The Mother of God in the Orthodox Church

Mary, the Church

"We have come to know..." and this "knowing" of John embraces and unites all of us, the faithful. It comes from the heart of Mary. But she stands removed, she lets other people do the talking. John speaks, Peter speaks, Paul speaks. Scriptures talk and the Church talks; but each one of their words is as if drenched in the mediation of Mary.

St. John's "coming to know love," as well as St. Ignatius' becoming aware of the "three incredible mysteries" a few generations later, reveal another mystery that unites Mary with the Church. The Church hears the Word in the silence of Mary, receives the love of God from the hands of Mary, and "recognizes herself" in Mary; the Church also remembers Mary in all her prophetic "prefigurations" which we find in Scripture. The ecclesial memory or "remembrance" always goes back to its source in the heart of Mary.

We find her in the narration of creation as the "virgin land," in the image of the Garden of Eden, in the story of Eve who became "the mother of all the living" because Mary is destined to become the New Eve. We sense her discrete presence in the ark of Noah and in the heavenly ladder of Jacob, but above all we see her in the burning bush because Mary herself becomes the receptacle of the "Fire," that "Fire" which the entire earth cannot contain. In the crossing of the Red Sea we recognize the virginal birth of the Word, in the hymn of the sister of Aaron we hear the echo of the "Magnificat." Also in the dwelling, and in the glory of the Lord which filled the dwelling, we already recognize the vision of Mary's glory. We recognize the figure of Mary in Anna's canticle in the Psalms. We meet her in the uncreated Seat of Wisdom, we confess her as spouse in the Song of Songs, and finally, in the words of Isaiah we hear her prophesied, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel" (Is 7:14).

The Church in the commemoration of Mary recognizes herself in Mary, because the remembrance that lives in the Holy Spirit-or Tradition-continues through time. Therefore, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, which the Church confesses from the beginning, finds its fulfillment, its fullness, only when enlightened by the mystery of Mary.

The Church, in her knowledge of Mary figured as "Odighitria," "Succorer," "Mother of the Afflicted," "Joy of All Creation" and so on, finds the avenue to her own mystery. "Mary is the archetype and the personification of the Church, body of Christ and temple of the Holy Spirit."¹ With the words kept in the heart of Mary, the Holy Spirit that lives in her keeps reminding the Church of everything that Jesus said (cf. Jn 14:26) and everything that Jesus continues to tell us, even today. Tradition is the uninterrupted Word. But this dimension of the "sanctified remembrance" is tied to another one, to that of sacrifice. Christ is an offering of God to humanity, but an offering that we receive as a gift from Mary. Mary herself, as well, is above all the gift that humanity gives of itself to God, the most precious gift, the fruit of a long maturation in the embrace of grace.

"What can we offer you, O Christ?" sings the Orthodox Church at the Christmas vigil, "Heaven offers you the angels, earth brings you her gifts, but we, humankind, offer you the Virgin-Mother."

In the writings of the early Fathers we find the idea of a reciprocal thirst which unites God and man; we find the idea of God's walk towards humankind and the walk of humankind towards God. The story of humanity is the very long vicissitude of the place of this encounter. "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you," we hear Isaiah's cry (Is 64:1). But God came down in secret and in peace. The womb of the daughter of Zion was the place of his encounter with humankind. And from the moment of this encounter a new light falls all over Scripture. The Word of God becomes a string of "icons" that foresees the coming of Mary as the one who carries within herself the mystery of the definite encounter of God with humanity. Mary was chosen as the last stopping place in the long walk of the Word toward man. The Church of the Word was revealed and became fully realized in Mary, in her body, in her heart, in her faith. And so it was also in the faith of her saints and martyrs.

No matter; says one of them, how crazy the world can get and raise a turbid wave upon what we have that is most sacred and pure, we are certain that the sacred mysteries will triumph, because our sinful earth is marked by the footprints of the only Pure One. No matter how much the Church will undergo persecution, it cannot be overcome, because the Mother of God is the heart of the Church, and this heart is cloaked in the sacred mystery of divine love. This sacred mystery is the source of our rebirth, the triumph of eternal life.²

For, "Mary is the archetype and the personification of the Church, body of Christ and temple of the Holy Spirit" (F. Alexis Kniasev).

