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Father Christopher, Regarding the Theotokos. I mean no disrespect but how was she able to reach such a state of perfection before the resurrection of Christ? It was only after the resurrection of Christ when death was defeated and enabled humanity to live a new life.
Answer to Question 584 The New Testament doesn’t tell us a lot about Mary the Mother of God, what we know of her has been passed down by Tradition and the Apocryphal Gospel of St. James. When the Most-holy Virgin Mary reached the age of three, her holy parents Joachim and Anna took her from Nazareth to Jerusalem to dedicate her to the service of God according to their earlier promise. The Most-holy Virgin remained in the Temple and dwelt there for nine full years. Thus she lived a holy life from childhood which was a preparation for her future service to God and mankind which is revealed to us in the Gospel of St. Luke.
We believe that Mary was born with the consequences of the original sin just like every other human being, but was cleansed of this the moment she accepted to become the Mother of God. How this was possible is not for us to ask, but remains one of the mysteries of salvation. All we need to know is that the Holy Spirit prepared the Virgin Mary for her role as the Mother of God. She was filled with the Uncreated Energy of the Holy Spirit of God in order that she might be a worthy vessel for the birth of Christ.
One can try to explain this cleansing of original sin with the Mystery of Baptism. When we are baptized, we are immersed into the water, which signifies the death of the Old Adam, the death of the body that inherited the fallen nature. When we are raised from the water, we are joined to the Resurrection Body of Christ. In a similar manner, with the annunciation story where the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, one can interpret this as a form of baptism that cleansed Mary from the inheritance of the fall and prepared her to receive God in her womb. What is definite is that God could not have taken His abode in Mary’s womb if her body still had the scars of original sin, because God can have no part with sin.
It should be noted that Mary was free to accept her election or to reject it, God didn’t force it upon her against her will. Protestants wonder why we give so much praise and veneration to the Mother of God and cannot understand how we owe our salvation to her because she accepted this heroic and greatest of callings to become the instrument through which God would save mankind. We say heroic because she didn’t think of the consequences to herself and how she was going to explain to her betrothed that she was pregnant, who had every right to accuse her of adultery and have her stoned to death. She put her complete trust in God’s will and whatever the consequence of her obedience would surely be also God’s will. We cannot understand her holiness, but try to think that she had God in her womb for nine months. Surely she was blessed with Godly grace beyond what any other person can imagine. Her experience and grace remained with her until her death, but she had not reached perfection before Christ’s resurrection. She was only raised to perfection when she died and Christ honouring her special position among men, raised her body to heaven and beyond the day of Judgement.
Your question puzzled me, Where did you read or hear that the Theotokos had reached perfection before the resurrection of Christ?
Same member I just thought that in order to have the supreme honour of becoming the Mother of God, she had to reach a state of perfection.
Reply Understood, this is where we differ with the Roman Catholic Church who believe in the dogma of the immaculate Conception. In other words they believe that Mary was born without the consequences of original sin. For the Orthodox Church this dogma is totally ludicrous and even blasphemous. because then Mary would no longer belong to the human race. The dogma breaks Mary’s link to Adam and the rest of humanity and makes her a super person with the attributes that we ascribe only to Christ.
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