Part 3: Mary, Our Intercessor
Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Savior, save us!
In this continuing conversation between Protestant Me and Orthodox Me, I reveal the struggle and the understanding I have reached concerning Mary as our intercessor and helper by looking at my biggest issues on both sides of the debate.
PM (Protestant Me): I’m starting to understand that perhaps in my Protestant upbringing, we may have sold Mary short, but I still can’t quite get to the point where I feel comfortable saying prayers to her. I clearly remember my mother, after leaving the Catholic church, telling me that she had been taught all her life to pray to Mary, but in fact we shouldn’t do that. That Mary had no special designation or was given any particular access to God, and was no different than other humans, and therefore prayers to her were wrong. We proceeded to attend churches who taught such doctrine. Where are you with that now that you are Orthodox?
OM: (Orthodox Me): I have come a long way, but to be honest, once the first domino fell and I gained the understanding of the things we discussed in our last conversation, prayers offered to Mary was a much easier concept to grasp. As a new convert, though, I cannot say that it feels perfectly natural to me, yet. I still stumble over the prayers sometimes, and it doesn’t come as easily as I would like, but I am learning to love the Mother of God and one way that is happening is is by asking for her prayers. Interestingly, my husband and I have noticed that he finds it much easier to accept this because he was not raised with any bias against Catholicism. His upbringing was in a non-religious household, so he does not have the same hurdles to overcome.
One thing that I think is important to distinguish is that we are not praying to Mary in the same way that we pray to Christ, though sometimes the Orthodox verbiage can seem that way to the outside observer. First, as we discussed in the previous post, if we pour out our concerns to Mary, we are not worshiping her—we are talking to our mother. Just as a mother in a family has a unique ability to listen and know how to comfort and act on behalf of their lamenting children, Mary cares for the hearts of the Christian people. Second, when we pray to her, we are asking for her to intercede on our behalf, to talk to her Son and share our hearts’ concerns with Him. Because He honors her as his mother, she is elevated to a unique place in the Kingdom of heaven that is higher than the angels, so contrary to Protestant teaching, she does have unique access to Him, as any beloved mother would. We recite often the hymn of praise to Mary that says:
It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos,
Ever blessed and most pure and the mother of our God,
More honorable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim,
Without corruption thou gavest birth to God the Word,
True Theotokos we magnify thee.
If that seems high praise, it is because Christ and His Church have deemed her worthy of it, and it is part of our understanding of why she is able to advocate for us. She has an ongoing relationship with her Son that began with the Annunciation.
One does not have to look far to see the relationship that exists between Mary and Christ, and she is instrumental in bringing about his first sign. At the wedding in Cana of Galilee, Mary, Jesus, and his disciples were in attendance. The scene that is set for us reinforces the idea that Mary was a member of the community surrounding Jesus and was part of the inner circle of those that followed him. As the story goes, the host of the wedding runs out of wine for the guests. In the situation Mary is compassionate and insightful—she cares about the plight of the wedding hosts, knows who can solve the problem, has the discernment to recognize that this was the moment to act, and she intercedes for them. She approaches Jesus, tells him the problem, and then turns to the servants and exhorts them with confidence to do what he says and they do. She not only draws Jesus into the situation, she comforts those who would have been distressed by the present travesty of running out of wine. He honors her with his capitulation to her pleas for help.
Luke 2:1-5
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
You know the rest of the story. Jesus goes on to instruct servants to fill six stone water pots to the brim with water, and he changes the water into the very best wine. In doing this he begins his ministry and gives a sign that he is the One who was to come—the Messiah.
There is a lot of theology wrapped up in that one story in the life of Christ, but to our point, what role is Mary playing here? Clearly she knows that Jesus can do something about this embarrassing situation, and she saves them by her intercession. So when we hear the prayers of “Theotokos, save us…” we have a perfect example of the implication of the word. We are not asking for her to be our Savior—she cannot be that because she did not defeat death by dying and rising from the dead. Furthermore, she would never usurp the role meant for her Son, or she would be no better than the enemy. But we are speaking on more human terms, as when we ask for help and mercy from God. One version of the Jesus prayer is recited as follows:
“Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of the Theotokos, have mercy on me.”
We can pray to Christ while acknowledging the incessant prayers being offered on our behalf by his mother. We know that He will do what we ask, but we also know that He will do what she asks, so we add her prayers to ours.
From the very beginning of Christ’s ministry, we see his mother interacting with him in an intercessory role, and we have no reason to suppose that this would ever change, because she is certainly alive in God’s presence even now.
