Theophanies

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Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Oration 38, St. Gregory the Theologian, Theophany

When I see St. Gregory the Theologian talking about the Nativity and Theophany being celebrated at the same time, I am sorely tempted to talk about when and where Christmas began to be celebrated as its own unique feast, the fact that Epiphany has a longer provenance in the East than does Christmas, and that all of this is quite interesting given that evidence suggests that Constantinople started to celebrate the Nativity on its own about the time St. Gregory began preaching there.

For those who are interested in a discussion of when Christmas became a Christian feast (particularly in context of the Christianization of the pagan winter solstice) I would direct you here; however, given that we have just celebrated The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple — a Great Feast of the Orthodox Church just as the Nativity is — I am more interested in the main point St. Gregory makes in this third section of Oration 38: the Nativity of Christ is a Theophany.

One point about Christmas that I think cannot be emphasized enough is that it is a revelation of God. He demonstrates to us His love and the lengths to which He will go in order to intimately identify Himself with His creation. God becomes man. Christ Himself is a Theophany.

Thus, it is possible to describe all of the 12 Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church as Theophanies — God reveals Himself to us. When one considers feasts like Epiphany, Pentecost and Transfiguration, this idea of Theophany is quite easy to see because God Himself is visibly active in each case. This premise, however, is far more difficult to see with the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple.

Firstly, this event is not recorded in Scripture — the record of God’s revelation of Himself to us. Secondly, this celebration focuses on the Virgin Mary, not Christ. The Hymnody of the Church (this from the Doxastikon from Great Vespers of The Entrance), however, helps us to understand how The Entrance is, in fact, a Theophany:

After you were born, O Bride of God and Sovereign Lady, you came to the temple of the Lord to be brought up in the Holy of Holies, as one holy; and Gabriel was then sent to you, the all-blameless, bringing nourishment to you. All the Heavens were astonished, beholding the Holy Spirit make His dwelling in you. Wherefore, O spotless and undefiled Virgin, who are glorified in Heaven and on earth, O Mother of God, save our race.

The Church explicitly states that the Theotokos, as a young little girl, entered into the Holy of Holies. The three OT readings from Great Vespers (Exodus 40:1-5, 9-10, 16, 34-35; Third Book of Book of Kings [1Kings in the Masoretic] 8:1, 3-4, 5 ,6-7, 9, 10-11 and Ezekial 43:27-44:4) make it very clear that such a feat is impossible. In both the Tabernacle built by Moses and the Temple built by Solomon, a cloud descended upon the Holy of Holies so that no one could enter.

This image is reinforced both by Ezekial who states, “Behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord; and I fell on my face” and Paul in the Epistle reading from Hebrews who explains that “only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people” (Hebrews 9:7).

Thus, the Holy of Holies was the place where God’s glory resided, making it impossible to enter save for the High Priest and only once a year with a blood sacrifice. Yet, the Theotokos as young girl is able to freely enter. The answer as to why is from the same hymn above: All the Heavens were astonished, beholding the Holy Spirit make His dwelling in you.

This is a Theophany. God demonstrates His intention for all of humanity: that the Holy Spirit dwell in each and everyone of us so that we, too, can enter into the full glory of God. This reality, of course, is made possible through the life and cooperation of the Theotokos: Let it be done unto me according to your word.

Thus, through our own efforts of preparation (such as the Nativity Fast) and our own cooperation with God we are capable to behold the full glory of God and of entering into the Holy of Holies just as our Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary did as a young child.

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Preparation

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Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Holy Spirit, Psalm 1, St. Hilary

Now that St. Hilary has established the Prophet is speaking specifically to us and that we are the subject of the First Psalm, he sets about introducing us to the purpose of the Psalm:

The Holy Spirit made choice of this magnificent and noble introduction to the Psalter, in order to stir up weak man to a pure zeal for piety by the hope of happiness, to teach him the mystery of the Incarnate God, to promise him participation in heavenly glory, to declare the penalty of the Judgment, to proclaim the two-fold resurrection, to shew forth the counsel of God as seen in His award. It is indeed after a faultless and mature design that He has laid the foundation of this great prophecy; His will being that the hope connected with the happy man might allure weak humanity to zeal for the Faith; that the analogy of the happiness of the tree might be the pledge of a happy hope, that the declaration of His wrath against the ungodly might set the bounds of fear to the excesses of ungodliness, that difference in rank in the assemblies of the saints might mark difference in merit, that the standard appointed for judging the ways of the righteous might shew forth the majesty of God.

