Mary: The New Eve - Theotokos

Transcription

1 Mary: The New Eve - Theotokos We stand proud to bear the name Christian for Christ is the center of our life; He is our way, our truth and our life. He is God true God of true God yet He is man, so much like us. The name Christian was given to us at Antioch as the early Apostles were preaching the good news and bringing into the Church the Body of Christ all those who accept Jesus as Savior and Lord. The word Christian was a new word at that time, based on the Hebrew/Aramaic translation of Masheeha, meaning the Anointed One. Since Greek was the spoken language of the entire Roman Empire as well as the language of education, Masheeha (Messiah) was translated as Christos, and from that time we maintained its use as Christ. When speaking of the second person of the Holy Trinity who became man for us and for our salvation, we call him Jesus the Christ or simply Jesus Christ. We have never opted to refer to him or to address him as Anointed Savior, the translation of Jesus Christ. We understand the meaning of his name, yet we have preserved his title as a name. It is a confession of faith that He is our Lord and Savior. From the biblical times we have preserved this glorious title as the name. In God s plan of redemption his divine economy, there is a special person, a woman, one who was intimately connected and involved in our salvation. She is Mary, a young girl of Nazareth who said yes when asked if she would accept to cooperate in God s plan of salvation. She was engaged or betrothed to Joseph, a simple carpenter also from Nazareth. By her yes to the Archangel Gabriel, she received the godhead in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit; God whom nothing could contain was now contained in her virginal womb. Mary offered her whole being, her whole human personality, body, soul and spirit, allowing God to inhabit her flesh and blood so that God could now be in immediate physical contact with his creation. What a phenomenal plan God had! The love among the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit needed to generate life in order to share this love. God said: Let it be and the universe and everything within it came into being. God created sun and moon and stars. God created comets and planets, our Earth being one. God created mountains, and oceans, trees and flowers, sea animals and animals walking on earth. God capped or topped off all that He made with a man and a woman and gave them reason and free will. Humanity, this man and woman, sinned and somewhat rejected what God asked for and required. They sinned and sin brought about evil and its consequences, death. But how could God, who generated life and love, now turn forever against those He created in love. His awesome and phenomenal plan unfolded by the Son of God, one of the Holy Trinity, becoming incarnate, taking the flesh of a human being and taking on all that was human. God becomes one of his creations, like us in everything but sin. The story of a holy Hindu man helps us to understand the reason for the Incarnation. This religious man had studied Christianity and was considering becoming a Christian himself. He could accept all that Christianity professed; however, the Incarnation was still a stumbling block for him. Why would God, Creator and maker of all, so glorious in the heavens and revered by all, why would this God become a human being? He was contemplating this mystery while walking on the great plains in India where there are very large ant hills. As the day was spent the shadows of the setting sun began to be cast; his shadow now covered the ants. They recognized the shadow as a 1

