Category Image How Can We Honor Mary So?


There is a practice within Orthodoxy of offering an Akathist to the Theotokos during the first five Fridays of Great Lent. For those not familiar with it, the service exalts the Blessed Virgin to a very high state. As I was sitting in my first experience of this a couple of weeks ago, it dawned on me why we can do this - why is it safe to do so.

In general, it is only a small subset of people I've run across who think that Mary was just some ordinary girl who just happened to give birth to the Messiah. In many Protestant traditions, most notably Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and to an extent, Calvinism, it is clearly understood that Mary was somebody very special. The thrust of the arguments against Rome (who is the usual target of such arguments) is that to speak of Mary in to special a way is to elevate her to being a God in her own right, or at the least, a fourth member of the Trinity. I won't get into why its proper to praise Mary the way that we do, that has been well handled by many others. No, I simply want to address why it is safe, for the Orthodox at least, to do so. I will confess that what I'm about to say might be a bit inflammatory, so I'll apologize at the outset.

The reason, IMO, that the Orthodox are safe in their treatment of Mary is that we are abundantly, absolutely, clear about who Jesus is. Our prayers constantly remind us that Jesus is God. He may be fully human, but he is also fully Divine. Beyond the frequent reference to "Christ our God", we even see it in how we refer to Mary. As I typed this up, I found myself struggling and feeling awkward at referring to the Theotokos simply as "Mary". We refer to her as the Blessed Virgin Mary, and more frequently as the Theotokos, or God Bearer. This latter title, which became a key element of the Council of Chalcedon, ensures that we are always mindful of the fact that she bore the God of the Universe within her womb. If Christ is clearly and unequivocally God, then no matter how lofty our language about the Theotokos is, it can't get out of hand since she is only the bearer of God, and not God Himself.

I'm not saying that other Christian groups (Jehovah's WItnesses excluded) deny the divinity of Christ. However, there has been a tendency over time to focus so much on his humanity, and his status as our "friend", our teacher, etc., that language and thoughts about him being the one who created the world seem to have faded away. When that happens, and we lose practical clarity on who Christ is, there comes a real risk that we'll confuse he and his mother in the order of things.

Posted: Wednesday - March 07, 2007 at 04:23 PM          

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