Anyone who comes into an Orthodox church is going to hear us use this word over and over again, and that word is the Theotokos. This is a Greek word that means God-bearer, the bearer of God. It's a very important term for us, so important that we typically maintain the Greek form of it when we say it.
We use this word instead of another word that was put forth many centuries ago, the word Christotokos, the mother of Christ. The heretic Nestorius insisted that Mary is indeed to be honored, and she's a wonderful person, but ultimately she has to be the mother of just Christ. It's crazy to call her the mother of God.
I think Cyril of Alexandria said he's surprised that not everyone is calling her the mother of God, and that has everything to do with who we believe Christ is, being both equally God and man. The story is as... The heretics often do, went a little too far with distinguishing between Christ's divine nature and human nature. You go too far one way, you find yourself in heresy. You go a little too far the other way, you find yourself in the opposite heresy.
But St. Cyril was very clear that if Christ is fully God, then we can say that Mary bore God. And that is exactly what they landed on. And that's what we say.
So we say, we call her the Theotokos, the bearer of God. Because it has a lot to say about who she is and who Christ is and what he is, which also has everything to do with who we are, with who humans are. We don't believe that Mary had to receive a special type of grace to be born in a state worthy of bearing Jesus, the Son of God.
So some people would say to us, Mary is just like everyone else. Like, sorry, she's... She's a human, just like everyone else. But we, the Orthodox, would say, Mary is just like everyone else. Isn't that great?
And in that distinction is evident a difference in how people perceive humanity. If someone perceives humanity as being, shall we say, lowly, fallen, maybe even dirty and unworthy of God, then it makes complete sense that they would also treat Christ's mother that way. But if someone...
sees humanity through God's eyes, that is elevated to the status of being worthy to sit on his throne. If we examine the Feast of the Ascension, Christ in his divinity and humanity ascends to take his seat on the throne of God. That means humanity is sitting on the throne of God in the kingdom. This is how highly exalted humanity is to be regarded.
This is how the Lord sees humanity. And if the Lord sees humanity in that way, then it makes perfect sense that his mother would be treated that way as well. We depict this in our churches.
She's on the same horizontal and vertical plane as he is, not because she is somehow like the source of her own holiness, but because of how much he regards her. And through her is that same regard for all of humanity. So when we see her sitting at his right side, we should also see our potential to sit near him as well. This is also reflected in our iconography.
The way that we set up our icons in the church is very intentional. And we'll see Mary as typically having the largest icon in the church over the apse, over the altar. And that icon is called more spacious than the heavens because in her womb, she contained the uncontainable one.
The one in whom all of creation came forth was held within her womb. The immutable one was bound within her womb. And so we venerate her for this reason.
She's very special to us. She continues to interact with humanity even after her death, making herself known through miracles, through miracle-working icons, through appearances of her own. And it's very clear that... her words to us when she reposed that she would not leave us alone. It's very clear that that is in fact happening.
Yeah, so one of the common objections that we get is that, show me in scripture, where does it say to pray to Mary? Well, we have to break that apart a little bit. First of all, the end of our life is not the end of our communion with one another.
So when one of us dies, we continue to pray for them. And then if we are clear on their holiness, we would ask them to pray for us. That's one particular distinction.
We continue to break that down. Then we can see like, well, of course, someone who is a great Christian is someone that we would ask for their help. Now, why Mary? Well, first, let's begin. With the Old Testament, Solomon has become king and his mother Bathsheba comes to him on behalf of someone else.
Someone came to her petitioning her to speak to her son on their behalf and to help him grant what they needed. So she goes to her son Solomon. As she arrives, he immediately places a throne on his right side for her and grants her her request. Nearly every king of Israel after that.
Rather than having his wife be the queen, the ruling queen mother, had the mother sitting at his right hand. And in every instance where there's a new king, the king is named, and right within those first few verses, within the first paragraph, is also named his mother. It would make perfect sense that as Christ is traveling, insisting that he is the Messiah, that people would be interested in knowing who his mother was.
after his ascension and has his disciples go out into all the world preaching about him, it would be natural that any good Jew who knew their scripture would ask, who's his mother? Because this would be a normal thing if they accepted him as their king and messiah. So that's thing number one. Thing number two, we see a reflection of that same petitioning of the mother in the wedding of Cana. They go to his mother to get him to do something about the lack of wine.
And she says to do whatever he says. She points to him and says, do whatever he tells you. This is what the mother of God does for all of us now.
We go to her and we ask for help. And she in return, she goes to him and does in fact petition on our behalf, but then also turns to us and says, do his will. We finally hear someone in the crowd and another story cry out to the Lord.
Blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed are the breasts that nurtured you. And he says in response, about his mother. Blessed are rather those who hear the word of God and keep it.
He's not rejecting her. He's saying this is what makes her great. She served the word of God and kept it.
We would also say and bore it within her.