“More honorable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, true Theotokos we magnify you” (Prayer near the end of services)
“Why do we call the Virgin Mary ‘Mother of God’?” we are asked by the visitor to our sacred services, “God has no mother.” Of course not, but the only-begotten Son of God, equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, entered the world through Mary’s womb, and for that we celebrate her as the bride of the Holy Spirit. The Greek term Theotokos means just that; i.e., God bearer. In terms Americans might grasp, the ultimate pageant queen.
The Church wants to emphasize the point that the heavenly Father did not just select the man Jesus to be His Christ when He was baptized, or even at the Lord’s birth. Prior to when He was given the name Jesus, even before He was conceived in Mary’s womb, He was God through Whom the whole universe was created. That’s why we sing to her with such radiant and impressive titles.
She deserves more honor from us even than the highest of the ranks of angels surrounding the throne of the Lord almighty, because no cherub brought the Son of God into our world as a man. Far transcending any possible comparison we might conceive of in glory, greater than the seraphim is she to us, because no angel could have been commissioned by the heavenly Father to save us from sin, death and separation from God’s kingdom, yet He found a way to do all three by having His only-begotten Son enter time and space, born as one of us, to lead us back to the relationship that the Holy Trinity planned for us before the world was made.
She is the “true Theotokos,” because there can be none other than her, unique not only on earth but in all that God created, without a match among the angels. True also in being without any stain or blemish found in other humans, be they as holy and near perfection as St. John the Baptist. True as well in the sense of wholeness and integrity, wholly devoted to caring for that most special Son from conception to birth and throughout His life on earth, even to the Cross and beyond, ever growing herself in wisdom and awareness of what her role in our salvation was about.
Thus we honor, glorify and magnify the Theotokos and Mother of Light, as she is called elsewhere, expanding our awareness of what she has meant for our salvation, and what she continues to do for our sakes by her constant prayers on our behalf. She has a mother’s heart, and we are invited to touch her heart with our pleas for ourselves, our loved ones, the Church and the world. As a woman, she understands the feeling of having given birth to a child while retaining some connection to Him long after the umbilical cord has been severed.
We pay her respect if for nothing else than for the dignity we accord any woman, especially the mothers of our friends and acquaintances. Nothing is more boorish than to enter a home as a guest and ignore the mother of the host. One could hardly visit an Orthodox Church even for the first time and not be struck by the array of icons of the Theotokos. I wonder how one goes about ignoring her, even if to focus attention on Jesus Christ?
Father Sergius Bulgakov advised us that we are commanded by our baptismal vows to shout the Name of Jesus Christ and the gift of salvation from the rooftops and in the market places; however, when a person is brought to the Lord Jesus, then whisper to him or her the name of the Mother of God. Indeed, our prayers for her, our veneration of her role in our journey to the Kingdom of God, and the place in our hearts reserved for her develop as we progress on the way to spiritual discovery.