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PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/18/2002 7:07 PM (GMT -6)

As the great western mystic Meister Eckhardt says, if she had not already conceived the Word of God in her spirit, she could never have conceived him in the flesh.

from Arimathea
www.arimathea.co.uk/genesion.htm

The Birth of the Mother of God

On September 8th we celebrate the Birth of Mary the All-Holy, the future Mother of God. This is the first major feast of the Church's year. The liturgical year begins on September 1st, a week before the Birthday of the Mother of God and ends a fortnight after the celebration of her Falling-Asleep and her Taking-Up into Heaven. Her birthday whispers the coming Mystery. Her death and her Taking-Up confirm the salvation of the world and the pledge of Resurrection Christ her Son gave.

The texts of this feast draw on two main sources. The poets make use of prophetic and wisdom texts from the Old Testament, seeing in them a mystical prefiguring of Mary's unique role in the history of salvation. The Orthodox Church has always read the Old Testament in this way, not simply in terms of the historical events and contemporary meanings its authors dealt with, but, guided by the the Holy Spirit who inspired those authors, finding in the texts mystical levels of meaning clearly visible only in the light of the Resurrection. The poets also draw on apocryphal writings, especially the Protevangelium of James. This text, while never accepted in any way as sacred scripture, holds a unique place in Orthodox tradition. It is essentially a pious novel, offering a delightful vision of the parents of Mary and of the birth and early years of the Mother of God. Orthodox Christians have always loved the stories in the Protevangelium. The Church's poets drew on the Protevangelium in the hymns they wrote for the feast. Eventually the Church even accepted the celebration of Protevangelium's story of the Entry into the Temple into the calendar of feasts, finding in that story a profound theological symbolism that leads us to deeper insights into the mystery of Mary.

The poetry of the Feast of the Birth of the Panagia explores a range of themes:

the sterility of her parents as a symbol of our sterile nature, its barrenness loosed as "the barren woman is revealed as the mother of her who, after bearing the Maker, still remained Virgin." Barrenness and virginity alike become miraculously fruitful, testifying to the Will of God as the source of these births. The delightful story of the Protevangelium shows Mary, as the child of a miracle, God's choice responding to the prayers of her aged and childless parents. She is a work of grace from the moment of her conception.

the parallel between the transgression of Adam and Eve, whose eating of the forbidden fruit "closed the gate of Paradise to those of old," and the "glorious fruit" of the love between Joachim and Anna, "Mary the Child of God, who opens its gate to all."

the new-born Mary is God's destined "throne" and "living heaven," the "Bridal Chamber of the Light, the Book of the Word of God." In her, humanity hosts and encompasses the uncircumscibable Godhead.

Mary is the "fountain of life that gushes forth from the flinty rock", a reference to Exodos 17, where Moses strikes the rock in Horeb and refreshing water pours forth for his thirsty people. She is the Burning Bush (Exodos 3) from which God speaks to Moses, the bush that burns with fire and is not consumed. Fire and water are, of course, both symbols of the Spirit. Here the vision of Mary as the burning bush is a direct reference to her overshadowing by the Spirit in her conception of the Anointed.

Mary, whose birth we celebrate, is "the Mother of Life, who destroys the darkness. She is the restoration of Adam and the recalling of Eve, the fountain of incorruption and the release from corruption: through her we are made godlike and delivered from death..."

Mary is celebrated as the "joy of all the world" since "on account of her exceeding goodness" she has become God's living Temple. These words of St. Germanos the Patriarch touch on an issue of great theological importance. In recent years Protestant theology has had an extraordinary influence on the Orthodox world, and this had led some to accept the view that Mary's holiness derives from her being Mother of Christ God: in part it does, but it is because she was already holy she was able to conceive God. As the great western mystic Meister Eckhardt says, if she had not already conceived the Word of God in her spirit, she could never have conceived him in the flesh.

In the Birth of the Theotokos "the whole creation is made new and godlike." She represents the turning around of creation back to its creator. From the moment of the expulsion of the First Ancestors from Paradise, the restoration has been promised. Her birth is the first moment in the final fulfilment of that promise. From now our return to Paradise begins, but it is not merely a return, the creation is renewed by her Son and we are called to return transformed in Him and deified.

By Mary's Birth "Joachim and Anna were set free from the reproach of childlessness, and Adam and Eve from the corruption of death." These words from the Kontakion by Romanos the Melode are startling to Western ears. Eastern tradition freely acknowledges the role of the Mother of God in our salvation: her Son, and He alone is our Saviour, but her consent to become His mother is a crucial moment in the unfolding of God's plan. Just as we celebrate the birth of the Anointed as well as His Passion and Resurrection, so too we celebrate the birth of His mother as well as her consent to bear God's Word. Of itself the birth of Joachim and Anna's child does not free Adam and Eve from the corruption of death, but as the birth of the Mother of God it is part of that act of God that saves us. She is the the moment when humanity, responding to the outpouring grace of God and the call of His Spirit, becomes open to God's Word being spoken in her flesh.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/19/2002 4:41 PM (GMT -6)

The last sentence seems to be a good definition (among others) of the Church, the Body of Christ:

"...when humanity, responding to the outpouring grace of God and the call of His Spirit, becomes open to God's Word being spoken in her [The Bride of Christ's] flesh."

writerdad
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448

Posted 9/19/2002 5:35 PM (GMT -6)

Mary who? The one blessed by God or the one made into an idol by fools such as Eckhardt...such things are, of course, totally foreign to scripture...such things as the foolish ramblings of man. Mary was the mother of the human Jesus and the avenue by which God the Son entered into the world. She was not the mother of God...what you talk of is blasphemy...