PM: Well, I’m not sure about that. You just cited an example of Mary interceding in a situation where they were all physically present and active here on earth. Now that we have the Holy Spirit and Mary has presumably gone to heaven, isn’t it wrong to pray to her? Paul says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that cannot be expressed in words (Romans 8:26). I don’t understand why I need to involve Mary in my prayers to Christ if I have His Spirit to do it for me.
OM: Yes—this IS the sticky wicket where every Bible-believing Protestant understandably comes and gets stuck. Some will even turn away and not enter the doors of the Church because they cannot cross that threshold.
There are two points to be made here: First is the fear is that we would blaspheme God by offering worship to someone other than Him, and in so doing violate the first commandment. But is this kind of prayer (entreaty) worship? If I ask my earthly mom to pray for me, am I worshiping her? If I ask her to “save me” from a desperate financial situation with a loan, have I worshiped her? In my understanding, this is the class of entreaties we are making.
The second point is this: Where is the authority found for this practice when we cannot find it in canon of scripture? The secret lies beyond the threshold that you have to cross—in the Traditions of the Church which have been excised by the sola scriptura model. Protestants tend to think only in terms of what is contained in Scriptures as reliable, despite the fact that they omitted 10 books from the Bible which had been canonized in the 5th century, whereas the Orthodox think very much of both the Tradition of the Church and the Scriptures as reliable. The Vincentian Canon of St. Vincent of Lérins in 434 A.D. states:
Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally.1
If for 1500 years the Church did one thing (in this case venerate and pray to Mary) and then at year 1500 some clerics come along to “fix” everything that had previously been “amiss,” declaring some deeply held beliefs and practices to be not only unscriptural but blasphemous, we have to ask—who is in error here? The doctrines of Reformation theology quickly begin to extend tentacles far beyond the intentions and statements found in the 99 Theses posted by Martin Luther. We find this primarily with John Calvin who said he believed himself a “true follower” of Mary because he “freed” her from her elevated position given her by the Catholic church.
Calvin considered himself the real follower of Mary, because he freed her from what he saw as undeserved honour given to her by Roman Catholics which is due only to Jesus Christ, and for returning this honour to Him alone.[21] Calvin stated that Mary cannot be the advocate of the faithful since she needs God’s grace as much as any other human being[22] If the Catholic Church praises her as Queen of Heaven, it is blasphemous and contradicts her own intention, because she is praised and not God. (emphasis mine)2
Calvin’s theology effectively reduces Mary to the ranks of common sinners, and removes any honor given to her by God as Theotokos (God-bearer). It also assumes if praise is given to her then it is not being given to God and this is absolutely not the case. This was not the teaching of the church through the ages. This is reductionist theology that was the offspring of the Reformation. Incidentally, Calvin was also the chief iconoclast of the Reformation, and encouraged the removal of images from churches and cathedrals, paving the way for the blank, sterile, churches that now display only a bare cross as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. Now that I am Orthodox, I am angered by this! It is as if someone came into my house, robbed me and tore the family photos off the wall and said, “See, I did you a favor—you are free of all of that now!” Regardless of the brand of Protestant theology one holds, they are all the beneficiaries of Calvin’s “favor.” But I digress. A little.
Because we hold Tradition as authoritative, I tend to find anything that gives evidence from the very earliest years of the pre-schismatic Church compelling (pre-dating 1054 A.D, and the earlier the better), so I went looking for evidence that the early Church did in fact say prayers to Mary, and it absolutely exists. The tradition of prayers to Mary can be ascribed to the very early church, with the first written evidence for such prayer being dated to 250 A.D. This particular prayer has a special place in my mind and heart. It is one that I like to say often, because when I do, I know that I am praying along with the saints of at least 1,750 years of church history--I enter into that “great cloud of witnesses” that is mentioned in Hebrews. Frederica Mathewes-Green points out that a scrap of papyrus was the earliest evidence that the prayer was prayed. It does not suggest that the prayer was necessarily composed in 250 A.D., but rather that it had probably been recited for many years prior to someone writing it down on a small scrap of papyrus.3 The prayer says:
Beneath thy compassion we take refuge, O Theotokos—
Do not despise our petitions in times of trouble,
but deliver us from danger,
Only pure, only blessed one.
So, my answer is that I have come to terms with prayers offered to the Theotokos. I do not worship her as God, but I honor her as unique among Christians. I honor her as Christ would—as His mother, the first one to believe in Him, the one most devoted to Him. When I ask her to pray for me, I trust that she is interceding for me as she interceded for the wedding hosts in Cana and as the mother of all Christians, of whom she was first.
New Advent, Fathers, Comonitory, Vincent of Lérins, chapter 2. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm
Mathewes-Green, Frederica, Mary as the Early Christians Knew Her: The Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts. Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA. (pp. 83-87)