My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
ON THE 25TH OF MARCH, WE CELEBRATE THE GREAT FEAST OF THE MOST HOLY MOTHER OF GOD AND EVER-VIRGIN MARY
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Today is the fountainhead of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery which was from eternity. The Son of God becometh the Virgin's Son, and Gabriel announceth the good tidings of grace; for this cause, let us cry to the Mother of God with him: Rejoice, thou who art full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
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When the bodies one learned the secret command, in haste he came and stood before Joseph's dwelling, and spake unto the Maiden who knew not wedlock: The One Who hath bowed the Heavens by His descent is held and contained unchanging wholly in thee. Seeing Him receiving the form of a servant in thy womb, I stand in awe and cry to thee: Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.
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Another Kontakion Hymn.
To thee, the Champion Leader, we thy flock dedicate a feast of victory and of thanksgiving as ones rescued out of sufferings, O Theotokos; but as thou art one with might which is invincible, from all dangers that can be do thou deliver us, that we may cry to thee: Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.
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On third day, that follows hard on the Spring Equinox, when the darkness of night, having reached its furthest extent, begins to yield its place to the light, the Church celebrates the conception of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the descent into this shadow-shrouded world of the Sun of Righteousness. He is, reversing the movement of time and history, turned a descent towards death into an ascent towards the unchanging springtime of eternity.
The root and principle of all the other feasts of the Lord, by which, each year, we commemorate our Redemption, the Feast of the Annunciation (Evaggelismos) must always be celebrated strictly on the same date because, according to an ancient tradition, it was in the month of March that the world was created by God, and it was on precisely March 25th that Adam, beguiled by the serpent's promise and wishing to make himself God, transgressed the Divine Command and was driven out of Paradise. It was therefore fitting that the healing of our nature be accomplished, like a second creation, by the same means and on the same days as those of our Fall. And, as mankind was subjected to death by Eve's disobedience in the springtime of the world, it was fitting that mankind be delivered in the month of March by obedience of the Virgin. Magnificently developing this doctrine of connections in the economy of Redemption, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons writes on the subject: "As the former (Eve) had been seduced by the discourse of an Angel, so that she fell away from God through transgressing the Angel's word, so the latter (Mary) was taught the good news by the discourse of an Angel, so that she bore God in obedience to the Angel's word. Even as the former (Eve) was seduced so that she disobeyed God, even so the latter (Mary) becomes the advocate for the virgin Eve. The human race having been made subject to death by a virgin, it was freed by a virgin, the disobedience of the one virgin being counterbalanced by the obedience of the other.
After the Fall, God, exercising long-suffering in His infinite mercy, had little by little prepared humanity, sorrowful events, for the realization of the Great Mystery that He had kept hidden before all ages in His Trinitarian Counsels: the Incarnation of the Logos/Word. Although He knew long beforehand what would be man's transgression and its tragic consequences, it was with the fulfillment of this Mystery in view that He created mankind in order therein "to prepare a Mother', who, by the beauty of her immaculate soul, enhanced by the adornment of all the virtues, drew on herself the gaze of the Almighty and became the Nuptial Chamber of the Logos/Word, the receptacle of Him Who contains all things, the Palace of the King of Heaven and the fulfilling of the Divine plan.
Six months after the miraculous conception of him who was in all things to be the Forerunner of the Lord, Gabriel, the Angel of Divine Mercy, was sent by God to Nazareth in Galilee, to the Virgin Mary, who had, on leaving the Temple, been betrothed to Joseph, a righteous and chaste man, for him to guard her virginity. Appearing suddenly in the house in human form, with a rod in his hand, the Angel greeted her who was to become 'the consolation of Eve's tears', saying: Rejoice, thou that art highly favored; the Lord is with thee" (St. Luke 1:28). Before this strange apparition, the Virgin let fall her distaff and, deeply troubled by the words from this incorporeal being, asked herself if this proclamation of joy was not, as it had been for Eve, a new deception by him who well knew how to transform himself into an angel of light. But the Angel reassured her, and said to her: "Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. Do not wonder at my strange appearance or at these joyful words, although your nature, tricked in days of old by the serpent, has been condemned to pain and lamentation. It is true joy that I am come to proclaim to you, and deliverance from the curse of our first mother.
On hearing these strange words, the Virgin exclaimed: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" She did not doubt the Divine word through lack of faith like Zacharias, who was punished for this with dumbness, but asked herself how this mystery could be brought about in her without the union of wedlock, which had become the law of reproduction of a human race subject to corruption. Understanding her doubts, the Angel laid no blame on her, but explained to her the new manner of this birth: The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee; on her who was full of grace in preparation for His Coming, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Then, reminding her that Elizabeth, who had been know as 'the barren one', had conceived a son in her old age, he showed her that there where God so wishes, the order of nature is overcome, and confirmed that the greater than that of the creation of the world and that, bringing down the heavens, would empty Himself through an ineffable condescension, in order to dwell in her womb, to mingle Himself with human nature in union without confusion and to clothe himself in her flesh, steeped in her virginal blood as in royal purple.
Bending her gaze humbly earthwards, and cleaving with her whole will to the Divine plan, the Virgin replied: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."
With these words she gave her consent, and with her the whole of human nature, to the coming within her of the Divine power conveyed by the Angel's words. It was at that very moment that the conception of the Savior was wrought. The Son of God became the Son of Man, one single Person in two natures (divine and human). God clothed Himself in humanity and the Virgin became in very truth the Mother of God (Theotokos), so that, by this exchange of natural qualities, men, delivered from hell, can become son of God by grace.
The accomplishing of this Mystery of the Incarnation, that was hidden even from the Angels, was not therefore the work only of the Father, in His good pleasure, of the Son who came down from heaven, and of the Holy Spirit who covered the Virgin with His overshadowing. The Lord had been waiting for her whom He had chosen before all women, to take an active part by her free and voluntary acquiescence, so that the redemption of the human race would become the common action of the will of god and the faith of man. This came to pass by a free co-operation of humanity with the divine plan, that brought about the Great Mystery which has been prepared from the foundation of the world: God became man so that man might become God in Him, and that the Virgin, the Bride-Unwedded, has become for our restored nature the source and cause of every blessing.
Perceived of old in types by the Prophets as the Bush that burned but was not consumed, the un-quarried Mountain, and the sealed Doorway through which God alone could pass, the Mother of God is the living Ladder by which God has come down and allows men to climb to heaven. She has opened a new way of existence to mankind: virginity, through the body of every man and woman is, as consequence, called to become the temple of God.
The whole creation, formerly subjected to corruption by man's transgression, was also waiting on this "yes" by the Virgin, which proclaimed the beginning of its deliverance. This is why heaven and earth, reunited, from today an exultant choir together with the sons of Adam to glorify God and honor the Conception by His Unwedded Holy Mother. (Source: The Synaxarion: The Lives of the "Saints of the Orthodox Church")
(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George