Homily Three on the Nativity of the Theotokos
By St. John of Kronstadt
(Delivered in 1907 or 1908)
By St. John of Kronstadt
(Delivered in 1907 or 1908)
“The universal joy has shone forth for us from the righteous Joachim and Anna, O all-lauded Virgin, through whom, because of her exceeding purity, the temple of God is made a living one, and she alone is truly recognized as the Mother of God.” (Sticheron at the Aposticha, Forefeast Service)
Before beginning my poor word on the Nativity of the Mother of God the Word, I beseech this Pre-eternal Word to grant me understanding to glorify according to my strength, or rather according to the grace of God, this truly great Christian feast, the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, who was destined by the Creator of the ages to become the Mother of the Son of God according to the flesh.
In my mind I compare two virgins: the first-created virgin Eve, when she had not yet known conjugal union, and the truly Immaculate and Ever-Virgin Theotokos Mary.
The first virgin became willingly the cause of ancestral sin, the curse, and death, and of all the evils to which we remain subject and from which we suffer terribly to this day; the second, by God, became the cause of righteousness, blessing, and life, with which God the Word, born from her according to the flesh, has benefited us.
The first was created from Adam’s rib, for the unity of origin from one blood of the human race; the second Virgin—the Cause of this present celebration—was born through the faith, fervent prayer, and almsgiving of her barren and aged parents, the righteous Joachim and Anna, for the destruction, through the goodness of God, of sin, the curse, and death. For God the Word, born from her according to the flesh, destroyed utterly evil sin in those who believe, drove out the curse and death, and bestowed blessing and eternal life.
Behold two opposites: Eve, the foremother of the human race, and the Ever-Virgin Mary, the advocate of Christians! Wondrous are the works of God’s providence for the human race!
Wondrous also are righteous people, who, by the grace of God, bring forth in the world righteousness, peace, blessing, and eternal life, among whom the Most Holy Virgin Mary is preeminent. Wondrous is the mercy of God toward the human race, which restored it from its fall. By Her Nativity, the Most Holy Virgin Mary united God the Word with human beings and, having made our nature estranged through sin akin to heaven, brought the human race into communion with the angelic, radiant, all-blessed world, and made earthly human beings citizens of heaven.
Through the Incarnation of God the Word from the Most Holy Virgin, humanity was deemed worthy by God to receive, freely and without measure, blessings of which it would not even dare to conceive, having become immersed in every kind of defilement of sin. The Lord, who voluntarily suffered for the sins of the world, gave mankind the font of regeneration (Holy Baptism), all-saving repentance, and the all-illuminating Word of God, which teaches all godliness. The Church was established with her sanctified shepherds; the communion of the most pure Body and Blood of the Lord was given, cleansing every sin and renewing our nature corrupted by sin, adorning and perfuming the believing and humble souls.
The salvation of man has been made dependent upon the faith, repentance, and good works of man, and without faith in Christ, the Lamb of God who took upon Himself the sins of the world, and without sincere, fruitful repentance, salvation is impossible; the faithful have been given an all-powerful Intercessor and Advocate.
I look upon the world lying in evil, or, more closely, upon Russia, which received from God the precious inheritance of the Orthodox faith from her forefathers, and through incomprehensible frivolity departed from her faith and fell into every kind of calamity: and I am horrified and grieve, seeing how she suffers and will suffer still more if she does not turn with all her heart to the faith of her fathers and to the Orthodox Church, in which so many righteous people have been saved. For from unbelief, drunkenness, and debauchery there follow calamity after calamity, calamities of the greatest magnitude, beyond measure: a shameful war, the impoverishment of the people, revolution, famine, cholera, and the rebellious two Dumas, of which the second, through some of its representatives, nearly brought about the destruction of the Imperial Family.
These are the punishments of God for apostasy from the faith and unrestrained debauchery.
Even our holy feasts, which ought to lift our minds and hearts toward heaven, have been turned into satanic feasts, feasts of flesh and blood and of every senseless and harmful passion. As once with the feasts of the Jews, the Lord is displeased also with our feasts.
“I cannot endure your festive assemblies,” — lawlessness and festivity (Isaiah 1:1–3), says the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah.
Let us fear God. Let us attend to the meaning of our feasts and lift our minds and hearts upward to God, to heaven, to our heavenly homeland. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
