In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and said, ‘The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How fearful is this place! This is none other than the house of God [Bethel], and this is the gate of Heaven.’
The Old Testament account of Jacob’s Ladder bridging Heaven and earth, earth and Heaven, upon which the angels of God both ascended and descended, has long been seen by the Church as a type of Mary. We hear this reading at virtually every Mariological feast. “Through [her],” the Church sings at Great Vespers, “things on earth are joined with Heaven, for the salvation of our souls” (“Lord, I Call” stichera).
This feast of the birth of the Birth-giver of God inaugurates the festal seasons of the Church. It is the first feast of all the feasts of the Church, thus making the Most Blessed Ever-Virgin Mary the source and fountain of salvation history. Without her conception (9 December) and birth there is no salvation. Of all the women who ever were or will be, she and she alone was chosen by God, deemed most worthy to bear in her virginal womb God – the Son of God! “Although by the will of God other women who were barren have brought forth famous offspring,” so the Church sings at Great Vespers,
yet among all such children Mary has shone most brightly with divine glory. For, herself born wondrously of a barren mother, she bore in in the flesh the God of all, in fashion surpassing nature, from a womb without seed. She is the only gateway of the Only-begotten Son of God, Who passed through this gate, yet kept it closed: and having ordered all things in His own wisdom He has wrought salvation for all mankind (“Lord, I Call” stichera).
“Her place in history, [therefore,] is unique. . . . We see hints of her throughout the Old Testament,” writes one author. “For the early Church Fathers, history unfolded according to the ‘divine economy.’ God’s plan hidden from all eternity [is] revealed in the acts of creation and salvation.” Indeed, “From the earliest days of the Church, the Fathers believed that Mary’s role was in the mind of God, even before the creation of Eve, and it was signified throughout the Old Testament [in types] and in the created world” (History’s Queen, Aquilina).
The conception and birth of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, therefore, is “for us men and for our salvation,” just as much as is our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Virgin’s holy and blessed Son, Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and made incarnate (Nicene Creed; Annunciation). Her conception and birth, however, also has something to say to us about our understanding of human beings and our fall into sin and death. It is this particular understanding that separates us from our Roman Catholic brethren who adhere to the late papal dogmatic decree of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The nature of her birth as immaculate wasn’t formalized by the Pope of Rome until 1854, which makes it a relatively late newcomer in the two thousand plus year history of the Church and, from our perspective as Orthodox, it is a novel decree heretofore unheard of (A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology, Tibbs). The Roman need for this dogmatic assertion, however, is rooted in how they understand the Fall and sin, which differs from our own.
For our Roman brethren, since the Fall of Adam and Eve, all of humanity inherits the sin and guilt of Adam. This is what they call “original sin.” And, because we are all sinners and guilty on account of Adam from conception and birth, we are in need of the saving waters of Baptism. But, this presents a problem for the incarnation of God: God cannot be born a sinner nor guilty. So, in order to circumvent that dilemma, Rome declared the Blessed Virgin to have been born immaculately, that is, according to their Catechism,
from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, [she was] preserved immune from all stain of original sin (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 490-493).
Of course, the impact of this, from our understanding, is that the Mother of our Lord is made singularly very different from the rest of us. Her immaculate conception renders her unique, yes, but very much unlike the rest of us fallen creatures of Adam and Eve!
From the Orthodox perspective, however, the Blessed Virgin, though miraculously born of a barren couple – following in the ancient and venerable footsteps of the likes of Abraham and Sarah, of Elkanah and Hannah, of Jacob and Rachel, of Zechariah and Elizabeth – is nonetheless conceived and born just like the rest of us – a fallen creature. However, we do not inherit Adam’s guilt nor his sin. That belongs to him alone. What we inherit – as did the Theotokos – is “the disease of death and decay.” So, when Adam turned away from God, he turned away “from the very Source of life itself,” thus breaking communion with God and embracing the darkness of sin and death. From the original creation viewpoint, this is most unnatural. But, from a fallen creation perspective, it is what we experience now as quite natural. We were not created for death and decay, but, as Sacred Scripture affirms, we were created in the image of God’s eternity; we were created to be immortal (WS 1:13-15; 2:23-24). Immortality and righteousness, therefore, is our natural state whereas mortality and sin are unnatural. This is what we call “ancestral sin.” “What we have inherited from the Fall is ‘essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality’.” “[N]either Adam’s sin nor guilt have been transmitted to us, our personal sinfulness [however], arises as a result of humanity’s inherited mortality and corruptibility. Salvation is thus . . . a healing and renewal of [our] human nature that has been assaulted by Satan. Death, not guilt, is the primary consequence of the Fall” which has been once-and-for-all conquered by the Crucified and Risen Jesus Who has trampled down death by His Death (A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology; Paschal Troparion/Only-begotten Son Troparion)! Our Lady, then, born just like us, just like us then must die for she has inherited with us the weakness of mortality and the decay of death – a creature of this earth, just like us, striving with the passions and subject to death (Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary).
From our Orthodox perspective, sin comes about because of our weakness, that is, because of our mortality. Sin arises from death. So that when the Son of God appears out of the kindness and mercy of God, He does so to deal primarily with death by giving to us His divine and Eternal Life through the Cross and Resurrection (Ts. 2:11-14; 3:4-7). By His Death and Resurrection death is conquered and the healing of our sin-sick soul is begun by the restoration of our communion with God, lost to us because of Adam’s Fall.
We sinners sin. That’s a fact we know all too well. But, contrary to what seems to be the general mindset, Adam’s Fall does not communicate to us sin, the need to sin. We are not obligated to sin. Contrary to John Calvin and our Puritan forefathers and mothers, we are not totally depraved so that we cannot do anything good or holy or righteous. We do not have to sin as though we have no other choice, but we do again and again and again because of our death-weakened, sin-inclined mortal nature (Rm. 7:1-25).
The Most Holy Theotokos, on the other hand, stands for us as the ultimate icon of synergism and the theosis, that is, the divinization or deification that awaits us as we cooperate with the grace of God given to us. From birth, she was totally consecrated by her holy and righteous parents, Joachim and Anna. Indeed, the new-martyr Priest Daniel Sysoev in his The Law of God says that her birth was “the fruit of prayer, so that from the very moment of her conception she would be purified by the righteousness of her parents.” For two millennia now, the Church has recognized the utter uniqueness of this woman – of this child – and how she was so devoted to God and strongly inclined to habitually turn away from sin and turn towards God in love and adoration all of her life, she has become “the highest example of human holiness,” unsurpassed by none save her Son (These Truths We Hold). In fact, St. John Maximovitch says of her that her “righteousness and sanctity were manifested in the fact that she, being ‘human with passions like us,’ so loved God and gave herself over to Him, that by her purity she was exalted high above the rest of the human race,” even transcending all the angelic hosts combined (The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God, Maximovitch)! For the Church sings her praises, “More honorable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, without corruption [defilement] thou gavest birth to God the Word: true Theotokos, we magnify thee” (Megalynarion).
Thus, the Church has seen in Jacob’s surprise at Bethel a type of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. She is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven by whose holiness and humble obedience, in God’s providence, has become the Ladder to Heaven re-uniting Heaven and earth, and earth with Heaven, through whom God comes to us in the flesh of Jesus Christ, “for the salvation of our souls” (“Lord, I Call” stichera).
Most holy Theotokos, save us!
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
VIGIL PROPERS: PROPERS:
Gn. 28:10-17 Pp. 2:5-11
Ek. 43:27-44:4 Lk. 10:38-42; 11:27-28
Pr. 9:1-11