2 danger and began scurrying back to their anthills for protection. He saw them doing so and knew they were running in fear away from him. He said to himself: I know the ants are afraid of me but I love all of God s creatures and respect all aspects of life. The tiniest ant I would not kill. I wish I could become an ant right now and as one of them speak their language and tell them I love you and I will not hurt you. As he said this the light bulb went on and now he knew why God became a human being. In order to effect this Incarnation, God s plan involved a human mother. Mary, the ever Virgin, is that very one. So our understanding of Mary flows from our understanding of Christ. Mary gave him flesh, nourished him within her body for nine months and gave birth to him. She fed him with her milk and taught him how to be human. She is his mother. She is Mother of Jesus Christ, she is Mother of God. The divine motherhood of Mary was celebrated in the Church from the earliest days of Christianity. As the Church began to understand that in the Incarnation God took flesh, it realized that God became real man to identify with his creation, to save it, and to divinize or return to God and godliness all of humanity and the universe. Let us take a step back in time then a step back to the Old Testament. Mary, Mother of God is seen in the Old Testament in signs or types, in other words, we look at the Old Testament with eyes or glasses of the New Testament. We see Mary in images. Certainly the authors of the Old Testament books did not have Mary in mind when they wrote. However, we Christians look at the Old Testament with eyes of faith and with eyes of the New Covenant and see the Mother of God in imagery. We look deeper into the spiritual meaning in certain texts. Mary is the new Eve. The first woman Eve, disobeyed God s command with Adam and sin entered the world. Mary s obedience to God s will brings salvation from the fall. Mary is the new Eve who gives birth to the new Adam, Jesus. Eve comes from the rib of Adam just as Christ, the new Adam, comes from the body of Mary, the new Eve. When Jacob left Beersheba and went to Haran, he stopped for the night at a shrine and slept. Then he had a dream: a stairway (ladder) rested on the ground, with its top reaching to the heavens when he awoke from his sleep, he exclaimed, truly this is nothing else but an abode of God and that is the gateway to heaven (Gen. 28:12-17). The ladder connecting earth to heaven is a type or image of Mary, who bore Christ, thus uniting earth and heaven. Mary is seen symbolically as the Ark of the Covenant: Advance, O Lord, to your resting place, You and the ark of your majesty (Ps 131 (132): 8). We see her in the burning yet unconsumed bush that Moses saw on fire, and not consumed. (Ex 2:2-3) She bore the divinity and yet was untouched, preserving her virginity. The three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace of the Chaldeans (Daniel 3) were untouched by the fire and Mary was untouched in her virginity, even with the fire of the divinity. The dew on the fleece of Gideon (Judges 6:39-40) is a type of Mary: the fleece was dry but there was dew on the ground; Mary was preserved from sin. In Ezekiel (44:2): the gate is to remain closed, it is not opened for anyone to enter by it; since the Lord God of Israel has entered by it, it shall remain closed, is another vivid allusion to Mary s virginal womb. Mary is seen as the unhewn stone from a mountain, without a hand being put to it. [it] became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:34). Mary is the pledge of restoration as seen in Jeremiah (32-33). 2

3 The lampstand of Zachariah (4:2) is a type of Mary as well as the staff of Aaron (Numbers 17). Of course, we have the great text of Isaiah (7:14), the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child and shall name him Immanuel, God with us. And there are numerous other types to be found which you can enjoy finding in the Old Testament and which relate to Mary. The New Testament speaks little about Mary; however she is seen as the greatest woman who ever lived. The archangel Gabriel addresses her at the annunciation: Rejoice, O highly favored daughter! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women (Lk 1:28). In Mary s fiat or acceptance, she herself proclaims: I am the servant of the Lord, let it be done to me as you say (Lk 1:38). Mary visits Elizabeth who cries out: Blest are you among women, and blest is the fruit of your womb. But who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me (Lk 1:42-43). And Luke also records Mary s own words: all generations shall call me blessed (1:48). Both Matthew and Luke mention the event of Mary s giving birth to Christ (Mt 2: 1-20). Mark has no mention of Mary. John records Mary at the wedding feast of Cana in Galilee where she intercedes with her son to help with the wine shortage (Jn 2:1-11). We see her at the foot of the cross when the dying Jesus entrusts her to John, Woman, there is your son. To John he says, There is your mother (Jn 19: 26-27). In the Acts of the Apostles (1:14) we learn there were some women in their (disciples ) company, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. We look back to the Fathers of the Church and the early councils of the Church. Great theological debates were taking place in the early centuries and the truths of the Christian faith needed defining. Among the truths and issues of Trinity in one God, and the incarnation of God in the flesh, there also arose the understanding and role of Mary. She was not a substitute for Jesus who is our only Savior, yet her closeness to him and her personal holiness made the incarnation possible. By the 2 nd century we have the witness that Mary was called Theotokos. This title became more prominent in the 3 rd and particularly the 4 th century which was dominated by Trinitarian controversies. Christological problems abounded and needed explanation. Let us take a look at the meaning of Theotokos. Since Greek was the language of the Roman Empire, the Greek word Theotokos was immediately applied to Mary. It is a formation of two words: Theos means God and tokos comes from a word meaning a woman who carried a child in her womb and bore it. Thus Mary is the one who gave birth to or bore God in the human flesh. In common English we have generally translated Theotokos as Mother of God. However, a mother could also mean an adopted mother. A child who is adopted certainly calls his parents mother and father. So there is a fine distinction in the Greek that makes Mary more than just any mother, but the one who gave birth in a physical manner. Some translations of Theotokos use Bearer of God or God-Bearer. This is fine only if we are to understand bearer as one who bore a child; yet in Greek many saints are called God-bearers theophoros. This is certainly in a spiritual, moral or virtuous sense. Yet Mary goes beyond being bearer in this sense. She is a God-bearer not spiritually or morally but in a real physical way. She is not a theophoros like any saint; she is Theotokos, the one who gave birth to God. All of us carry the image of God and we can each be called theophoros, God-bearer, but the greatest and most sublime reality is Mary s: she is elevated to the physical touch of divinity. She lives a miracle 3