Mary, the Faith

St. Clement of Alexandria says, "Only one Virgin-Mother exists, and according to my point of view no better name can be suited to her than the name Church."³

Mary, by herself, because of her ever-living faith, built the Church of Jesus, and during the long vigil of that Saturday while Christ was resting in the Sepulcher, the entire life of the Mystical Body was gathered in her, almost as if to look for refuge in her, as if the Body were in its own heart.⁴

From the very heart of Mary the infant Church was also trying to understand herself and her own faith. The first Christian generations who lived in the mystery of Mary, who possessed the strong sense of her protection, of the fullness of the Holy Spirit within her being, had not yet put together a "Mariology." The hold of dogmatic consciousness of Mary's role and of her presence became more deeply rooted by means of necessity, born in the discussion with the many opposers of a Christocentric faith. For this reason the mystery must be lived, not only in liturgical glorification or in the profession of faith, but also in reasoning that deals with the mystery as if it were precious stone and takes it apart, cutting facets on it with human rationality. There is more: dogmatic knowledge is developed, keeps going ahead, but in the end it goes back towards the source of knowledge, towards the remembrance hidden in the heart. True knowledge is in fact gratitude, because it springs from love; and it is also recognition because it derives from veiled memory. The Church, therefore, by developing her vision of Mary, always arrives at the truth of faith already known, because she carries it within herself from the very beginning, the truth already lived by her saints and her martyrs: Mary is the Mother of God, Mary is always Virgin, Mary is Mother of humankind. This truth is only born by the "intelligent contemplation" of the mystery of the incarnate Word.

It is in this manner that St. Justin, philosopher and martyr, discovers the analogy, which becomes classical, between Mary and Eve, because Mary was already present in the remembrance of Eve:

Eve ... while still virgin and incorrupt, conceived the word of the serpent and gave birth to disobedience and death. Mary, the Virgin, on the contrary, when the Angel Gabriel brought her the happy news that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, accepted it with faith and joy ... and for this reason the Holy One born of her would be the Son of God. And she responds with the following words, "Be it done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38).⁵

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in his fight against Gnosticism, the heresy of the second century after Christ, a heresy that shows its vitality even nowadays, speaks of Mary as the Mother of the Word of God. The Gnostics diluted the Christian faith by separating the Word and Jesus. "The Jesus of the economy" of which they speak, passed, they say, through Mary like water passes through a pipe.⁶

Two centuries later the idea of separation finds its form in Nestorius' doctrine. He said something very simple, and according to him something very logical: the Word of God did not need nine months of development in order to be born of Mary. That is, God used Mary as his "instrument," and Mary as Mother of God simply does not exist.

The Council of Ephesus, which condemned Nestorius, expressed the mystery of the union of the human and of the divine having taken place in the womb of Mary as the foundation of the salvific work of God. "According to the concept of the Council of Ephesus," says the Orthodox theologian, Alexis Kniasev, "we are acknowledging the holy Virgin as Theotókos (Mother of God) since the Word of God became incarnate and was made man and since the Word united to himself, from the very beginning and by means of that very conception, the temple undertaken by her."⁷

The term "Theotókos" is not a small part of dogmatic Mariology-it is at the very center of the vision of Mary, or rather, it is "Marian wisdom" finding its rational formula. Only as Mother of God can Mary also become Mother in an ontological and soteriological sense. "The mystery of the divine maternity reaches far beyond the personality of the Mother of God and is revealed like a fundamental mystery of Christ's salvific work. She receives and introduces the Savior as well as salvation to humankind."⁸ And as the Mother of the Incarnation she is also Mother of all humanity in its walk towards God. The decision of the Council of Ephesus remains, for the Orthodox Church, a definitive boundary of the last facet that separates true spiritual knowledge, salvific and rooted in the mystery, from erroneous and illusory avenues. This is like a foundation stone upon which Christocentric piety is based. The sense of the conciliar decision is: the truth about Christ casts a light on the truth about his Mother as well, and only this light can nourish our soul with the correct faith, rooted in Christ, conceived in Mary.

