Today, 1st October, is both the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God on the Orthodox New Calendar, and the Chinese National Day – the day on which the People’s Republic was officially inaugurated in 1949. This confluence, and the ironically-shared symbolism thereof, is something I’ve commented on before (along with its admittedly-tendentious connexion with the history of the Albazinian community of Orthodox Christians in Beijing). The original protection of the Mother of God at Blachernæ is today more observantly celebrated among the Slavs, who lost that naval battle in the 900s, than among the Greeks who won it. But the Holy Theotokos, in her appearance to the holy fool St Andrew at Blachernæ, showed herself to be covering the whole of the world – the whole oikoumenē – with her maternal love. To be blanketing the world, the way a mother would cradle her baby.
That’s what it’s all about, really. We touched a bit on the Mother of God in our adult education class at St Herman’s this past Sunday on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (yes, sad to say, that’s me coming in late at 02:50), and we spent a good deal of the time talking about who the Mother of God truly is and what her character is like. First of all, the fact that God Himself – the Being beyond Being, the source of every single thing that is good and true and beautiful – poured Himself out into the creation of the cosmos; and second of all, the fact that the cosmos is observably, ontologically fallen and under the rule of death – these two metaphysical facts seem to tower over everything we do and say and think. The same was true, we must remember, of the Theotokos. The Theotokos was human. Just like every one of us. God loved her, just as He loves every one of us.
I have spoken before about this, but some of the biographical details are worth dwelling on again, just so we can get a clearer picture. After all, the personhood of the Mother of God is central to any Incarnational Christology worthy of the name; just as the womanhood of the Mother of God is central to any Christian appreciation of femininity worthy of the name (though whether we call it feminism may be a matter of some debate).
For the biographical details of Miryam bat-Yahoyaqim (I use the Aramaic rather than the Anglicised spellings here, not to advocate a kind of false Judaïsation, but instead to emphasise the Incarnational particularities of her time and place), we have to turn to the Gospels, and in particular to St Luke, who knew her personally and who was her very dear friend. She is betrothed to an older man of Davidic descent. She is a young girl, a virgin, when she is betrothed to Righteous Yôsep – this we know from multiple of the Gospel accounts. We see from the Gospel of St Luke that she argues with God through Gabriel, but that, at the end of the day, she is perfectly humble, obedient and loving. We see her family: her cousin Elisheva and her unborn baby Yôhanan. We hear her sing a song of praise to God, for which the song of her namesake Miryam the Prophetess in Exodus 15 is the type and prefiguration. We see her giving birth to Christ in the cave outside the inn in Bethlehem, and presenting Him to the expectant Righteous Shim‘ôn at the Temple – who prophesies to her both His glory, and the sorrow that will come to her because of it. In the Gospel of St Mark we see her motherly concern for Christ, when she seeks Him out with His kinsmen as He is healing and preaching in the synagogue. In the Gospel of St John we see her both at the beginning, at the wedding at Cana, and at the end with the Gospel’s author at Christ’s Crucifixion.
From all these accounts, a picture begins to emerge. She is Hebrew. She is not wealthy. She is observant of the rituals. She has an intense life of inward prayer. She is close with her kinswoman. We may imagine in her, without presumption, the ebullient Middle Eastern hospitality still shown by the Syrian and Lebanese Arabs in the Antiochian Church. She is respectful of her elders. But, she has a note of that disputatiousness toward God which is typical of the Jews. She takes a self-effacing rôle in all of the events of the Gospel in which she is most closely concerned. But toward Christ she always, always appears as an attentive, caring, even doting mother – even and especially where she doesn’t entirely understand what her Son is doing. The Gospel accounts are entirely consistent on this last point of her personality. Her self-giving love for God; her love for Christ – these are perfect, ever-consistent, never-failing.
This last point, the sublime love of the Most Holy Theotokos for her Son (and of her Son for His mother), was the one most keenly emphasised by Fr Paul this past Sunday. Even so. What is the meaning of this? Why did God – the First Cause of the entire cosmos, the Unmoved Mover, the One Being beyond all being, the Great ‘I AM’ – single out this particular girl? Why this unassuming, devoted, prayerful, filial and sisterly Jewish teen, among all His creatures? Why, and how, did He – the Most High God who created all things seen and unseen – as Fr Paul says ‘knit Himself into her flesh’, and take from her His own flesh? These questions are unsearchable to human reasoning. Wrangling with the intellectual enormity of the Incarnation is what caused it to be a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. It is, however, the reality that the Apostles bore witness to, that the Church has borne witness to. This is a reality that cannot be explained through intellectual concepts and abstractions. It can only be explained in the same way in which the Theotokos accepted it for herself, in which the Theotokos herself said ‘yes’: in a humble spirit, a spirit of love.
But this ‘yes’, which was given after a bit of argument by – again – this particular Jewish teenager at this particular time and in this particular place: is of supreme importance. It overturns the cosmos. We may say it completely undercuts the concept of earthly time. Saint John the Theologian places Miryam bat-Yahoyaqim at the beginning of his Gospel, at the wedding at Cana – and at the end, at the Crucifixion. Fr Paul puts it thus: ‘[Without the Theotokos], would God have even created the world? No.’ In some mysterious way this one act, this one ‘yes’ of the Theotokos – this love of a human, earthly, flesh-and-blood mother for her equally human and flesh-and-blood (as well as Divine) Son – placed in medias res in fallen time, becomes the single act through which and because of which the whole of the cosmic drama, the whole of the life of the world, from the beginning to the end, can take place. Isn’t this the message Christ Himself proclaimed to Jerusalem – a mother hen gathering all her chicks under her wings?
Perhaps this is the meaning of what Blessed Andrew the Fool-for-Christ saw in his vision at Blachernæ over a thousand years ago. St Epiphanius, in the awe which should overcome any of us, saw the Mother of God covering not just Constantinople, not just the Empire, but the whole of the cosmic order from the beginning to the end, in her protecting love.
Today the faithful celebrate the feast with joy
Illumined by your coming, O Mother of God.
Beholding your pure image we fervently cry to you:
‘Encompass us beneath the precious veil of your protection;
Deliver us from every form of evil by entreating Christ,
Your Son and our God that He may save our souls.’
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