritual closeness, and they are sometimes used in a broader or narrower sense. St. John notes that in any case, people are called brothers or sisters if they have a common father and mother, or only a common father or mother; or even if they have different fathers and mothers, if their parents (having become widowed) have entered into marriage (stepbrothers and stepsisters); or if their parents are bound by close degrees of kinship.

            St. John notes that nowhere in the Gospels can it be seen that those who are called the brothers of Jesus were or were considered the children of His Mother. On the contrary, it was known that Jesus and others were the sons of Joseph, the betrothed of Mary, who was a widower with children from his first wife (cf. St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, Panarion, 78). Also, the sister of the Theotokos, Mary the wife of Cleopas, who stood with her during the Crucifixion (Jn 19: 25) had children. These children, in view of such close kinship, with full right could also be called brothers of the Lord.

            That Christ's so-called brothers and sisters were not the children of the Theotokos is clearly evident in the fact that Christ entrusted His Mother before His death to His disciple John. Christ would not have given her to John's care if Mary had other children other than Himself. The other children would have taken care of her themselves. Also, as St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco points out, the sons of Joseph, the supposed father of Jesus, did not consider themselves obliged to take care of someone they regarded as their stepmother, or at least they did not have such love for her as blood children have for their parents, and such as the adopted John had for her.

            Aping the ancient heretics who blasphemed the Mother of God, the entire Protestant world is unable to abandon its blasphemous and mocking teaching on the Mother of God. Even to this day, Protestantism refuses to call the all-holy Virgin anything but Mary. Also, twisting all things in Scripture that are hard to understand (cf. 2 Peter 3:16), Protestantism brought back to life the false teaching that Mary lived with Joseph as a wife with her husband, and that he fathered children by her. However, St. John's examination of Scriptures given above reveals with complete clarity the insubstantiality of the objections to the ever-virginity of the Mother of God. Also, the flippant irreverence of those who attack her virginity is completely nullified by Scripture, which states: “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut” (Ezekiel 44:2). The Holy Fathers regarded these lines as a prophecy of the birth of God from a virgin, and also of the ever-virginity of Mary, and the liturgical poetry of Orthodoxy often refers to “the closed gateway of the Virgin.” Moreover, as Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky points out, the birth of Jesus Christ from a virgin is testified to directly and deliberately by two Evangelists, Matthew and Luke. This dogma entered into the Church's Creed, Fr. Michael explains, in these words: “Who for the sake of us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.” The dogma of the Virgin Birth teaches that the Theotokos was a virgin before Childbirth, during Childbirth, and after Childbirth.

            The life of the Theotokos is preserved in the Church's Sacred Apostolic Tradition. During her earthly life, she avoided the glory that was hers as the Mother of God, but preferred instead to live in quiet and to prepare for her departure into eternal life. She always gook pains to the end of her earthly days to prove worthy of the Kingdom of her Son.

            The friends of Christ, the Apostles, manifested great concern and devotion for the Virgin Mary, especially John the Theologian. After Christ uttered to him from the Cross, “Behold thy mother,” John took her to himself and cared for her as a mother.

            After Mary's repose, the Apostles (save Thomas) gave her most pure body over to burial. On the third day, when the Apostle Thomas arrived in Jerusalem, all of them went to the tomb, only to find it empty. Mary later appeared to them that evening during their meal, telling them that Christ had glorified her body also and that she, resurrected, stood before His throne. She then promised to be with the forever. Of this encounter, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco writes:

The Apostles greeted the Mother of God with great joy and began to venerate her not only as the Mother of their beloved Teacher and Lord, but also as their heavenly helper, as a protector of Christians and intercessor for the whole human race before the righteous Judge. And everywhere the Gospel of Christ was preached, His Most Pure Mother also began to be glorified [The Orthodox Veneration of Mary, the Birthgiver of God, p. 23].

The God-pleasing Saint John continues:

If God the Father chose her, God the Holy Spirit descended upon her, and God the Son dwelt in her, submitted to her in the days of His youth, was concerned for her when hanging on the Cross — then should not everyone who confesses the Holy Trinity venerate her? [Ibid., p. 21].

Mary is the Mother of our God and the most exalted among all God's creatures. In the titles assigned to her by two Ecumenical Councils, she is the Theotokos (Birthgiver of God) and Aeiparthenos (Ever-Virgin). She is also popularly referred to as Panagia (All-Holy), and in the hymn Meet It Is sung at the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, she is called “more honorable than the Cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim.”

            It is indeed proper for people to follow the example of the Most Pure Mother of God and venerate her. Many times each year, Orthodox Christians all over the world gather in churches adorned with icons of their heavenly Intercessor to praise her who was glorified with special honor in Heaven and on earth, and to thank her for the benefactions she has shown, and to beg mercy. They also venerate her in every series of hymns in the services, each of which ends with a hymn or verse (the Theotokion) that honors her.