Note the the primary actor in this is the Holy Spirit and that the primary message is the comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven — what is possible for the happy man — and the fallen world — the fruits of ungodliness. This demonstrates two things: First, it is not possible to understand Scripture without the Holy Spirit. In the prayer prior to the reading of the Gospel we pray:

Shine within our hearts, loving Master, the pure light of Your divine knowledge and open the eyes of our minds that we may comprehend the message of Your Gospel.

As an aside, yes it is this prayer from which this blog gets its name. Also note this priestly prayer from Orthros:

O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has raised us up from our beds and has gathered us together at this hour of prayer; Grant us grace in the opening of our mouth, and receive our thanksgiving as we have power to make them, and instruct us in Your statutes. For we know not how to pray as we ought unless You, O Lord, by Your Holy Spirit, guide us.

This leads to the second point about the Holy Spirit: when we pray and when we read Scripture we are allowing the Holy Spirit to move in and through us. In other words, when we make daily prayer and Scripture reading a part of our lives, we are actively participating in the Holy Spirit.

Since we are in the midst of celebrating The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, I would be remiss if I did not mention that our Holy Mother models this behavior. Note what the Church says in her hymns (from the Stichera of Vespers of the Entrance):

In that holiest place of all, the most holy and blameless Maid, in the Holy Spirit does come to dwell therein; and by an Angel is fed she who is truly the holiest temple of our Holy God, Who by dwelling Himself in her cleansed and sanctified all creation, and He has deified the very nature of us mortals, though it had fallen away from Him.

In other words, Mary is being prepared to become the Theotokos — the new ark where Christ Himself will reside. We, too, prepare to receive Christ, not only as the Body and Blood, but as the Christ Child in the coming Feast of the Nativity by allowing the Holy Spirit to descend upon us through our prayer and our reading of Scripture. May we all take advantage of the time of fasting to prepare in order to make the coming feast a truly magnificent one. Amen.

Annunciation

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Annunciation, Christmas, Cross, Entrance into the Temple, Holy Spirit, prayer, Sacrifice, St. Ambrose, Theotokos, Trinity

I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to continue to meditate upon what I wrote about yesterday. Namely, this image of the Theotokos in Orthodox Christian hymnody (this particular verse being sung at the Vespers of the Nativity):

The Virgin is now more spacious than the Heavens; for light has shone upon those in darkness, and has exalted those of low degree who sing like the Angels: Glory to God in the highest.

The Evangelist tells us in Luke 1:31 that the Archangel Gabriel informed our Holy Lady the Theotokos that

You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus

because (Luke 1:35)

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you.

That is to say, the Holy Spirit descends upon Mary and Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, enters her body. This very same salvific action happens during the Divine Liturgy to Orthodox Christians. The Holy Spirit descends upon us and the gifts set forth and changes the bread and the wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ.

In other words, when we take communion we experience what Mary underwent at the Annunciation. For, as St. Ambrose states in the twelfth chapter of his treatise One the Holy Spirit:

There is communion between the Father and the Son is plain, for it is written: ‘And our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:3). And in another place: ‘The communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all’ (2 Cor. 8:14). If, then, the peace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one, the grace one, the love one, and the communion one, the working is certainly one, and where the working is one, certainly the power cannot be divided nor the substance separated. For, if so, how could the grace of the same working agree?

Here, again, we find the marvel of the Incarnation: in the moment we take communion, not only do we experience what the Theotokos underwent at the Annunciation, but we, too, are made more spacious than the Heavens. In that moment we can ask of ourselves: How is that the uncontainable is contained within me?

There is one caveat, here, however. During the Canon of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, celebrated on November 21, we sing repeatedly:

You, O pure and virgin Maiden, are truly superior to all.

We say this because Mary experienced the descent of the Holy Spirit and the Incarnate God within her through faith. In order that the rest of us experience this truly awesome mystery, Christ had to go to the Cross. So, too, must we all pick up our Cross in order to follow Him and experience that which the Theotokos underwent at the Annunciation and become more spacious than the Heavens. Amen.

