By Fr. George Dorbarakis
We did not even have time to bring to an end the praises of the Most Holy Theotokos for the month of August — a month that is made radiant, as we all know, by her Dormition, but also by the deposition of her honorable zoni — and already we are beginning new celebrations on the occasion of the feast of her Nativity. But our Church never ceases to celebrate the Mother of the Lord, indeed on a daily basis, since all her hymns are crowned by the troparia dedicated to her, the well-known Theotokia, just as all the great feasts of our saints have as their standard-bearers the canons dedicated to her. And rightly so: the Panagia is a type of the Church, because just as she gave birth to the Son of God as man, so the Church gives birth to Christ in the hearts of human beings. Therefore, not only on the feasts of the Mother of God, but at all feasts and always, the Panagia has the first place. What, however, does today’s feast specifically set before us, so that it is distinguished from the other feasts of the Panagia?
1. First of all, we should explain something that appears to be a contradiction and that has certainly been emphasized many times: the Orthodox Christian faith does not present a person’s birthday as a day of celebration, but rather the day on which his saint is celebrated. How, then, do we have here a feast of a Nativity, as is likewise the case with Saint John the Forerunner? The explanation is not difficult. A person’s birthday, the day of his coming into the world, represents simply a horizontal course of human existence which, in reality, nourishes death. Man comes into the world within the conditions of corruption and knows that his end is death. What, then, is there to celebrate? The day on which a person’s saint is celebrated, that is, the saint whose name he bears, or even the day of his Baptism, as the day of his incorporation as a member into the living Body of Christ, the Church, this constitutes the remembrance of the grace from God that he received and, consequently, the beginning of his salvation. If something is celebrated in the Church, it is because it always has a soteriological character. From this perspective, it is clearer than daylight why our Church celebrates the Nativity of the Panagia or of Saint John the Forerunner: it is then that those who above all cooperate in the coming of Christ and, consequently, in the salvation of the world, come into the world.
“Your Nativity, O Theotokos, proclaimed joy to all the world. For from you has risen the Sun of justice, Christ our God.”
2. And it is precisely this fact, namely the connection between the Nativity of the Panagia and Jesus Christ, that the feast above all proclaims. Our Panagia is not presented in herself merely as a human being. No human being, ever, however great he may be, can of himself substantially help other human beings: all act and exist within the conditions of corruption, as we said, and death. The Panagia comes into the world within the divine plan for the salvation of the world from sin and death: she is “the one foreordained from all generations” to become the Mother of God, while remaining a virgin maiden, as the hymns of her feast proclaim. She is the one whose coming, as the foreannouncement of the Savior of the world, Christ, had been prophesied through divine illumination by the prophets of the Old Testament: whether as Jacob’s ladder, or as the vessel and the manna, or as the rod of Aaron, or, much more, as “the closed gate that faces toward the east,” which God showed to the Prophet Ezekiel, revealing to him that no one would pass through it except Himself, and that for this reason He would afterward keep it closed again.
The Nativity of the Panagia, therefore, is emphasized and hymned with such extraordinary beauty precisely because it points to Jesus Christ. Christ is the One who gives worth to His Mother, without whom, however, He would not be who He is: not only perfect God, but also perfect man. Therefore, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ also reveals the uniqueness of the Most Holy Theotokos. No one has ever existed, nor will ever exist, like the Panagia. The height of her holiness is immeasurable and will always remain so, in accordance with the patristic poetic hyperbole, “God after God.” Consequently, we can also understand why there is such great joy throughout the whole world. For with the Nativity of the Panagia begins the process of the Nativity also of the Joy of the world, Christ. From that point onward, the possibility would exist in the world of overcoming sin, abolishing the devil, and trampling down death. True Life would exist in the world. Is it possible that the world would not rejoice over this?
“Today are the beginnings of universal joy; today the breezes have blown, the heralds of salvation.”
3. One point at which we must pause, among those things that the Church bears witness to concerning the feast, is the frequent invocation of her predestination, or foreordination, for her role in the divine economy. The Panagia was predestined to become the Mother of God as man. The question of predestination has provoked many discussions, particularly in the past. Indeed, it is one of those matters that demarcate truth from the error of heresy. Is there a predestination of man? And if so, then where is man’s freedom, which is recorded in Holy Scripture as the fundamental element of man’s being in the image of God? We will not dwell at length on this. Despite the seriousness and perhaps the difficulty involved in addressing it, we must not forget that Saint Augustine, the greatest theologian of Western Christianity, but also a saint of our own Church, taught what is called “absolute predestination,” that is, the division from the outset, on God’s part, of human beings into the saved and the lost, a fact that later greatly influenced the Protestants. We can make a few simple observations: God certainly creates man free, but this does not abolish His own all-knowing foreknowledge and prescience. For God, all things are “naked and laid bare” before Him; consequently, He knows beforehand whatever may happen, whatever thought man may conceive in his mind. Besides, time does not exist for God; that is, for Him everything is present.
The fact, therefore, that God foreknows everything does not mean that He also determines everything, as though He were absolutely responsible for everything. Man moves and thinks freely, but God can simply intervene to modify what man’s freedom has decided and put into action. We see this reality both in negative things and in positive ones. Among the positive things is the Nativity of the Panagia as well: God, foreknowing the positive inclination of her soul toward His all-holy will, prepares her to become what she did become. The Panagia willed to be with God. God prepared her to become His Mother, foreseeing the turning of her will toward Him. In this way, insofar as it can be expressed simply, we can also understand the foreordination or predestination of the Panagia, perhaps a kind of relative predestination, of which the hymns of our Church speak.
4. And certainly our Church does not cease, while presenting the feast in the most poetic and theological manner, to call us, the faithful of all ages, to its practical dimension: namely, on the one hand, to move toward glorifying our God for His beneficence in making the Panagia His dwelling place; on the other, to understand that “through the intercessions of the Theotokos” the Lord will save us; and third, to learn from the Panagia the manner of her life, following that which raised her to such great holiness: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The Church continually reminds us that we are called to theosis, that is, to become Panagias [All-Holy] ourselves, incarnating Christ within us. And the reason for this prospect, which surpasses every imagination, is our incorporation into the Body of Christ through our Holy Baptism. We are members of Christ; we have put Him on; consequently, we can live like the Panagia. It is enough, of course, that we desire it and strive for it.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