4 more miraculous than all miracles. To her we apply these words: more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, sinless, all holy, pure and immaculate. Yet these words are minor when we see and know her to be Theotokos, the birth-giver of God. This expression or title of Mary was first applied to her from around the year 250 AD in Egypt. We do not have to go through all the Fathers of the Church who speak of her with this title for there are many. But her title Theotokos was used by Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasios, Nonnos, Cyril of Alexandria and St. Gregory Nazianzos long before the Council of Ephesus. Gregory says: if anyone does not believe that Mary is Theotokos, he is severed from the godhead. Gregory of Nyssa as well as Eustathios of Antioch used the title before Ephesus. This is interesting since the problems around its use developed more at Antioch. I just mentioned the Council of Ephesus what s all that about? I noted previously that the 4 th century particularly was filled with Trinitarian and Christological controversies. In Antioch there was always more stress on the human nature of Christ, whereas Alexandria stressed the unity of the divine and human. Nestorios was a priest at Antioch, well known for his eloquence. In 428 AD he was elected Archbishop of Constantinople. He saw the word Theotokos as a confusion between the divinity and humanity of Jesus and he preached strongly: Let no one call Mary Theotokos, for Mary was only a human being and it is impossible that God should be born of a human being. In modern contemporary English we can say All hell broke loose, a battle began. Words and ideas were hurled about, flying and confusing: some called Mary anthropotokos birth-giver of man. Some called her Christotokos birth-giver of Christ. The Council of Ephesus was convoked then not to propose a dogma about Mary as some think. But rather to define that the human nature of Christ which was taken from her was complete and real, and that this nature was united substantially and completely with the divine person of the Son of God. Thus Christ is one person with two natures: He is fully human and fully divine. Because Mary was the actual Mother of God the one who bore him in her womb, his birth-giver she consequently is Theotokos. St. John of Damascus explains this further: the Word (Jesus) did not take his divinity from Mary, but the Word (Jesus) who had been with the Father from eternity took flesh from her when the time of the Incarnation had come (Orth. Faith 3:12). So the primary purpose of the Council of Ephesus was to refute a heresy called the Nestorianism. Nestorios held to a moral or spiritual union and a physical one. He said that Mary was simply the Mother of Jesus, not the Mother of the God made-man. In 431 AD the Council met and made the final decision that Christ was of two natures true God and true Man united in one and unique divine Person of Jesus Christ.. The final declaration of Ephesus read like a song of triumph: We confess and proclaim that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, is real God and real man. He is composed of soul, reason and of body. In regard to his humanity, He was born of the Virgin Mary 4

5 For us and for our salvation he was born. He is of one essence with the Father according to his divinity; consubstantial with us according to humanity. The union of divinity and humanity was a real unity in him. Therefore, we recognize but one only Christ, one only Son, one only Lord. Because of this union without any confusion, we confess that the holy Virgin is Theotokos. God the Word was made flesh, He became man. And He united to himself since his conception, the temple (our human nature) which He assumed from her. Mary is his mother his birth giver, therefore she is Theotokos. The Tradition of the Church very early in the Christian centuries celebrated the important events in the life of Mary. Some of her feasts come from apocryphal writings of tradition: her conception in the womb of Ann on December 9, her birth to Joachim and Ann on September 8, her entrance into the temple on November 21, and her dormition and assumption on August 15. An interesting note is that the time of her birth is off by one day not a perfect nine months from the date of her conception. Her conception was celebrated in the East long before the declaration of the doctrine in the West which placed it on December 8. Today the traditional birthplace of Mary stands in the old city of Jerusalem near the gate called Sitna Mariam our Lady Mary. It is a beautiful basilica named St. Ann next to the sheep pool, Bethesda, where the sick man was cured after thirty-eight years of trying to get into the healing waters of the pool. Her tomb is just outside this gate in the Garden of Gethsemani. The Annunciation on March 25 is the only event besides the birth of Christ in the life of Mary mentioned in sacred scripture. A very eastern custom developed to honor the mother of a child on the day after its birth, so the Eastern Churches celebrate her maternity or giving birth on December 26. Numerous other feasts relating to miracles or icons of the Virgin were added to the calendar over the years. Mary is predominant in the iconography of the East, yet she is always seen with Jesus, her son, who gives her her importance. Many names were given to 5

