THE MIRROR OF THE THEOTOKOS

Blachernitissa or Platytera, the Virgin Orans with Christ Emmanuel in her womb

A MEDITATION ON THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

The Church begins her liturgical year with a birth, and a birth of one from whom all the theological assumptions about the salvation of the world, all the drama of God struggling to take back His beloved creation from man’s fall, pertains. 

Before Bethlehem, before the angels sing to shepherds, before the star rises over Judea, before the Word is heard crying from the manger, the Church pauses to remember the birth of a little girl whose coming into the world passed almost entirely unnoticed by the powers of the earth. Caesar issued no decree concerning her. Herod trembled at no report of her birth. No Magi came from the East bearing gifts. No angelic multitude appeared above Jerusalem. Yet in the hidden providence of God something had begun which would overturn the history of mankind. A baby named “Miriam”, named from the Hebrew root associated with “Bitterness” or “Rebellion” (מרר, m-r-r), had been born. Her name represents the human condition. Her role would, by God’s grace, be to birth the New Adam. 

And therefore the Church sings at the Nativity of the Theotokos not merely of the birth of Mary, but of the beginning of the manifestation of salvation. For the mystery of Mary can never finally be separated from the mystery of her Son. We do not honor her because she constitutes another center of the Christian faith alongside Jesus Christ. We honor her precisely because there is only one center: Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

The glory of Mary is therefore derivative, but it is not insignificant. It is reflected light, but the light reflected is the uncreated Light Himself. Our Holy Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a “Mirror of the Incarnation.” 

The canonical Scriptures tell us nothing directly about St. Mary’s birth. Yet they give us the theological world within which her birth must be understood. Scripture repeatedly brings salvation out of barrenness. St. Sarah cannot conceive, and Patriarch Isaac is born. St. Rebekah is barren, and Jacob and Esau are given. St. Rachel cries for children, and St. Joseph comes forth. Manoah’s wife is barren, and Samson is conceived. St. Hannah weeps before the Lord, and the Hreat Prophet Samuel is given to Israel. Again and again, where human generation reaches its limit, God acts. The pattern teaches Israel that the covenant survives not by human power alone but by divine promise.

The ancient Protoevangelium of St. James, although never received as canonical Scripture, preserves the early Christian tradition of Mary’s birth within precisely this biblical pattern. Joachim and Anna are presented as righteous Israelites afflicted by childlessness. St. Joachim remembers Abraham and Isaac. St. Anna remembers Sarah. She laments beneath the tree because the birds bear young, the beasts reproduce, the waters teem with life, and the earth itself brings forth fruit, while her own womb remains barren. Then the angel announces that God has heard her prayer and that she shall conceive. When the child is finally born, St. Anna asks the midwife what she has borne. “A girl,” comes the answer. Anna rejoices, and the child is called Miriam - “Mary.” This is not canonical Scripture, and the distinction matters, since the Church has never officially included it among the readings to be read without an eye for history, context, and later developments. Yet the story is profoundly scriptural in its imagination. Mary appears at the end of the long procession of miraculous births through which God prepared Israel for the coming of the Messiah. The barren womb becomes fruitful because the history of promise is moving toward its fulfillment.

But there is an extraordinary reversal here. St. Sarah’s miraculous child is Patriarch Isaac. St. Hannah’s miraculous child is Prophet Samuel. Elizabeth’s miraculous child is St. John the Baptist. St. Anna’s child, according to this ancient tradition, is not herself the Messiah. She is the woman from whom the Messiah will take flesh. The miracle therefore moves one generation backward and God prepares the womb from which He will prepare the flesh by which the Word will enter His creation.

This is why the Nativity of the Theotokos belongs properly within the great biblical movement of Creation, Generation, Covenant, Seed, Incarnation, and New Creation. Genesis begins with the creation of humanity as male and female and immediately commands, “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). After the Fall, salvation itself is announced through generation: the seed of the woman shall crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The promise narrows through Abraham: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). It narrows again through Judah, through David, through Israel, until finally St. Paul declares, “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made… And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). And between the promise of the Seed and the appearance of the Seed stands a woman. “When the fulness of the time was come,” Paul writes, “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). That sentence contains almost the whole mystery. The Son is sent because He existed before His birth. He is made of a woman because His humanity is real. He is God’s Son before He is Mary’s Son, yet He truly becomes Mary’s Son without ceasing to be God’s eternal Son. Here lies the reason that the Church’s confession concerning Mary is never merely Mariology. At its deepest level, it is Christology.

Already in the second century, St. Ignatius of Antioch insisted upon the reality of Christ’s birth from Mary because he was combating those who denied the reality of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is truly “of the seed of David according to the flesh,” truly born of the Virgin, truly crucified, and truly risen. The flesh matters because salvation happened in the flesh.

