Our Most Holy Lady, the Ever-Virgin Mary
is a wonder and mystery which not even the angels can understand:
“Heaven was astonished and the ends of the earth amazed, for God
appeared bodily to mankind, and your bosom became broader than the
heavens. Therefore, Mother of God, the leaders of the orders of angels
and of men magnify you”, writes the poet of the Paraclitic Canon. She
is, as Gregory the Theologian says, “God after God”. Of course, the
Fathers also refer to her position elsewhere, clarifying it: “Let Mary
be held in honour. Let the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be worshipped,
but let no-one worship Mary”, (Saint Epifanios).
Regarding the genealogy of Our Lady,
we’re told in the Gospel according to Saint Luke that she was “of the
house of David”. The protoevangelium, as it is called, of James, the
Brother of the Lord, tells us that the priest Matthan married a Mary and
she bore four children: Jacob, who was father to Joseph, the betrothed
of Our Lady, Salome the midwife, Sobe, who bore Elizabeth the Mother of
John the Baptist and Ann who gave birth to Mary, the Mother of Jesus
Christ, the God/Man.
She was given the name Mary by her
parents Ioakeim and Ann, but the name she mainly goes by in Orthodoxy is
Mother of God. This term was ratified at the 3rd Ecumenical
Synod of the Church in 431. But in order to express its great love and
respect towards the Virgin, the Church has attributed to her a host of
honorific titles and epithets. A typical example is Saint Nektarios, who
devoted five thousand verses to her honour, comprising his
“Theotokario”*.
From the Gospels in the New Testament we
learn that the Daughter of Nazareth received her Annunciation from the
Archangel Gabriel; visited her cousin Elizabeth; who was already
pregnant with the Honourable Forerunner, John the Baptist; gave birth to
the Saviour of the world in Bethlehem; fled to Egypt to protect her
child from those seeking to kill Him; sought her twelve-year-old Son in
Jerusalem, while He was debating with the teachers in the Temple; was
present at the wedding in Cana, where she interceded with her Son;
accompanied Him to Golgotha and witnessed the divine events of the
Crucifixion, the burial and the glorious Resurrection of the Lord and
then the descent of the Holy Spirit which occurred in the upper room on
the day of Pentecost.
We learn more about the life of the
Mother of God from Patristic Tradition, which is just as valid a source
as the Apostolic Tradition, of which it is the natural continuation,
based on the experience and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The work, On the Divine Names, by Saint Dionysios the Areopagite, the Encomia of
the Dormition of Our Lady which were written by various saints of the
Church such as John the Damascan and Andrew of Crete, the hymns and
iconography of the Church – all these are basic sources. We also find
information in the Apocryphal narrative of Saint John the Theologian on
the Dormition of Mary, the Mother of God.
Just as the Archangel Gabriel had been
her attendant all through the previous years, so now he brought her the
message that, in three days, her Son would come and take her all-pure
soul. After the divine message, Our Lady went up onto the Mount of
Olives, where she prayed to her Son and God. She then told the Church
about what was about to happen. On the day of her Dormition, the Grace
of God, in the form of a cloud, brought the Apostles, who were far away,
to the house of Saint John the Evangelist in Gethsemane, so that they
could take her blessing and experience her blessed Dormition. Saint
Paul, Timothy the Apostle, Saint Dionysios the Areopagite and other
saints of both sexes were also present. Our Lady comforted and advised
the apostles and prayed for the salvation of the whole world, until the
morning, when her Son Himself took her spirit.
Then, “her God-bearing body, with
angelic and apostolic hymnody was carried and buried, and was laid in
the grave in Gethsemane”, even though the Jews tried to impede the holy
rite. It is reported that a Jew called Ieronias, attempted to stop her
interment, with the result that his arms were cut off by an invisible
force. Fortunately, he repented and was immediately healed. A similar
fate befell all those who approached Our Lady with impiety in their
hearts: they were blinded, but had their sight restored when they
repented.
The Holy Apostles then interred the most
holy body of the Mother of God and remained there for three days, while
the “presence of the choirs of angels singing hymns continued
unceasing”. John the Damascan records in his Encomium on the
most august Dormition of the Mother of God: “After the third day, when
the angelic hymnody had ceased, with the apostles still present, one was
brought to them, and since he wished to reverence the God-bearing body,
they opened the grave. They were unable to find her all-praised body,
only the burial objects, and were filled with the ineffable fragrance
she left behind”.
The apostle who had been absent on the
day of the Dormition was Thomas, according to tradition. Thus, on the
third day after the event, when Our Lady was due to be transposed in the
body to be with her Son, the Apostle Thomas was borne to Gethsemane by
the Grace of the Holy Spirit, where he saw the Mother of God being taken
up into the heavens. Our Lady gave him her belt, which is now kept as a
prize possession in the Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi.
The Paraclitic Canon to the Mother of God
The day of the Dormition of the Mother
of God is a high feast. In the life of the Church, the dismissal hymn
and kontakion for the feast explain why: “In giving birth, Mother of
God, you retained your virginity, and in your Dormition you did not
abandon the world. You who are the Mother of Life have passed over into
life and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death”. “Neither the
tomb nor death had power over the Mother of God, who is always watchful
in her prayers and in whose intercessions lies unfailing hope. For as
the Mother of Life she has been transported into life by Him Who dwelt
within her ever-virgin womb”.
Initially, this feast of Our Lady was moveable, but then, at the behest of Emperor Mavrikios, was established on 15 August.
Nowadays, the feast is preceded by a
period of compunction lasting two weeks and every evening we Orthodox
gather in our churches in order to sing the Paraclitic Canons to the
Most Holy Mother of God.
