The Mother of God in the Orthodox Church

Mary, Apple of Discord

The figure of Mary continues to divide three big Christian families: Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. It is common knowledge, for example, that Catholicism and Orthodoxy are separated by two Marian dogmas. But, in the two faiths, the sense and the place of the dogma have a somewhat different position. If Orthodoxy sees dogmatic knowledge as the secure custodian against deviation from the "correct faith," Catholicism perceives, in the same knowledge, an element of praise as well. The thought of Catholicism does not remain enchanted in front of the impenetrable mystery, does not go around it, but wants to penetrate it, as if to tear away the secret of silence in order to have it participate in the veneration. For this reason there is an interior coherence in the Catholic dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption, as a similar logic and coherence also exists in Orthodoxy in the very absence of said dogmas. Orthodoxy does not accept these definitions as rules, not because it was not able to undertake the intellectually coherent and necessary task, as Newman thought,¹ but simply because Orthodoxy does not want to allow entrance to what it perceives to be a logic that is too rational, too constricting in a dogmatic sense, in its Marian devotion. The so-called Marian rationality, however, object of so much criticism on the part of the Orient in the past, cannot be anything else but an instrument of glorification and a specific language of prayer. Therefore, the intellect can pray with the dogmas also. We pray in different languages, and perhaps the flowery embellishment of our hymns, akathists and canons, so familiar to us, are not easily married in the Latin mentality.

If dogmatic apophatism is part of Eastern faith, whose main way of expression is liturgical, the more modest Catholicism, more reserved in its divine office, always searches "divinity" (that is, the revealed character) of its faith, scans and finds new reflections of the same mystery that we instead keep in the hollow of silence.

Let us see in a more concrete way. Practically there is no discussion between the Orthodox and Protestant view on the role of Mary because the Protestant world acknowledges the ecclesial tradition which leans exclusively upon the letter of the Scripture. But the veneration of the Mother of God from the second century to nowadays is a part of "ecclesial being" in its spiritual, liturgical, and dogmatic dimension. It is an inalienable part of the Church's life. In theory we can find some formulas of reconciliation, but we can't communicate the so-called "Mary" wisdom, revealed to St. Ignatius and to his innumerable followers. For example the so-called problem of "Mary's children" cannot be resolved on historical grounds; but it cannot be even seriously discussed because for the Orthodox mind it does not exist. "Apollo has no revelatory significance for Christians; the Virgin Mother Mary reveals nothing to Protestantism" (Paul Tillich). But for the Orthodox tradition the ever-virginity of Mary is not only a dogmatic statement but an element of revelation matured in the Church. Thus, the discussion with the Protestant world can't be led dogmatically or historically, but only on the basis of a common, rediscovered, spiritual and ecclesial life.²

A Way to Reconciliation

St. Augustine said, "In the most important matters, seek unity; in that which is less certain, seek freedom; in all things seek charity." Perhaps, regarding unity in a Mariological sense, the fundamental thing is the wisdom that Mary possesses and incarnates within herself. Wisdom precedes dogmatic knowledge, but the latter, contrariwise, is deeply personal and free. And in its liberty there is also an avenue towards reconciliation in the spiritual life, toward the memory shared in the heart of the Mother of God. Mary, who remains the "sign of contradiction" before the prince of this world and for the world itself, should not be a similar sign for the Christian family. Marian wisdom, that is the vision of the world and of mankind created out of love through the divine maternity, in the mystery of the bond that forever unites the Mother with the Son of God, should create the spiritual space for abiding unity under the protection of Mary herself. It is not necessary to try to accomplish such unity right away, not now nor even tomorrow. What really counts is the space acquired by the common silence and of shared knowledge. Only from this unifying source can unity make its way visible: unity, not as constriction or compromise, but as gift of inner freedom, sapiential freedom.

In addition, with knowledge as a Marian source of theological thought, we can be free from the law of opposition, from the constricting need of being opposed to the truth of another in favor of our truth.

P.P. Florensky writes, in his essay "Thoughts about Orthodoxy," that the entire knowledge of religion and of its writings as well, is supported by the adverbial particle "not." However, in his contact with another religion and another confession, modern man does not see and chooses not to see the interior meaning, its coherence, its conformity to its law, its intrinsic form.³ In other words, we can try to live another truth, and the faith of another, by recognizing them and discovering them in our own knowledge.

However, before talking about traditions that seem to divide, we must find reconciliation in the mystery of knowledge rooted in silence. How do we find it? With the effort of the heart and the effort of the ear as well, tuned to the silence of another. The priority of faith formulas must give space to another priority, that of the relationship with the Lord, "searcher of mind and heart" (Jer 12:20). Where this silence is present and truly felt and protected in the heart of Mary, there does not exist any crisis of the ecclesial essence, and the faith is not thrown into confusion by the waves of secularism or by the internal movements that destroy the Church. The Word of God, that in the process of transmutation becomes the human word, is, as it were, protected by the Mother of the Word, the Mother who keeps silent. Her silence is the veil, the "pokrov" of our faith that speaks, thinks, and creates concepts.

Mary is also the image of each soul fertilized by the Spirit, which generates the Lord. This absolutely unique event in history becomes a paradigm of the mystical life for each soul, a model of the Trinitarian faith which needs the Mother, Mary. Such are the principal features of the veneration of the Mother of God in the Orthodox Church. However, when one starts to ponder the "marian" experience of the East, one is always struck by the similarity or the kinship with the same experience of the Occident, in spite of a difference in forms and dogmas. This intimate affinity, vital, existential, which carries the germs of the inevitable unity is Mary, Mother of God, the unity which remains to be discovered.