St. Justin Martyr and, still more fully, St. Irenaeus recognized another biblical pattern. Eve and Mary stand opposite one another. Through the disobedience of the virgin Eve comes death; through the obedience of the Virgin Mary comes the One who destroys death. Irenaeus does not make Mary another savior. His entire theology makes such an interpretation impossible. Christ is the New Adam who recapitulates humanity in Himself. But within that recapitulation Mary’s obedience answers Eve’s disobedience. The knot tied through unbelief begins to be untied through faith.

This is the ancient Marian theology at its strongest. It is not Mary instead of Christ. It is Mary within the mystery of Christ. She matters because the Incarnation matters. She is blessed because the Fruit of her womb is blessed. She is the New Eve because He is the New Adam. She is the Mother of God because the man whom she bore is God.

And therefore St. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Ghost, cries, “Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). Mary herself, also speaking within the mystery of the Spirit, prophesies concerning the Church that is yet to come: “Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

We should not be embarrassed to fulfill that prophecy. All Christians should call Mary blessed. We should speak her name with tenderness. We should commemorate her with gratitude. We should contemplate her faith. We should imitate her obedience. We should honor the body that bore our Lord. We should marvel at the woman who heard the impossible announcement of Gabriel and answered, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

There is something impoverished in a Christianity that can speak endlessly about Paul, Peter, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or some beloved contemporary preacher, yet becomes uncomfortable when Christians speak lovingly about the Mother of Jesus. The Gospel itself does not share that discomfort. Gabriel calls her “highly favoured” (Luke 1:28). Elizabeth calls her “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42). Mary declares that all generations shall call her blessed. At Cana she points away from herself and toward her Son: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5). At Calvary, when almost everyone else has fled, she remains beneath the Cross (John 19:25). In Acts she is found among the infant Church persevering in prayer as it awaits Pentecost (Acts 1:14).

There is therefore a properly Christian “hyperdulia”, an extraordinary honor accorded to Mary above the other saints because her relationship to the Incarnation is absolutely unique. She is not simply one holy Christian among many. There is only one woman in all human history who gave human flesh to the incarnate Word. There is only one woman whose blood and body nourished the humanity assumed by God the Son. There is only one woman who can say to the Creator of heaven and earth, in the ordinary and literal human meaning of the word, “my Son.”

Yet precisely because her dignity comes from the Incarnation, Marian devotion must always preserve the distinction upon which the Incarnation itself depends: Mary is creature; Christ is Creator. Mary is redeemed; Christ is Redeemer. Mary receives grace; Christ is the fountain of grace. Mary bears God; she is not God. This is why the controversy settled at the First Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 remains so important. The title Theotokos—God-bearer, Mother of God—was not ultimately a sentimental compliment bestowed upon Mary. It was a fortress erected around the identity of Jesus Christ.

St. Cyril of Alexandria understood the issue clearly. If the one born of Mary is merely a human person subsequently associated with the divine Word, then Mary may perhaps be called Christotokos, Mother of Christ, but not properly Theotokos. But if the eternal Word Himself truly assumed humanity, so that the one born from Mary is the same divine Person who is eternally begotten of the Father, then Mary is properly called Mother of God; not because she originated the divine nature, but because the Person whom she bore according to the flesh is God.

St. Cyril therefore wrote that the Fathers called the Virgin Theotokos not because the divinity of the Word began from her, but because the Word personally united human nature to Himself and was born from her according to the flesh. His first anathema consequently joins the two confessions inseparably: Emmanuel is truly God; therefore the Holy Virgin is Theotokos. And the force of the word “therefore” should never be missed. St. Mary’s title protects Christ’s identity.

To confess Mary as Mother of God is to confess that the child in Bethlehem is not a human person alongside the eternal Son, as later Nestorianism would claim, and introducing a duality into the Mystery of the Incarnation. He is the eternal Son, now incarnate on person, one reality, fully God and fully man. The hands of the Blessed Mary hold the One through whom the galaxies were made. The breast from which He drinks nourishes the One who fed Israel with manna from Heaven and dropped quails upon them when they prayed for meat. The infant who sleeps against her body is the One in whom “all things consist” (Colossians 1:17).

This is why Christian orthodoxy cannot dispense with Theotokos. But neither may it reverse the logic of Ephesus. The purpose of Theotokos is to tell us who Christ is. Christ does not exist to explain St. Mary’s greatness; her greatness exists because of who Christ is. That distinction becomes increasingly important when we move from the apostolic and patristic foundations of Marian doctrine into the later history of Marian devotion. The later development was gradual. Modern historical work on Byzantine Marian devotion shows that the fifth-century homiletic tradition remained overwhelmingly Christological. Explicit emphasis upon Mary as an intercessory figure becomes considerably more prominent in the sixth century, expands thereafter, and is particularly visible in the literature surrounding Constantinople and the Iconoclast period. By the conclusion of Iconoclasm in 843, Holy Mary could be represented culturally and devotionally as the great intercessor of the Christian empire. 

