St. Mary’s Feast as a Celebration of Christ

Many peo­ple who are not famil­iar with Ortho­doxy or the way it under­stands saints are sur­prised to see the Church cel­e­brat­ing the feasts of saints, like today. They think that, if the cel­e­bra­tion is not about Christ, it is merely a dis­trac­tion and con­trary to the Gospel. The answer to this is that we never cel­e­brate saints alone. Although we cel­e­brate this great feast of St. Mary this week, we are really cel­e­brat­ing St. Mary in the light of Christ. It is never pos­si­ble for us to sep­a­rate St. Mary from our Lord and Sav­ior Jesus Christ, because the role and sig­nif­i­cance of St. Mary is under­stood only in ref­er­ence to her Son.

In the his­tory of the Church, we see that St. Mary was given the title of Theotokos, which means “Bearer of God” or “Mother of God” at the Third Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil at Eph­esus through the great and heroic efforts of Saint Cyril of Alexan­dria. Nesto­rius, a heretic, wanted to deny her the title Theotokos and give her the title Chris­to­tokos instead, which would mean she is Mother of Christ, but not Mother of God, which, in turn, would mean that Christ is some­how not God. The Church con­demned Nesto­rius and affirmed the use of this title for St. Mary, because we can­not sep­a­rate St. Mary from her Son and what­ever title we give to St. Mary must reflect Who her Son is. Christ is the sec­ond Per­son of the Holy Trin­ity, of one essence with the Father, Who exists before all ages. He is God. There­fore, St. Mary is Theotokos, the Mother of God.

This his­tor­i­cal real­ity is man­i­fested in our life of wor­ship. For example, in the icon placed on the iconos­ta­sis in  Ortho­dox churches, St. Mary is depicted, not by her­self, but with Christ on her lap. In this icon, she is bear­ing God. In fact, with very few excep­tions, almost every icon of St. Mary in the Ortho­dox Church por­trays her with Christ in one way or another. This is one way in which the archi­tec­ture and iconog­ra­phy of the church expresses the real­ity that she is defined by her rela­tion­ship to God.

Thus, when­ever we cel­e­brate St. Mary’s feast, we cel­e­brate her in the light of Christ.

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