Tabernacle

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Entrance into the Temple, Kontakion, St. Ambrose, Tabernacle, Theotokos, Worship

St. Ambros’ treatise On the Holy Spirit is written in the form of a letter to the Emperor Gratian, who reigned from A.D. 375 to 383 and, through the influence of Ambrose, was a champion of the Nicene faith over and against both Arianism and its off-shoots as well as paganism. Written in A.D. 381, it coincides with the Second Ecumenical Council which affirmed that the Holy Spirit is God “even as the Father and Son are God: who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together glorified.” These words echo those of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that Orthodox Christians recite at every Divine Liturgy — the section on the Holy Spirit being added to the Creed at the Second Ecumenical Council, convened at Constantinople.

Ambrose begins the First Chapter of his letter to Gratian by complimenting the Emperor on his decision to restore the Basilica to the Church. One might be tempted to chalk this compliment up to what we today crudely call “brown-nosing;” however, Ambrose insists that this decision had its source in the grace of the Holy Spirit:

So, then, we have received the grace of your faith and the reward of our own; for we cannot say otherwise than that it was of the grace of the Holy Spirit, that when all were unconscious of it, you suddenly restored the Basilica. This is the gift, I say, this the work of the Holy Spirit, Who indeed was at that time preached by us, but was working in you.

He uses this compliment to launch into a defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Thus, he argues that the inspiration for the restoration of the Basilica to the Church did not come from a mere creature (as Arianism and its off-shoots would claim) but God Himself.

This is particularly important to realize today, on the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple when we sing this Kontakion:

The whole world is filled today with joy and gladness on the Theotokos’s auspicious and resplendent feast, whereon with great voice it cries out: In truth, she is the heavenly tabernacle.

The tabernacle is the tent that God instructed Moses to make in order to house the ark of the covenant. Both the Temple and Orthodox Churches are modeled after the tabernacle. The narthex is where the Hebrews would bring their sacrifices. The nave (where, today, the Orthodox Christian laity worship) is where the sacrificial altar for the burnt and liquid offerings was — where only the priests were allowed. The altar, behind the iconostasis, is where the Holy of Holies was — where the ark of the covenant was — and could only be entered once a year. The tabernacle was where God resided — specifically where the ark was.

According to the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, Ioakim and Anna present their daughter Mary to the Temple when she was three years old as a temple virgin. Therein she enters the Holy of Holies in preparation for her role as the Mother of God.

Historically there were two Temples — the first built by Solomon which was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the second built after the Babylonian Exile. The second Temple — the one Mary entered — did not house the ark.

Thus, in her role as the Mother of God — the womb wherein the Incarnate God resided — she is the new ark. She is, as the Kontakion declares, the heavenly tabernacle. This is why most Orthodox Christian Churches have the icon of the Platytera — the Theotokos as a throne whereupon the Christ-child sits — behind the altar. This would be where that ark of the covenant would be in the architecture of the tabernacle.

This reality — in truth, she is the heavenly tabernacle — happens through the descent of the Holy Spirit, whereupon the Incarnate Christ comes to reside in her womb. This same reality happens during every Divine Liturgy. The Holy Spirit descends upon Orthodox Christians and the Gifts. The Gifts become the very Body and very Blood of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. Then, Orthodox Christians partake. In that moment, we participate in the reality of the Theotokos-as-heavenly-tabernacle because just like her, the Holy Spirit descends and Christ resides in us.

If the Holy Spirit is not True God, of one essence with the Father and the Son this reality is not possible. If the Holy Spirit, through His descent upon us and the gifts, is our source of communion, His being merely a creature and not God would only grant us access to that which we already have — creation. We would have no access to God. Christ’s Incarnation and Crucifixion would be rendered meaningless.

This is why St. Ambrose and the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council insisted that the Holy Spirit is God — so that we, like the Theotokos herself, could be a tabernacle of God Himself. Amen.

Before Her Pain Came Upon Her She Delivered a Son

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Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Isaiah, Old Testament, St. Gregory Palamas, Theotokos

One of the most stunning claims made by St. Gregory Palamas in the second paragraph of Homily Fifty-Eight on the Saving Nativity According to the Flesh of Our Lord and God and Savior is that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ without any labor pains:

He is born without suffering, as He was conceived without passion, for as His mother was shown to be above the pleasure of passion when she conceived, so she is above grievous pains when she gives birth.

He quotes Isaiah 66:7 as his proof:

Before the pain of travail came upon her, she escaped it.