6 these icons either by style or by cities where they are located. She is called Hodigitria a Greek word meaning guide. She carries Christ in her arms and directs us to focus on him, pointing to him as the guide who leads the way. The famous Vladimir icon is called Eleusa or Virgin of Tenderness. In some icons she is nursing Christ from her breast. The icon that became popular in the West is called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, originally from Constantinople, and it depicts Jesus on the arm of Mary, and he is frightened by the angels carrying instruments of his passion. Mary is predominant in Church architecture. Iconography and church architecture blend in such a way as to attempt to create heaven on earth and Mary is seen in a special way in church architecture. In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, a fourth century Father of Church, we sing a special hymn to the Mother of God within the anaphora or offering: In you, O full of grace, all creation rejoices: the orders of angels and the human race as well. O sanctified temple, spiritual paradise and glory of virgins, from whom our God who exists before all eternity took flesh and became a little child. He has taken your womb as his throne making it more spacious than the heavens. Therefore, O full of grace, in you all creation rejoices. Glory to you! This beautiful hymn is generally portrayed simply by the icon of the Platytera, more spacious than the heavens. It is represented high in the apse of the church found in the holy place or sanctuary. It may be an icon of Mary enthroned holding Christ or the more traditional Lady of the Sign Mary in an orans position with arms outstretched in prayer and Jesus Christ in her womb. She is surrounded by angels in art and her icons are also in the nave as the human race as well. What is the connection of the icon and architecture? A dome, the sign of heaven, sits over the center of the nave. It is painted with the almighty (pantocrator) image of Jesus Christ looking down on his Church, his Body. It may include the heavenly Liturgy, angels and prophets on different levels. But the breakthrough of God to humanity came through Mary and the apse soars high to almost touch the base of the dome. There is Mary, the one who united heaven and earth by giving birth to Christ. She is painted there not just because of our devotion to her but rather because she becomes the symbol or image of the entire Church. As she gave flesh to Christ we are also called to give flesh to him when we leave the church building by living his Word and being his Eucharistic body. In Byzantine and other Eastern Churches Mary is never portrayed without Christ her importance comes through him. Eastern piety is very liturgical. Poetic hymns were written for all of her feasts and are chanted in the various hours of liturgical worship: vespers, orthros (matins). Her name and role pervade all liturgies, even the Divine Liturgy of the Eucharist where she is mentioned numerous times. A hymn called hirmos from the ninth ode of the matins canon was inserted into the anaphora of the 6

7 Eucharistic Liturgy around the 11 th century. Mary is called ever-virgin, pure and immaculate, without sin, and full of grace. The most famous hymn honoring the Mother of God is the Akathist Hymn. It was composed by St. Romanos the Melodist in 532 AD and is in the form of a kontakion having twenty-four stanzas or sections. It is based on scripture and tradition and relates the incarnation of Christ. It is called Akathist, which means standing because it was chanted at the liberation of Constantinople in 626 AD. The faithful and the clergy remained standing in the church all night, begging for her intercession. In the Greek and Melkite Churches the Akathist Hymn is sung on the first five Friday evenings of the Great Lent because the event of Constantinople s liberation took place on the fifth Saturday of Great Lent. It is most likely directed to the feast of the Annunciation, which always falls during Lent. At a later date another canon was composed and called Paraclesis, or the canon of consolation, asking Mary to be our intercessor. It is chanted each day from August 1 to August 14, the fasting season prior to the feast of Mary s Dormition. It is also used at any time when consolation is requested. At Matins or Morning Prayer of Marian feasts we read the gospel pericope from Luke, recounting the visit of Mary to Elizabeth (Lk 1: 39-56). At the Divine Liturgy we read the Martha and Mary story (Lk 10: 38-43), emphasizing that contemplating Jesus is the important matter. To this text are added two verses that are very important in understanding the role of Mary. While teaching his disciples a woman from the crowd called out, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you. But he said, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it (Lk 11: 27-29). Mary heard the word of God and kept it and is the image for us to do the same. This is not demeaning his mother. An interesting remark is necessary here. In a few Gospel passages we hear about the brothers and sisters of Christ. From early Christian days, James, the apostle and first bishop of Jerusalem, is called Brother of the Lord. In Matthew and Mark s gospels we read, Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, a brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? (Mk 6: 3 and Mt 13: 55-57). In Mark s gospel we read, His mother and brothers arrived, and as they stood outside they sent word to him to come out. The crowd seated around him told him, Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside asking for you. He said in reply, Who are my mother and my brothers he continues, These are my mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me (Mk 3: 31-35). Who are these brothers and sisters? The western tradition ascribes them as cousins or relatives of Jesus. The Semitic languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and even Arabic, do not have a single word for cousin. For cousin we have to say the son/daughter of my father s brother or sister, or the son/daughter of my mother s brother or sister, thus making them cousins to Jesus. More so it was even very common to refer to cousins as brother or sister. However the Eastern traditions, based on the apocryphal gospels, state that Joseph, husband of Mary, was previously married and his wife died, leaving him with some children. 7

