ORTHODOX TEACHINGS

Of all human beings who have ever lived, one was asked to bear God in her own body. When the angel Gabriel came to Mary with the impossible message, the young woman of Nazareth responded with the words the Orthodox Church has treasured ever since: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)

The Theotokos

We call the Virgin Mary Theotokos, a Greek word meaning Birth-giver of God. This title, recognized by the Church at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, is a statement about who Jesus is. Because Jesus is fully God and fully man, the woman who carried Him can rightly be called the Mother of God. Her title protects a core truth of our faith: that in Jesus, God truly became human.

Our Relationship with Mary

The Orthodox Church loves the Theotokos with a love that is hard to translate into the Christian vocabularies that have lost her. She is honored in every Liturgy, remembered in our hymns, acknowledged in our prayers. Many of our icons depict the Theotokos, and in those icons, almost without exception, her hand is pointing to her Son. She does not draw attention to herself but continually points us toward her Son, as she has for two thousand years.

In the Ode of Mary (the Magnificat) from Luke 1:46-48, we see Mary's faith and joy: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed." In Orthodox Christianity, we fulfill Mary's prophecy.

A Model of Faith

Mary is the first and greatest exemplar of what an Orthodox life looks like. She lived in complete openness to God, in unwavering trust, and was faithfully present to Christ from His conception to His death on the Cross.

At the Nativity, she treasured and pondered mysteries she could not yet understand, teaching us how to respond with awe and humility to God's blessings. At the Wedding in Cana (John 2), when the wine runs out, Mary brings the need to her Son, and despite His response that "My hour has not yet come," she tells the servants with complete confidence, "Do whatever he tells you." From Christ's first public miracle to her intercessions today, the Orthodox Church understands that Mary sees our needs, brings them to her Son, and always guides us to follow Him.

In deepest anguish and sorrow, enduring perhaps the worst loss any parent can know, the Theotokos remained constant in her faith. As we sing in the Lamentations of Holy Friday, she wept bitter tears as she laid her Son in the grave. She had lost Him who was both her son and her God, her "Life and Christ." Orthodox Christianity honors both Mary's motherly devotion to her son, and her unwavering faith in her God through the darkest hours of Christ's three-day burial. Every year when we sing, "Every generation, to Your grave comes bringing, dear Christ its dirge of praises," we join her in steadfast faith and witness to Christ's sacrifice.

An Invitation to Know Her

To cherish and honor the Theotokos is not to elevate her beyond what she is. It is to recognize what she is: the first Christian, the mother of the Church, the human being who said yes to God most fully, and the one who continues, even now, to point us to her son: the Son of God.