This is what I love about reading the Fathers. They have a relationship and a knowledge of Scripture that puts modern man to shame. Whenever I encounter a short verse like this, the cynical modern man in me wants to believe that it is taken out of context from some obscure section of the OT, and will most probably have nothing to do with (in this case) the virgin birth.

Fortunately, I have experienced this before and I never cease to be amazed at how I always find myself re-reading Scripture with new eyes when I follow the Fathers of the Church down these apparent rabbit holes. Reading Isaiah 66 from the perspective of our Most Holy Lady the Theotkos and Virgin Mary, is like taking light to a diamond — it reveals its stunning beauty. Take for example, the opening verses:

Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word. — Isaiah 66:1-2

Modern biblical scholars will tell you that these verses are merely about the temple; however, we are fresh from the the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple where the Church declares:

The Savior’s most pure and immaculate temple, the very precious bridal chamber and Virgin, who is the sacred treasure of the glory of God, on this day is introduced into the House of the Lord, and with herself she brings the grace in the divine Spirit. She is extolled by the Angels of God. A heavenly tabernacle is she! — Kontakion of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple

In other words, St. Gregory has not taken Isaiah 66:7 out of context. He knows very well that the Church understands that the verse, and the verses around it, are speaking of the Virgin Mary.

Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word: Your own people who hate you and reject you for my name’s sake have said, “Let the Lord be glorified, so that we may see your joy”; but it is they who shall be put to shame. Listen, an uproar from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, dealing retribution to his enemies! Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she delivered a son. Who has heard of such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be delivered in one moment? Yet as soon as Zion was in labor she delivered her children. Shall I open the womb and not deliver? says the Lord; shall I, the one who delivers, shut the womb? says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her — that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. — Isaiah 66:5-11

Amen.

The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple

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Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Katavasiæ, Theotokos, Worship

Whenever we encounter a reading from Scripture that is associated with a specific feast, we must understand that the Church has already interpreted it for us. We must therefore look at it from the perspective of the feast in question. Thus, the Church is calling us to see this reading from Hebrews in light of God’s Mother, our most holy Lady, the Theotokos and more specifically, her Entrance in the Temple:

Brethren, the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary. For a tent was prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence; it is called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain stood a tent called the Holy of Holies, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. — Hebrews 9:1-5

Since the story of this feast cannot be found in Scripture, we must turn to the hymnody of the Church. This, from the Kathismata of the feast, tells us the basic story:

The feeder of our Life, now an infant in body, the offspring of the just Joachim and Anna, is offered to God today in the holy Sanctuary. She was blessed therein by the priest Zacharias. Therefore let us all, with faith, proclaim she is blessed, for she is the Mother of the Lord.

However, the key to understanding today’s reading from Hebrews is found in the Lauds:

V. When they saw the Entry of the all-pure one the Angels were astonished at how the Virgin entered into the Holy of Holies.

Now let no uninitiated hand approach the living Ark of God to touch it. Rather let believers’ lips sing out in exultation the Angel’s salutation unceasingly to the Theotokos and cry out: You, O pure and virgin Maiden, are truly superior to all.

According to the Church, not only was Mary dedicated to the Temple, but she entered the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest was allowed to go once a year. When describing the Temple, St. Paul tells us “Of these things we cannot now speak in detail” (Heb 9:5) because they no longer had access to the First Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians. The Second Temple — the temple in which the Virgin Mary was presented — no longer had “these things,” especially the Ark of the Covenant whose proper place was in the Holy of Holies.

Note how the Church not only claims that the Theotokos went into the Holy of Holies, but equates the Theotokos with the Ark of the Covenant. The metaphor calls attention to the proper function of the Ark — the place where God dwelt. The Theotokos is properly called the Ark because she is the place where God dwelt in the person of Jesus Christ. This, by the way, is one of the reasons that we see the icon of the Theotokos, called the Platytera, behind the altar in most Orthodox Churches — the place where the Ark of the Covenant would have been in the First Temple.

This calls attention to the amount of preparation that God has taken for our salvation. He chose Mary from birth and prepared her for her role in salvation history. Indeed, God’s preparation goes back generations:

Let us with faith extol in song the Virgin Mary, child of God, of whom the assembly of Prophets prophesied and of old declared to be the tablet and the rod, the mountain that was quarried not. For she is introduced today into the Holy of Holies, to be fostered by the Master. — Exaposteilarion from the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple

All of this, however, does not diminish Mary’s free will. She had the choice to reject her role. She did not have to say, Thy will be done (or more specifically, “let it be with me according to your word” — Luke 1:38).