8 These children would then be considered the step-brothers or step-sisters of Jesus. The earliest teachings of the Church state that Jesus is the only son of Mary. The Dormition or falling asleep of Mary, Mother of God, is a curious event, again based on the early tradition of the Church. From scripture we know nothing of the circumstances surrounding her death. Various stories developed in tradition embellished with childlike love and tenderness but we are under no compulsion to defend the historicity of any of them. Her death is beautifully explained in the icon of Dormition. Mary dies and lies on her death bed. The apostles were miraculously gathered to pay homage to the Mother of God. With them we see Paul and some bishops and mourning women. Christ stands in a mandorla of radiant light. The almond shaped mandorla is a sign of the divinity. Jesus holds a little Mary in his arms. She is wrapped in swaddling clothes, a sign that she is alive and eternally with Him. The west calls this feast Assumption. She returned to God, body and soul. In this icon we see not total sorrow but joy, and most profoundly not death but life. In the Dormition feast the Church remembers the love of Jesus for his mother. The details may not be historically factual in context. Rather, the Church looks instead at the essence and meaning of her death: the death of the one whose Son in the flesh conquered death, was raised and promised resurrection and victory of an undying life. This is also our promise. The Byzantine troparion and kontakion or hymns of the feast from the fourth century testify: In giving birth you have preserved your virginity, and in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Mother of God. You have passed to life being the mother of Life. Through your intercession save our souls from death (Troparion). Neither death nor the tomb could hold the Mother of God. She is always ready to intercede for us, forever our steady hope and protection. Since she is the Mother of Life, Christ who dwelt in her ever-virginal womb lifted her up to life (Kontakion). Mary was the first one to be called back into the heavenly life. She is not a substitute for Christ for He is the only Savior, yet her yes, her personal holiness, and her flesh made the incarnation possible. So we see her first among the saints. This was the first celebration of death remembered and commemorated after the death of Christ. Later the death of martyrs was celebrated as feasts of their eternal life, but Mary s death was the first. In the beautiful Akathist Hymn we hear the words: Rejoice, bright dawn of the mystical day! Contemplating Christ s death as well as Mary s death, we understand that death is more; a person s very act of dying has now become an act of living, the entrance into life, where life reigns. She who gave herself completely to Christ, who loved him to the end, is met by Him at these radiant gates of death. At this meeting death is turned into a joyful encounter; life is triumphant, joy and love rule over all. 8

