Part 1: Encountering Mary
Overcoming my Protestant misconceptions of the Mother of God
On August 14th (Old Calendar) of the Orthodox Church, we began a lenten fast. It is known as the “Dormition Lent” and it precedes the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 28th. In the next several posts I want to process openly the stumbling block that Mary, the Mother of God, was for me coming into the Orthodox Church. These posts are extremely personal, so I apologize in advance if the writing is not exactly linear. I have written my thoughts as a dialogue with myself, which is practically what happened as I traveled this path. I will publish these dialogues periodically throughout the two weeks of the fast. It is my hope that in doing so—in reflecting on my own barriers in understanding the Theotokos—that I can shed light on her for others who are in a similar situation. It may also prove helpful for a lifelong or cradle Orthodox to see the inside of a convert’s struggle to understand the deep and abiding affection for Mary that is inherent to the Orthodox mindset.
Orthodox Me (OM): “Can we talk about the elephant standing in the room that you cannot ignore?”
Protestant Me (PM): “uhhh…sure. Which one is that?” (casts eyes in every direction so as not to look at the elephant.)
OM: The one that looks like a beautiful woman holding a baby in her lap. She is the Theotokos, the God-bearer.
PM: Oh. Mary? Yeah, I know.
OM: But do you? What do you think you know about her?
PM: She was a good young girl from Nazareth. She was probably very poor. Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would have a baby by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. Her fiancé, Joseph, was told the same thing and he was a good man and decided not to abandon her. That baby was Jesus. They journeyed to Bethlehem for the census and Mary gave birth. Joseph took them to Egypt to protect them, came back, lived in Nazareth. She gave birth to him and then she and Joseph went on, got married, raised a family of which Jesus was the eldest son. She must have been a good mother to have raised the Son of God! When Jesus died on the cross, he commissioned John to take care of her. You know—the basic gospel accounts.
OM: That’s it? That is what you know of the Virgin Mary?
PM: Pretty much. She was just a poor Jewish girl. Special, yes, but Jesus had to be born somehow, and God used her. I do find that amazing, don’t get me wrong. But I guess beyond what we read in the Gospel accounts, I don’t know much else. Realistically how can I know because if it’s not in the Bible, then it might not be true.
OM: What about the Church? Couldn’t the church know things about Mary? You know by now that the Orthodox Church was established at Pentecost, and you accept that, right? Mary was part of the early Church—remember, she was in St. John’s care! (John 19:26-27) Did you ever consider what she may have been doing during the years after Christ’s Ascension? Did you ever think about the fact that people in his circle would have known her, and known her well? 1
PM: Well, no—I guess I never did really consider that because it’s not in the Bible—I mean, there’s the wedding at Cana, but after that Mary becomes unimportant to the story. It’s all about Jesus.
OM: (sigh) Okay, I get it—it IS all about Jesus, but Jesus did not appear in a vacuum, which is how most Protestants present the story. The sola-scriptural context is shallow, and people tend to fill in the gaps in the story with suppositions about her. Mary, or the Theotokos as she is known to us, is an extremely important part of our faith. While I respect your desire to uphold scripture, I think you may be missing out on a very precious and wonderful part of the Christian faith.
PM: I would love to hear more, if it is trustworthy information. Let me explain where I’m coming from and then maybe we can understand each other’s perspective. When I was a kid, my mother converted from Catholicism to Protestantism and with that, she was taught that prayers to Mary were wrong, and of course she taught me the same thing. Asking her to “Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death” was wrong. We should only ever pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus. Any other prayers were ineffective and possibly idolatry. Also, since Mary died, how can she pray for us? Also, I know that Catholics believe in the “immaculate conception”- that she was born without sin which is the only way she could have had a sinless child, but what about Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God”? And what about all the statues and pictures of Mary? Those must be distractions to keep people from looking to Christ—to keep them focused on, well, not-Christ. I just don’t get it. And by bowing and kissing an image of Mary, isn’t that idolatry? How are we supposed to feel about this? I’ve been to the services, but for some reason, I cannot bring myself to think I would ever be able to do that—to venerate—isn’t that what you call it?