There is nothing inherently unchristian about asking the prayers of Mary. If “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16), the Church has good reason to cherish the prayers of the saints. If death does not separate the members of Christ from Christ, neither does it destroy the communion of His Body. Mary belongs to that communion. But intercession is not mediation in the unique redemptive sense belonging to Christ. Here Scripture speaks with a precision which Christian devotion must never blur: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6).

And Hebrews tells us why. Christ is not merely one petitioner among others. He is the Great High Priest. “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession” (Hebrews 4:14). He has entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24). He “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come unto God by Him (Hebrews 7:25). And, decisively, He does this because He has offered the one sacrifice which no creature can offer:“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12).

The intercession of Christ is therefore qualitatively different from the intercession of Mary, Peter, Paul, the martyrs, the angels, or the living Christian praying beside us. They pray but He mediates. They petition God because of His mercy, but He is Himself the propitiation. They stand before God as redeemed creatures, but He stands before the Father as Priest and Victim, the Lamb that was slain. St. John therefore does not tell the Church that Mary is our propitiation. He writes: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2).

This is one of the places where Christian iconography itself can become a theological meditation upon the development of Christian consciousness. The primitive and apostolic vision is the vision expressed with overwhelming force in Hebrews: Christ enters the heavenly sanctuary. The earthly high priest once passed through the veil bearing sacrificial blood; Christ passes into heaven bearing the efficacy of His own Blood. He stands before the Father not to persuade a reluctant God to become merciful, but as the incarnate manifestation of the Father’s own mercy. Priest, altar, sacrifice and mediator converge in Him. “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). Through Him “we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). The entire movement is through the Son, in the Spirit, unto the Father.

Later Byzantine iconography increasingly developed another visual grammar. Mary appears beside Christ in supplication. Eventually the familiar Deësis presents Christ enthroned in majesty, with the Theotokos and John the Baptist turned toward Him, petitioning on behalf of mankind. A surviving Byzantine Deësis at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, dates from the mid-tenth century and explicitly presents Mary and John as intercessors before Christ.

Mid-9th Century Ivory Icon held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Properly understood, this remains entirely compatible with Christian faith. Blessed Mary is not sacrificing Christ. She is not the source of mercy. She is not standing between an angry Christ and mankind as though she possesses a compassion lacking in Him. She is praying, as all the Saints and Angels do, according to Scripture, within the vast empyrean of the Heavenly Hosts, who praise and worship God before His throne (Revelation 5:8; 6:9–10; 8:3–4; Isaiah 6:1–3; Daniel 7:9–10; Revelation 5:11–14; 7:9–12; 19:1–6). And there is something beautiful in that image: the Mother of the Lord and the Forerunner of the Lord, the woman through whom He entered the world and the prophet who pointed to Him and cried “Behold the Lamb of God,” now turned eternally toward the same Christ.

But an iconographic shift can produce a theological shift if its symbolism is allowed to outrun its doctrinal limits. The danger appears when the imaginative structure becomes: mankind approaches Mary; Mary approaches Christ; Christ approaches the Father, as though access to Christ Himself required another mediator. Worse still is the devotional imagination in which Christ gradually assumes the position of the severe Judge who must be persuaded by His merciful Mother not to punish mankind. At that point the visual grammar has begun to reverse the grammar of the Gospel.

The Gospel does not tell us that Mary so loved the world that she persuaded her Son to save it.“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). It does not tell us that Christ was reluctant to receive sinners until His Mother interceded.

Christ Himself says: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The father of the prodigal runs to meet his returning son (Luke 15:20). The Good Shepherd Himself searches for the lost sheep (Luke 15:4). Christ Himself touches lepers, receives sinners, forgives adulterers, eats with publicans, blesses children, weeps beside graves, and finally stretches His arms upon the Cross while praying for His executioners. No saint can be more merciful than Jesus Christ. No mother can be more compassionate than the God whose compassion created motherhood.

And therefore genuine hyperdulia must finally lead us where Mary herself leads us:“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” This gives us a criterion by which Marian devotion may continually be purified without being diminished.

We need not choose between the barren refusal to honor Mary and the theological inflation of Mary into a quasi-redemptive mediator. The ancient Church gives us another way. We call her blessed, Ever-Virgin, All-Holy in the proper sense of a creature sanctified by grace. We call her the New Eve. We call her Mother of the Church insofar as the expression preserves her relation to Christ and His Body. Above all, call her Theotokos, because the One whom she bore is God. We sing hymns in her honor. We keep her feasts, and place her image within the church, and we teach our daughters her obedience and courage, and teach our sons to honor the woman whom their Lord honored as His Mother. We ask her prayers as we ask the prayers of the saints and of one another. But, we must remember to let every honor offered to Mary terminate in wonder at the Incarnation.