The term "Theotókos" is apophatic as well. It contains the whole truth about the divine maternity, a truth, however, "folded" into the mystery, wrapped in the non-knowledge. The light that comes from Mary's maternity in not always "decipherable" with precise formulae. And the Orthodox Church defines this apophatism. This light continues to live and grow in the Church, but its "development," according to Orthodoxy, is not dogmatic or purely rational, but is existential, which manifests itself in the history of the sanctity lived by the saints. The Holy Spirit allows the development of the truth about Mary and of Mary to be manifest in the experience of the saints, in the common remembrance of the People of God, where the word "Theotókos," while safeguarded in its infant and conciliar nucleus, becomes filled with new meanings that are brought about through a prayer-filled life pervaded by the presence of the Mother.

And this presence is the language of divine love that speaks with the soul, in the silence, a presence that also keeps looking for its liturgical expression.

Ave, torment of the invisible enemies,
Ave, key to the doors of heaven,
Ave, bond of joy from heaven to earth,
Ave, as the earth exults with the sky,
Ave, from the unceasing lips of the apostles,
Ave, invincible courage of martyrs,
Ave, firm assertion of faith,
Ave, luminous knowledge of grace,
Ave, for whom hell is destroyed,
Ave, of whose glory we are blinded ...
(Akathist to the Most Holy Mother of God)

The art of the akathist is that of recognition. The heart (of humankind, of the singing community, of the Church) recognizes the different faces of its joy of loving or of being loved by the Mother of God, the joy of singing its faith with her or the joy of simply being near her. We can see the definitions multiplying themselves in the expressions of joy and exuberance; the akathist, as a liturgical form, is an act, or rather, it is the river of knowing that does not become rigid through the dogmas that have been defined, a river which has its value in the very flowing of the confession of faith as a state of mind that takes life from its own singing. This casting, this musical flowing, has its origin in the only definition of Mary "recognized," praised in the role of Theotókos, and it goes back to the same source. The divine maternity is like a fountain of "the essence of being ecclesial," of the Church, who, in her praying, finds her definition in Mary.

But the prayer born in the heart of the Church also creates the truth in the Church, truth in the two following aspects: Christological and Mariological; the truth in two senses: existential and dogmatic. Certainly, not every word of our liturgical usage can expect to claim a definitive truth. At times it expresses nothing but our search, our intuition or conjecture, a bursting out of the soul. But also in this case, when the search is done along the trail of authentic Tradition, prayer brings with it the witnessing of its truth, a truth not completely perfect, but the truth of that "indistinct vision" (1 Cor 13:12), characteristic of humankind, or the hypothetical truth that can also be rejected. However, in the Orthodox Church this rigid confinement between faith and its devotional expression, upon which Newman insists at the beginning of his letter to Pusey about Mary, does not exist.⁹ Faith, having its solid structure in its dogmatic foundation becomes open and constantly recognizes itself in its prayer; faith in turn, "becomes aware" of the moment of truth in the Spirit through the praying community.

Only the Church, the expansion of Christ's human nature, can hold the fullness of Revelation; if a book were to be written about it not even the entire world would be able to contain it. Only the Mother of God, chosen to contain God in her womb, can fully realize all that is connected to the event of the Incarnation of the Word, which, at the same time, is the secret of her divine maternity.¹⁰

But there is yet another aspect of Mary's mediation, the pneumatological one. In the Church's conscience every dogma is like a seal of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind, the rational icon of the same Holy Spirit. The definition of Mary as Mother of God is the act of self-consciousness of ecclesial faith and the manifestation of the Spirit. The birth of dogmatic knowledge is like the conception of the Word. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk 1:35). But the Spirit also comes to give life to the Word in our soul, that is, to faith. Faith is the fruit of the descent of the Spirit, and Mary is always the first image of faith, its icon, its mother giving birth to faith itself.

In other words: If Christian faith has a face, this face is the one of Mary, the icon of the Church.

"Crown of dogmas," Mary sheds light on the Trinitarian mystery reflected in the human: "You have given birth to a son without a father, this Son who was born of the Father without a mother" (the dogmatic, third tone). To the paternity of the Father in the realm of the divine corresponds, in the realm of the human, the maternity of the Theotókos; the image of the maternal virginity of the Church. And it is Cyprian who exclaims, "One cannot have God as Father who does not have the Church as mother."¹¹