The Mother of God in the Orthodox Church

Mary, the Soul

The center of Christian faith is always Jesus Christ, because "there is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved," as St. Peter says in the Acts of the Apostles (4:12). But in our most intimate, deeper life with God the mystery of Mary always walks along with the mystery of Christ (and of the Trinity), just as silence walks along with the Word. The roots of Mary's veneration are centered in the faith and in the love of her Son, "the true light that enlightens every human being." But, in its own simplicity and transparency, the light that enlightens us also carries within itself the maternal presence. Among the people this light takes on the "material" substance of this world. And the light's first "matter" was the womb and the heart of its Mother. The light comes clothed in an obscure and unfathomable mystery, it comes as a message, the Good News; it comes as a person, as the face of Christ back to us, but it also comes as the purity of the Virgin, as tenderness and protection, intercession and love. All these are the "substances" of the Word that speaks to the soul, that enters the soul and, in a primordial manner, becomes flesh in the soul as well as in the Church.

"Every soul that believes, conceives and gives birth to the Word of God; according to faith, Christ is the fruit and all of us are mothers of the Christ," says St. Maximus the Confessor.¹

Mary, the Mother

Christian faith is founded on the Word, is nourished by the Word, but cannot be reduced exclusively to the Word. Because faith is the Word we feel and sense in our heart, in the depth of our silence, the silence we feel at the depth of the Word. And the Word gives life and life enters into our heart. The Word has a Mother and the Mother brings the Word to us. Mary lived all this fully in her maternity.

"In the Mother of God is affirmed eternal maternity, no longer restricted to only the Nativity alone," says the Russian martyr Maria Scobtzova; because the "maternity is an indication of love."² She reveals, according to the word of the great theologian Father Serge Boulgakov, the secret "maternity of God," because the love of God also has a discreetly feminine face. Love is expressed in the Son, but the Son is also the One who saves and who judges, the One who awaits us at his tribunal. But God sends Mary "before" the judgment so she may intercede for all sinners. God lives his Passion on the Cross, but also his compassion for all those who suffer and whom his Mother carries in her heart.

Another secret revealed to us by Mary is that of the Church. There is an intimate bond between the presence of Mary and the action of the Church, between the purification of the soul in Mary and that in the Church, whose invisible protagonist is the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is the Virgin and the Virgin is the Church, as St. Ambrose said.

The revelation of the maternity of God is another aspect, another face of his love. In our most intimate, deepest life with God there is a secret relationship between the Son and the Mother, between the Word and the silence, between faith held and kept by means of dogmatic rules and the mystery, the mystery hidden in the act of faith. And this relationship is essential and sapiential. From the Word we go to silence, from Christ to Mary, from the Church to the soul and back, because the Spirit of truth unites these realities in itself, inseparably and distinctly at the same time. The Father himself sends his Spirit "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:17); and Jesus is conceived in our hearts by the maternity of Mary.

Consequently, the seed of "Marian piety" is alive in every kind of Christian faith, but it is only Tradition that, by going back to its own apostolic and patristic source, discovers Mary as mother of faith in Christ. Mary, as a figure of the Church, enables this seed to grow. In Mary every heart that "lives by faith" (Rom 1:17) becomes a dwelling place of the Word.

This fundamental bond between Mary and the Church, between Mary and the faith, between Mary and the maternity of God himself, holds within itself the hidden wisdom of faith-faith that is always aware of its origin in Christ and cannot forget its womb in Mary.

To confess our faith in God we can use different words, but they all rise from the same silence with God, from "the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col 2:3). In the communion of Marian knowledge seen as "maternity" of the Word, rooted in every single human soul, we can find the signs of the reconciliation which can be called, and fully deserving it, "Marian." Everything is a sign: tenderness and virginity; the icon and the miracle; and so is the sign that brings into focus, that develops, that proclaims the mystery of the living God who is born in us and lives in us.

Such was the faith of the ancient Church: the Word of faith cannot be eradicated from the place of its birth, from the "virgin" mystery of the maternity.

In Luke 8:21, we read, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it." Let us marvel at this; "all those who listen to his word, he raises up to his Mother's level and calls them brothers and relatives!" (St. Simeon the New Theologian).³

Mary, the "Orthodox"

"The heart of Orthodoxy (in particular, Russian Orthodoxy), perhaps, never expressed itself so completely as in the veneration of the Mother of God and of the saints."⁴

"The whole of human suffering in its yearning does not dare to break open its heart in front of Christ for fear of God," says Georguij Fedotov in his writings, "but it freely and lovingly turns to the Mother of God. Assumed in the realm of the divine, up to the dissolution with the Almighty, Mary stands as a distinction from Christ, tied with the human race, the compassionate and protective Mother."⁵

The "Orthodox" face of Mary has many expressions, many images that can be found in a permanent correlation. Very briefly, let us look at only three of them: Mary-Protectress, Mary-Eucharist, Mary-Wisdom.