9 Since Mary s life was an encounter with God, filled with love, her death was a continuous movement toward the light of eternity. Then the horror of death, grief and separation, descent into loneliness and darkness is not present. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). For Mary death becomes triumphant life. We too will die and it will be joyful: death is no longer death but an entrance to life. Death radiates with eternity and immorality. Death is not a rupture but a union; it is not sorrow but joy, not defeat but victory. So when contemplating the Dormition icon we celebrate ourselves too as we anticipate, taste and delight even now in the dawn of the mystical and never-fading Day. When we enter the church we see the majestic Platytera (wider than the heavens) in the apse Mary giving flesh to Christ and reminding us that we must give him flesh too. When we turn around to exit the church the last icon we see at the exit of the nave is the Dormition, reminding us that we will die but yet be called to joy and victory in our death. Mary is the perfect image of human dignity. She is the new Eve. She kept her likeness to God untarnished. She is the image of our call to divinization, to live a theosis or deified life. Let me move once again to the present. As Eastern Christians we celebrate our faith in doctrine, in scripture, in liturgy, and in the full Tradition of the Church. Our liturgy is ancient yet so alive and real today. We know we are human, called once again to be godly. Our earthly life is a procession to God, a procession in which we attempt to relive our godliness lost through sin. We are called to become divine, certainly not God, but sharers in the God-life. The God-life is love and love is always exemplified by a mother. For Mary our liturgical languages have always used Mother of God (miter theou) and Theotokos (birth-giver). In Greek there was more definition of these two words. Even when old Slavonic was created, the same thing happened. There was Mother of God but there was also Bogoroditsa a newly created Slavonic word for Theotokos. This was a created word to fulfill the profession of faith. Mary was not just any mother, but the actual birth-giver of God. In Arabic too we have Um Allah Mother of God, and Walidat al-ilah the birth-giver of God. In Latin we see Mater Dei Mother of God and Dei Genetrix birth-giver of God. English lacks so much definition. Birthgiver is not a proper English word but rather a newly formed word and still not fully accepted or used in proper English. In regards to Mary, there has been a return to these proper theological truths, especially since she is the one who gave birth to God. This is happening in East and West. Several years ago in a document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the bishops, used the word Theotokos, found also in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I intervened with an amendment because the writers proposed Theotokos as God bearer for an explanation. I explained to them the delicacy of the word Theotokos and theophoros, as I previously mentioned. A saint, a Christian, anyone of us can be a theophoros a God bearer, but only Mary could be Theotokos his birth giver. My amendment was accepted. Look at our Liturgy. Many people prefer particular languages for responses like: Kyrie eleison, Hospodi pomiloy or Ya Rab-burham for Lord, have mercy. In fact the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Church until Vatican II maintained Kyrie eleison instead of 9

10 its Latin translation which was never used. Indeed, so many Latin Church faithful who were not too favorable to the post Vatican II liturgical reforms would complain and cry out: at least let us say Kyrie eleison to preserve some Latin. And yet Kyrie eleison is Greek! From time immemorial we have maintained Aramaic and Hebrew words in Liturgy and they are still in use today. We sing Amen, a word which is so difficult to translate. It means a strong yes, so be it, I agree, right on, for sure, and many other concoctions. Yes we still say Amen. For a while the French translated it liturgically to Ansi soit-il but now have returned to Amen. Amen or Amin is common to Greek, Latin, English, Slavonic, French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic and on and on. Hosanna is the anglicized form of Hoshanna. It means O save us and was sung by the Hebrew people as a welcome to Christ as he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. It has remained fixed and untranslated in all traditions. Sabaoth is really difficult to translate: hosts, powers, angel forces or armies, so most churches prefer to keep Lord of Sabaoth. We welcome the Gospel with a joyful Alleluia. Translated, hal-le-lu yah becomes praise or give praise to God. Yet Alleluia or halleujah shout loudly praise to God and have remained in our liturgy. Pascha, the Greek form of the Aramaic/Hebrew Pesach or Passover is a much better word for the Lord s resurrection than our modern English Easter which is the corruption of the name of a pagan goddess of spring, Estra. The use of other similar words is abundant. So it is time now for us to recapture Theotokos, it is time for us to make it an acceptable English word. If we are proud of our faith, if we profess what we believe, if we love our spiritual patrimony, then we must confess Mary to be true Mother of God, his true birth-giver. We must make a profession of faith as we speak to her; it is a profession of faith in the royal dignity and divine worth of our own humanity. Indeed, from our humanity God chose a girl and drew her so close to his divinity as to make her his own mother on earth. He made her Theotokos. John of Damascus says: The name Theotokos contains the whole history of the divine plan of salvation in the world and the whole mystery of the Incarnation (Orth. Faith 111:2). Profess and confess your faith in Jesus Christ and recognize and say: Mary, his holy Mother, the new Eve, is Theotokos. 10