OM: Okay, first of all, why are you telling me about Catholic beliefs? Orthodoxy is not Catholicism, and just because we honor the Theotokos does not mean we are exactly the same. But let’s take a look so there’s no confusion, though you should know that they don't get it all wrong. The Roman Catholic Church has dogmatized certain beliefs about Mary, the prime example being the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This is a dogma of the RCC based upon their doctrine of original sin. Since we don’t even have the same theology of original sin, this practically becomes a moot point. If you follow the RCC’s understanding and explanation of original sin to its logical conclusion, then yes—the I.C. makes more sense. But if we are starting from a different point altogether, then such a dogma is not necessary. The doctrine of original sin, however, is much more complex than can be explained here, but let it be enough to say that it need not be an inhibition in our relationship with Mary.2
PM: Okay, I can accept that. So was she just a poor faithful Jewish peasant that God picked out of a lineup?
OM: You have so many questions! Let’s start at the beginning and sort through the whole story. I know it’s a jumble of thoughts right now, but they will be untangled as we go.
First, Have you ever thought about Mary’s parents? Did you know that in Orthodoxy we honor Mary’s parents as great Saints in the Church? That they have names? Their names are Joachim and Anna, they were prosperous, and they were like Abraham and Sarah—past childbearing years. The couple begged God for a child, and He heard their prayer. They were visited separately by an angel who told them that they would conceive, and in their joy they promised whatever child they bore to be raised in the temple. At the age of three, Mary was brought into the temple to live and serve. When the inevitable changes came about in adolescence, she was betrothed to Joseph, who was an older widower from among the men of Israel. He took her into his home out of obedience to God to oversee her protection and care.
PM: Wow. That is a far cry from the Protestant Christmas story! That’s really the only time we hear about her.
OM: What is very precious about the story is that we begin to understand that God orchestrated everything concerning Christ from before the birth of his mother—Mary was the child of a miraculous, albeit perfectly normal conception. She was beloved by her parents and committed to God from before her birth. She was raised in the presence of the priests and holy things set apart for the work of God, and was faithful in the temple. For her to receive the Angel Gabriel’s message was not as random as it appears in the Protestant ethos. Rather, it was a confirmation of the holy life to which she had been commissioned and which she had faithfully carried out. In my opinion, it elevates the entry of the God-man into the world by giving him a motherly home that was pure and holy and prepared for such a visitation. She gave herself—her purity and her devotion—but she was entrusted to God first by her parents, who recognized her holy calling, though they may not have known its full extent.
PM: I can already feel my understanding of her changing. What an amazing story, if it is all true.
OM: There is no reason to believe that it is not true. That community belonging to Mary and Jesus and the Apostles continues in the first and second centuries. These people knew them, or knew someone who knew them, and as the Church was established they told the stories, and eventually wrote them down. This is the Tradition, “capital T” that changes how we read scripture. It takes it from being black and white letters and cryptic stories on a page to a living, breathing community of faith which is maintaining its integrity both orally and with the pen (II Timothy 2:2).
PM: What amazes me is the confidence with which the Orthodox church speaks concerning these things. It doesn’t seem that they have any doubt about the way things happened. They just put it out there and accept it as fact.
OM: Let’s consider a personal example: Did you question your mother when she showed you a bullet embedded in a wallet that your great-great grandfather wore in his breast pocket in the Civil War? Were you amazed or did you second-guess her when she told you that it saved his life? Here you are, living proof that it saved his life, and his family goes on. That wallet is a relic of his existence!
PM: Of course, I was amazed. And right—that was still completely plausible, factual information that I told my son and I’m sure he will tell his son, even though he has never seen the wallet himself. Even though it will have been nearly 200 years since the event. I see where you’re going with this. It’s still true.
OM: Right, so these stories of Mary and her parents are not just wild tales made up by new converts to this new religion to make their people sound cool. These stories are grounded in the actual events that happened in their lives.
PM: Let me land on this for a bit. Let’s talk again soon.
Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mary as the Early Christians Knew Her. Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA. 2013, pp. 1-40.
St. John the Evangelist Orthodox Church, Ancestral Sin: The Fall and its Consequences https://www.saintjohnchurch.org/original-sin-vs-ancestral-sin/