What this demonstrates to us is that God has a place for each of us in the story of salvation. Just as he gave the Virgin Mary a means to prepare herself for her role — today’s feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple — He has given us means to prepare for our role. The key is our free will. Are we willing to prepare for our role in the story of salvation? Are we willing, as the Virgin Mary was, to say Thy will be done?

The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple takes place in context of our preparation for the Nativity of Christ. Today we do not sing the Katavasias for the Theotokos, we sing the Katavasias for Christmas. We are a week into the Nativity Fast. In other words, we have before us an opportunity to prepare — not just for Christmas, but for whatever it is that God has prepared for us. This is an opportunity for us to re-center our lives on Christ through fasting, through prayer and through alms-giving. It is an opportunity for us to enter the temple with the Virgin Mary and eagerly await for our chance to say Thy will be done.

Today the animate temple of the great King comes into the Temple, to prepare herself to become His divine dwelling. O peoples, be exultant. — Troparia after Psalm 51 from the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple

Amen.

The Forefeast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple

Tags

Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Gospel of Judas, New Testament, Protoevangelium, St. Ireneus, Theotokos, Worship

By blossoming forth the only Ever-virgin as fruit, today holy Anna betroths us all to joy, instead of our former grief; on this day she fulfills her vows to the Most High, leading her with joy into the Lord’s holy temple, who truly is the temple and pure Mother of God the Word. — Apolytikion of the Forefeast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple

I am going to pause today from St. Gregory Palamas to speak about an oft neglected part of our preparation for Christmas — the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple. Today is the Forefeast of this celebration where we commemorate, as declared in the Apolytikion, Anna fulfilling her promise to God to dedicate her daughter Mary as a Temple Virgin. This act itself prefigures Mary’s own role in the history of salvation as the temple of God the Word — a reality without which Christmas doesn’t happen.

Of course, one of the first questions our Protestant friends might ask (if we are not asking it ourselves) is where does this story come from? The answer, in part, is the Protoevangelium of James. I say in part, because this text bubbles up out of Tradition (more on that in later). We find the Church acknowledging aspects of this text in its services (including the Conception of the Theotokos on Dec. 9, the Nativity of the Theotokos on Sept. 8 and the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple on Nov. 21). We can therefore accept these elements that show up in the services with confidence.

The Protoevangelium of James is not part of the NT canon for one simple reason — it does not deal with the apostolic kerygma of Christ crucified and risen. Yet, the Church still recognizes the book as significant by celebrating the Mariological feasts recorded in it. In other words, the term Apocrypha (meaning hidden or spurious) is a misnomer in the case of the Protoevangelium of James.

This means that the formation of the Biblical canon as we have received it today is not as simplistic as one might be led to believe (though it is rather simple). Christians have been writing about their faith since beginnings of the Church. It took almost three centuries for there to be a consensus as to what belonged in the NT Canon and what was simply good for reading.

Please Note: there were a number of texts also written by the heterodox which were rightly rejected by the Church (the Church has every right to determine what is and isn’t Christian). An example of one of these rejected works is the Gospel of Judas, which the Orthodox Church had known about for over a millennium through the writings (and righteous rejection) of St. Ireneaus when the book was recently “discovered.”

Some examples of the books that the Church sees as good for reading include the Epistles of Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas, both of which were popular enough to be read in the services of the early Church.

In other words, the formation of the NT canon was a process — something that came out of the Tradition of the Church, where Tradition is understood to be the collective experience of the Church. We should not be ashamed of this reality. In fact, we should embrace it. The issue of whether or not the Gentiles should be circumcised was dealt with in a very similar manner. Please note how the Council of Jerusalem declares their decision:

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us — Acts 15:28

The Bible vs. Tradition is a false dichotomy. We celebrate the Forefeast of the Entry of the Theotokos today to remind us that through the Theotokos — the temple of God the Word — and the child that she bore, we, too, have been made into the temple of God. We have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself, and it is He that has guided us from the beginning. Amen.