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/20/2002 1:31 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
She was not the mother of God...what you talk of is blasphemy...

There have been some who say that Mary was only the "mother of Jesus" and not the "Bearer of God."

Christ, as to his divinity, was "begotten without a mother" -- as the old hymns say. And as to his humanity, was "conceived without a father." (Same hymns.)

YES, Mary is the "Mother of God." No, she is not the
"mother" (or Father) of his eternal begottenness. YES, Jesus is "fully human and fully divine, without confusion or mixture."

You should have NO problem with the "Christological" statement that Mary is the Theotokos (for which the translation into English of "Mother of God is NOT the best of all possible translations). Theotokos is a "Christological" statement.

You are saved by Christ, not by Mary. But Mary does play a part in your salvation.

But beyond that, Harold, is the icon of Mary. I'll explain.

YOU, Harold, are an icon of Christ, insofar as Christ dwells in you. Right. Christ is God incarnate. The Church (Christ's Body), is the dwelling of Christ, bodily. Mary was the first to have that relationship with God. Therefore, Mary is--like you but much moreso--the icon of the Christian and the Church.

Unless you have a problem with the idea that the Church is the Body of Christ, I think you have nothing to argue about here.

Except Habit.

Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 09/21/2002 12:04:55 AM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/20/2002 7:09 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
What is the Church? On the one hand the Church is certainly structure and institution, order and hierarchy, canons and chanceries. Yet this is only the visible structure. What is its content? Is it not also, and primarily, that which is to change and to transfigure life itself? Is it not the anticipation, the "Sacrament" of the kingdom of God? Yes, the Church is structure, but the unique purpose of that structure is to be an "epiphany," to manifest and to fulfill the Church as expectation and fulfillment, as pilgrimage and anticipation. The Church is thirst and hunger, and she is also the "food of immortality." She is the "not yet" and the "already is..." ...

(All this is from page 64-68 of "Celebration Of Faith #3," by Schmemann)

quote:
It is, of course, in worship that this experience of the Church is given. It is in her leitourgia that the Church transcends herself as institution and structure and becomes "that which she is": response, adoration, encounter, presence, glory, and, ultimately, a mystical marriage between God and his new creation.; ... . In the worship of the Church there comes the moment when all structures qua structures disappear; they are fulfilled. They are essential, necessary to bring us up to that moment, to make that moment possible. ...

quote:
... If Christ is the "icon" of the Father, Mary is the "icon" of the new creation, the new Eve responding to the new Adam, fulfilling the mystery of love. ... She is the New Eve because of God's request that she answered, "I am the servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to his word." At that moment all human "structures" which originated in man's alienation from God— freedom and authority, rights and obligations, etc.—all this was transcended. The new life entered the world as life of communion and love, not of "authority" and "submission." Thus, being the "icon" of the Church, Mary is the image and the personification of the world. When God looks at his creation, the "face" of the world is feminine, not masculine.

quote:
... She—Mary—is the ultimate "doxa" of creation, its response to God. She is the climax, the personification, the affirmation of the ultimate destiny of all creation: that God may finally be all in all, may fill all things with himself. The world is the "receptacle" of his glory, and in this it is "feminine." And in the present "era," Mary is the sign, the guarantee that this is so, that in its mystical depth the world is already achieving this destiny.

quote:
... But the "epiphany" of the Church always takes place beyond the structures, as their fulfillment. There comes a time when the institution disappears, although without the institution that moment would have never come, would have been impossible. This is when the Church is actualized as "joy and peace" in the Holy Spirit, is the taste—here and now—of the Kingdom which is to come. At the heart of that moment, as its expression, movement and perfection, we find Mary. She is not the "object" of prayer and adoration, but its very expression. She is the Church as prayer, as joy, as fulfillment. It is this combination of beauty and humility, matter and spirit, time and eternity, that is the real experience of the Church and of that experience Mary is the focus and the life. It is for this experience that the world is longing today.

Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 09/21/2002 07:54:09 AM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/21/2002 2:59 AM (GMT -6)

Quote:

"the Church ... is: response, adoration, encounter, presence, glory, and, ultimately, a mystical marriage between God and his new creation ... the "doxa" of creation, its response to God ... the climax, the personification, the affirmation of the ultimate destiny of all creation: that God may finally be all in all, may fill all things with himself. ... the world [as] the "receptacle" of his glory... actualiz[ed] as "joy and peace" in the Holy Spirit ... the taste—here and now—of the Kingdom which is to come... this combination of beauty and humility, matter and spirit, time and eternity ... is the real experience of the Church ... "

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