Saint Vladimir’s Seminary
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, the holy apostle Paul instructs us that “he who sanctifies”—Christ himself—
and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: “I will declare your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to you.” . . . Therefore, in all things he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
Today, on the feast day of the Annunciation to the most holy Theotokos, we celebrate that moment when, in response to the Virgin’s fiat, Jesus Christ, God before the ages, in time first partook of our flesh and blood in her womb. With those words, “Let it be unto me,” the Theotokos set in motion the whole sequence of events that will lead us, in a few weeks’ time, to Jerusalem, the garden, Golgotha, and the Arimathean’s tomb.
In a sense, we are all conceived and born to die—these events happen to us without any input or act of will on our part—but Our Lord Jesus is unique in having willed his own conception birth and his own death. And he willed this so that he might call us brethren. As St. Paul writes elsewhere, in his Epistle to the Romans: “whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that” his Son, Jesus Christ our God, “might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Through the Cross and the Passion, our Creator and Redeemer undertook a radical act of solidarity, of identification, with his fallen and suffering creation. In so doing, he opened the way for us to take up our own cross and unite our own suffering with his life-giving suffering so that we might become identified with him. “He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are one”—this is an affirmation both of the Christ’s Incarnation and the saints’ deification.
But if the Passion is the ultimate point of contact, the definitive locus of encounter, between God and man, the Virgin’s womb is the first point of contact. And everything that would be accomplished later is already, in some mysterious way, accomplished here.
The divine humility and total humiliation and self-emptying of Our Lord Jesus Christ is already perfected as he—God who made the ages, who fashioned time, space, matter, motion, light, and being itself—becomes the tiniest embryo in a human womb.
And our most pure Lady, a creature of clay, shows herself to wider than the heavens and holier than any human temple or angelic throne, containing in herself the fullness of the divinity and attaining to the highest pinnacle of sanctity, beyond that proper to any other created being.
She, too, accomplishes this through self-emptying: she makes no room in her heart for herself, giving all of her inner space over to God. In so doing, Mary becomes the Theotokos. The initiative belongs to God, the response belongs to the Virgin, but both act out of and through utter humility. The Virgin, united to God and uniting man and God in a manner past understanding, becomes, in a certain way, inseparable from God: Jesus Christ is always known to us through his Mother, the east-facing gate by which the Prince has entered creation.
And when we read traditional works of Orthodox piety—for example, medieval Russian saints’ lives—this connection becomes a sort of refrain. Every act a saint undertakes, he undertakes with prayer to God and to his Mother. All glory from a saint’s actions redounds to God and also to his Mother. Monks and princes put their faith in God and in his Mother. This is why we allow almost no sequence of hymns to go without a theotokion; this is why we mention the Theotokos at every dismissal.
And so, to return to the words of St. Paul, if we are Christ’s brethren, then we are also the children of the Theotokos. We always know Jesus as the one who came from the Virgin’s womb; thus, when we are united with him in baptism, we are united with the Son of the Virgin.
He dwelt in her womb for nine months, but spiritually he dwells in her forever. Of old, God was said to dwell in the temple of Solomon, in the city of Jerusalem, but today the types and shadows come to an end, and we behold the Virgin as the true temple, the well-watered city of God’s dwelling, the living ark, the spiritual Zion, the garden wherein God speaks with man.
And so today, as we ponder the mystery of the Incarnation, by which Christ has called us and made us his brethren, we are called to redouble our filial devotion to our Mother, the most holy Theotokos, from whose womb our Life was born.
Just as we never omit the theotokia at services, so we must never cease to call upon her in our private prayers. And just as her body became the point of first contact between God and man, likewise, if we wish to encounter God, we must spiritually flee to her as to a city, a temple, a holy mountain.
As did the saints of old, we must consider her to be inseparable from our life in Christ, since it is always through her—through her fiat, through her self-emptying and humility, through her child bearing, through protection and intercession—it is always through her that we know her Son, our God and Savior.
And to him, God before the ages, incarnate today in a Virgin’s womb, be all glory, together with his Father and his Holy Spirit. Amen.
Most holy Theotokos, save us!