Singing with Hannah

Tags

Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Hannah, Katavasiæ, Theotokos

I have to admit, I am struggling with today’s blog. Not because I have nothing to say, but rather because I have too much to say. The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, which we celebrate today, is one of my favorite feasts because of the richness and depth of its imagery. There are so many interconnections between hymns, scripture and liturgical traditions that I can’t possibly say everything that I want about this magnificent feast. Let me try to keep things as simple as I can.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior — Luke 1:46

Today we read Luke 1:46 twice — once during Orthros in the morning Gospel and once during the Liturgy as the Prokeimena for the Epistle. It is the opening line of the Magnificat — the hymn Mary sings when Elizabeth greets the Theotokos after the Annunciation. It is based upon the Song of Hannah at the beginning of the second chapter of Samuel (1Kings in the LXX). The opening line parallels Luke 1:46:

My heart exults in the Lord; the horn of my strength is exulted in my God — 1Sam 2:1 (1Kings 2:1 LXX)

Hannah sings this as she presents her son Samuel to God. Having been barren, she had promised Samuel to God and gave him into the care of the high priest Eli when Samuel was three years old. According to the Church, Mary was also born from a barren womb:

Today barren Anna bears a handmaid of God, pre-selected out of every generation as a habitation for the King of all, Christ God, the Creator. — Stichera from Vespers of the Nativity of the Theotokos

The Theotokos is also presented to God at the age of three into the care of the priest Zechariah (the father of St. John the Baptist and the Zechariah martyred between the altar and the sanctuary mentioned in Luke 11:51).

Samuel goes on to become a prophet and anoints David as King. Mary, a descendent of David, gives birth to the Anointed One — the Christ. We are called to look forward to the Nativity of Christ, because today we begin to sing the Katavasiæ of Christmas. These, in turn, ask us to sing the Song of Hanna:

To the Son begotten without flux of the Father before the ages, and who was lately made incarnate of the Virgin without seed to Christ God now let us cry aloud, “You have exalted the horn of our strength, only You are holy, O Lord.” — Ode iii, Katavasia for Christmas, First Canon

Amen.

Theotokos on the Brain

Tags

Entrance into the Temple, Theotokos

Today I had planned to consider this witness to the Church’s belief of Mary as the Ever-Virgin:

a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bare, and a Virgin she remained — St. Leo the Great Sermon XXII on the Nativity

However, that is not going to happen. Since tomorrow is the Forefeast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple and on Saturday we celebrate the feast itself, I cracked open the Menaion and promptly got lost in the hymns — the beauty of the poetry and how steeped in scripture our hymnody is. Instead, I want to share this gem, which the Church sings tomorrow morning:

O David, now lead the way into the temple of God, and leaping with joy and gladness, there receive our Queen, and cry aloud unto to her: Enter in the temple of the King, O my Lady, enter, whose glory is perceived in a mystery; for from you, Christ the Light shall make milk and honey flow forth for all.

The first line of this hymn refers to 1Chr 15:25-29; 16:1-2 when David dances before the Ark of the Covenant as it is brought to Jerusalem. This is then juxtaposed to the story of Mary entering the temple at the age of 3 to remain there until her betrothal to Joseph. In Exodus 25:21-22 God tells Moses:

You will put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and inside the ark you will put the Testimony which I am about to give to you. There I shall come to meet you; from above the mercy seat, from between the two winged creatures which are on the ark of the Testimony, I shall give you all my orders for the Israelites.

God, in the person of Christ, comes to dwell within the Virgin Mary to take on His humanity. In other words, the Church equates the Theotokos with the Ark of the Covenant — the place where God comes to be with us.

Note how this hymn has King David calling Christ King.

Christ’s incarnation is then juxtaposed with Exodus 3:7-8:

Then the Lord said, ‘I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying for help on account of their taskmasters. Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.’

The poetry of this hymn equates the story of Passover to that of Pascha. Egypt becomes the fallen world. The taskmasters are our passions and sins. God comes down to lift us up out of this fallen world and into a land flowing with milk and honey — Christ takes our humanity to the Cross and the Tomb so that He might raise our humanity on the third day and take it with Him as He ascends to sit at the right hand of the Father in glory.

In one short hymn we see the Church understanding that this one feast — the celebration of the young Mary entering the Temple — participates in the greater story of salvation. Not only does this reveal that the Church sees Scripture as a whole — not merely a collection of several books by several authors in several contexts — but it reveals that when we take part in the life of the Church, we participate in the larger story of salvation. Amen.