The Blessed Mary herself would have it no other way. Her great hymn does not say, “My soul doth magnify myself.” It says: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:46–47). Those words contain the proper architecture of Marian devotion. St. Mary magnifies the Lord. And something that magnifies does not replace the thing magnified. A lens does not become the light. It allows us to perceive the light more clearly.

So it is with the Mother of God. Her virginity tells us something about Christ. Her maternity tells us something about Christ. Her obedience tells us something about Christ. Her blessedness tells us something about Christ. Her title Theotokos tells us something absolutely indispensable about Christ. Even her Nativity tells us about Christ.

For on September 8 the Church is not yet standing before the manger. We are one generation removed from Bethlehem. We stand instead in the quiet house of Joachim and Anna, according to the ancient tradition, looking upon an infant girl. Nothing outwardly announces what has happened. Yet the covenant has narrowed almost to its appointed point.

Patriarch Abraham has begotten Isaac. patriarch Isaac has begotten Jacob. Patriarch Israel has become a people. Patriarch Judah has received the promise. King David has received the kingdom. The prophets have spoken. St. Isaiah has announced: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). St. Micah has foretold Bethlehem. The generations have passed. And now the woman from whom the promised Seed will take His humanity has herself entered the world.

The significance of St. Mary’s birth is therefore profoundly embodied. God does not save mankind by bypassing human nature. He enters it. He does not disdain generation, womb, blood, birth, motherhood, family, ancestry or flesh. He gathers them into the economy of salvation. “The Word becomes flesh”, and the flesh is truly received from Holy Mary.

This is why the Church’s love for the Theotokos should be neither embarrassed nor extravagant, neither iconoclastic nor idolatrous. It should be Christological. We love her because He loved her. We honor her because God honored her. We call her blessed because Scripture commands every generation to do so. We call her Mother of God because to refuse that title finally threatens the unity of the Incarnate Christ. We ask her prayers because she belongs eternally to the communion of saints. But we worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost alone. And when we need a Mediator, we do not search heaven for one more compassionate than Christ. There is none.

When we need a High Priest, we have Jesus. When we need an Advocate with the Father, we have Jesus Christ the righteous. When we need propitiation for our sins, He Himself is that propitiation. When we need access to the Father, we have access through Him in one Spirit. And when we ask what Mary herself would have us do, the Gospel has preserved her answer: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

Thus, the highest Marian devotion and the highest Christology meet rather than compete. The more clearly we understand Mary, the more clearly we see Christ. And perhaps this is the deepest mystery contained in her Nativity. The infant Mary does nothing. She preaches no sermon. She performs no miracle. She exercises no authority. She simply exists as the hidden preparation of God.

Yet within her tiny body lies the possibility of a future freely offered Fiat. Within this daughter of Israel the history of Israel approaches its fulfillment. Within this descendant of Adam the New Adam will take the flesh by which He recapitulates Adam. Within this daughter of Eve the Seed of the Woman will crush the serpent. Within this child the Creator prepares for Himself a mother. And therefore the Church rejoices. Not because another savior has been born. But because the Mother of the Savior has been born. Not because another mediator has appeared between God and man. But because from this woman will come, according to the flesh, the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. The Nativity of the Theotokos is dawn, not noon. Mary is not the Sun. But the appearance of dawn tells us that the Sun is coming.

And so, standing with Sts. Joachim and Anna, with Israel and the prophets, with Sts. Ignatius and Justin and Irenaeus, with St. Cyril and the Fathers assembled at Ephesus, and with the whole communion of saints, we look upon the birth of Holy Mary and bless God for what He is preparing to accomplish through her.

We call her blessed among women. We confess her truly to be Theotokos. We honor her with that singular love which the Church has called hyperdulia. And then, with Mary herself, we turn toward the One to whom every true Marian feast must ultimately lead: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”

For from her shall come Emmanuel. From her shall come the New Adam. From her shall come the promised Seed. From her shall come our Great High Priest. From her shall come the Lamb of God. From her shall come the one who “is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

And therein lies the glory of the birth we celebrate: Today Mary is born; and through Mary, the world draws nearer to the birth of Jesus Christ.

COLLECT

O GOD, who in the Nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary didst prepare for thine only-begotten Son a holy Mother, of whom he should take our nature and be born into this world for our salvation: Grant us grace so rightly to honour her whom all generations call blessed, that, following her faith and obedience, we may ever magnify thee, and through Jesus Christ alone, our great High Priest and Mediator, obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.