We have recourse to Our Lady and sing
the canons because we firmly believe, together with the poets who wrote
them that “No-one who hastens to you leaves disappointed, pure Virgin
Mother of God, but they ask for grace and receive profit from their
request”. Our experience of the countless bounties we have received from
the Queen of the Heavens prohibits our silence: “We, though unworthy,
never cease from telling your mighty works, Mother of God. For had you
not shielded us and interceded for us, who would have delivered us from
such dangers and how would we still be free? We cleave to you, Lady, for
you forever save your servants from all manner of adversity”. “I do not
hide the depth of your mercy nor the fount of your unlimited wonders…
but I confess, proclaim and announce them to all and rejoice in them”.
We confess our sinfulness before the
Mother of God, we express our cry of anguish to her, the pain of our
soul and body and the sorrow, all of which make us feel that “our life
has drawn nigh to Hades” Of course, we don’t lose heart and we don’t
bemoan our fate as those do who have no hope, but sing from the depths
of our hearts “fill my heart with joy Virgin… you who expunge the sorrow
of sin”. We place all our hopes on her, because we know from experience
that she really is merciful and that, as the Mother of God she is a
fount of mercy, the only refuge of the world and “unfailing Mediatrix
before the creator”. Moreover, we request her to govern our lives and as
the “invincible bulwark and protection” and “most secure citadel” that
she is to “keep us safe from the “flighted arrows of the demons” which
fly around us and which we are unable to withstand alone. And so we
Christians really do experience the summer Easter.
So on those days, apart from at Vespers
on the Saturdays and the eve of the feast of the Transfiguration of the
Lord, we sing alternately the Small Paraclitic Canon, which is a poem by
a hymnographer called Monk Theostiriktos, or Theofanis, to give him his
secular name, and the Great Paraclitic Canon, a poem composed by
Theodoros II Laskaris, the emperor of Nicea, who lived in the
13th century.
We have little evidence concerning the
identity of the Monk Theostiriktos, who composed the Small Paraclitic
Canon. As regards Theodoros II, we know that he was the son of the
emperor and saint Ioannis Doukas Vatatzis and Eirini Laskarina. It is
reported that Emperor Theodoros suffered from a malady that produced
severe depression, from which he prayed to be delivered. Indeed, it
appears that sometimes he disregarded his spiritual struggle which is
why he often repeated the phrase “I have abandoned you, Christ”. His
prayers, therefore, took the form of intercessions to Our Lady after he
came to know Saint Theodora, the Empress of Epirus, who had great
reverence for the Mother of God. It was from the saint that he learned
to turn to Our Lady in difficult times, when he was burdened by
depression, and to ask her to soothe the pain and bring him divine grace
and comfort. In this Paraclitic Canon “the sufferings and tortures of a
soul are put into song… where a Greek emperor, pursued, fought against,
worried, by Latins and Arabs and his own people, puts into song to Our
Lady his own pain and the persecutions that he suffered from the hordes
of the barbarians, which he calls “clouds”, as Alexandros Papadiamantis
notes. The Paraclisis of Theodoros II was given out to the Holy
Monasteries of the region, where a service was composed, and from there
spread throughout Byzantium, as the Great Paraclitic Canon.
The fact that the two Canon services are
held on alternate days is probably due to the set of historical
circumstances which marked Byzantium in 1261. In that year, during the
reign of Mikhaïl VIII Palaiologos, the Reigning City, Constantinople,
was recaptured without bloodshed and this was attributed to the
miraculous intervention of the Mother of God. Mikhaïl wanted to enter
the City in procession and to address his thanks to Our Lady. But since,
at that time, the Great Paraclitic Canon of Theodoros II, his
predecessor, was being sung, a compromise solution had to be found. It
was suggested that the older, Small Paraclitic Canon to Our Lady the
Mother of God be used instead. Since then, the use of the Great
Paraclitic Canon has been restricted to the fast for the 15th August.
The services of the Paraclitic Canons,
then, which fall between the two great feasts of the Church, Easter and
Christmas, are held so that we can address supplications and prayers to
Our Lady, our sole mediatrix with our Philanthropic God, so that we will
be granted mercy and the strength to ascend our Golgotha, where the
ineffable joy of the resurrection is experienced. Because the
resurrection is not to be found beyond the cross but is granted right there upon it.
Let us pay all due honour, then, and
like the great preacher Ilias Miniatis (1669-1714) let us implore Our
Lady the Mother of God: “You who are full of grace and glorified, the
Queen of All, from the exuberant radiance of the divine light you enjoy,
standing on the right of your only-begotten Son, send down to us here,
your devout servants, a blessed ray as light to our endarkened minds and
a flame to our ice-cold will, that we may see to hasten to tread in
the way of the divine strictures. After God we have our hope of
salvation in you, the Mother of God and Mother of us all; from you we
hope in the victories of the most serene Power, the trophies of the
God-fearing Emperors; the firm foundation of the Church; the defence of
the race of the Orthodox; the shelter of this habitation, which is
dedicated to your peaceable assistance. Indeed, Our Lady Virgin, indeed,
Mary, the name which is the joy, comfort and boast of Christians,
accept the fast and supplication of these holy days, which we have made
in your honour, as welcome incense. And count us worthy, just as we
embrace here in Church your holy and wonder-working icon, so, too, in
Paradise, to see your blessed face, which we shall venerate as we do the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, throughout the vast ages. Amen”
* Including the well-known hymn “Agni Parthene” [trans. note]
Source: www.churchofcyprus.org.cy, the web-site of the Church of Cyprus.
Source-Pemptousia.com
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