Mary, the Protectress

Mary is the one who protects, the one who accompanies, the one who pulls us away from danger, that danger that threatens our lives on earth and also the one that threatens the salvation of our souls. The justice of the Lord awaits us, "and we don't have other help, other hope, except you, O, Queen" sings one of the many Orthodox hymns addressed to Mary. "Protection," in Russian "pokrov," is not just the remembrance of a past miracle, but it is the maternal protective part of the very same faith that places us in front of God's eyes in view of our own misery. There, where the ancient virtue of wisdom is present, who, according to Scriptures, is "the Wisdom of God" (Ps 110:10), Mary meets us as mother of repentance. In Orthodoxy there is a tension and equilibrium between faith lived in fear, and trust in this protection before the Final Judgment as well as in front of our own temptations and the dangers of this world.

The maternity of God is also his compassion. Speaking about the mystical theology of Orthodoxy and of its "ethic" as well, we can say that their roots are very deeply Marian. "But the human heart," writes Maria Scobtzova, "still must be transfixed by a double sword blade. ... The cross of neighbors must be a sword for the soul and it must be transfixed by it. The soul must participate with the destiny of others, feel with, and suffer with. ... Due to the resemblance with her prototype, with the Mother of God, the human soul is attracted to Golgotha on the footprints of the Son of Mary; thus, it cannot be attracted without shedding some blood."⁶

And just as she arrives at the Golgotha of her destiny, the Orthodox soul calls upon the mercy and the intercession of the Mother. The miraculous icons, those of Vladimir, Kazan, Pochiaev and Tichvin (in Russia alone there are hundreds of miraculous icons), all express, each in different ways, the "message" of hope, the sign of protection, the mystery of her mediation. There is no room for the mystery where protection is guaranteed, where fear of our merited condemnation due to our sins is absent. The "space" of protection is the hope placed in the love that envelops us because it is born out of fear, in fact, born out of the fear of that love that burns and judges us.

Under the protection of your mercy we find refuge, Oh Mother of God, do not let those who pray to you be overcome by temptation, but free us from danger, you the only pure and blessed one. (Third-century hymn)

The idea of protection is particular to the Russian Orthodox soul. Among all the Marian festivities, "Pokrov," even though not part of the traditional Twelve, is still one of the most beloved ones.⁷ In most parts of Northern Russia the feast of "Pokrov" is celebrated the 14th of October, (October 1st, according to the Julian calendar), and it often coincides with the first snowfall. The earth becomes covered by a white sheet. The brightness of the mantle of snow symbolizes the immaculate icon of purity. But, at the same time, the incoming of winter brings within itself a certain anguish-cold, hunger: the thought of the Russian farmer was always how to survive during the winter. And this anguish becomes fused to the image of purity and the two of them together give birth to a third image, the image of death. The snow is like a denial of a preceding life, another dimension of life undergoing trial, yet cloaked in purity.

All these images "work" at the deepest level, which is that of human rationality. But the answer of faith, which has its roots in the subconscious, that part which always remains concealed to man but that at the same time possesses a clear and rational expression, is the prayer addressed to Mary requesting her protection:

Today, we, people of good will, celebrate in the light, enlightened by your coming. Oh Mother of God, while looking at your most pure image, we say with a heart made tender: cover us with your mantle and save us from every ill; while praying to your Son, Christ our God, save our souls. (Tropaire of Pokrov)

From all these images, buried in the depth of the human heart, the icon representing the face of Mary Mother of God is born; Mary protecting us from evil. But let us take a closer look: this icon is invaded by the light of Christ. Without confusion and without separation, as always in Orthodox Marian piety, Mother and Son are always together. "Mary covers us and protects us with her mantle, and this is for sure" writes a monk of the Oriental Church. "But her mantle is nothing else than the tunic of Jesus, that cloak which the sick of the Gospel used to touch in order to be healed. When it seems that Mary is touching us, it is really Jesus that is touching us."⁸ Otherwise we can say: Jesus is protecting us with the mantle of Mary, he is saving us with the prayer of Mary.

In the Orthodox tradition there is also another view of the "pokrov," that of Mary as the defense from divine love itself, whose fire, for us mortals, is unbearable. Bishop Alexander Semionov-Tian-Shanckij writes:

Any writer holding the faith can confirm that the mantle of the Mother of God protects us from the light of divine glory, from its splendor unsustainable by us sinners. Without this gentle mantle we would be burned by the brightness of the divine glance turned on us, by the ray of his justice and of his love; the mantle of the sovereign Queen gives to each one of us the possibility to receive this light as if it were received from our own strength, thus disposing us to gradually open up, more and more, to the light.⁹