September 8 · Nativity of the Theotokos

Nativity of the Theotokos · Read aloud

0:00

/484.754286

1×

Yesterday the Church stood on the doorstep of this feast.

Today she opens the door.

The Church keeps more than one nativity. There is the Nativity of Christ, in the winter, in the cave at Bethlehem. That day is not today.

Today is the Great Feast of the Nativity of our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary. The Church calls it a day of universal joy. A girl-child has been born, and her name is Mary.

Do you hear what she is singing already? "Your Nativity, O Virgin, has proclaimed joy to the whole universe!"

That is today's word. Not the waiting. The joy.

The Most Holy Virgin Mary was born in the small city of Galilee, Nazareth. Her father was the righteous Joachim, of the tribe of the Prophet-King David. Her mother was the righteous Anna, of the tribe of the First Priest Aaron.

They had been a house without a child, because Saint Anna was barren. They grew old. They did not lose hope in God's mercy. They had strong faith that for God everything is possible, and that He would be able to overcome the barrenness of Anna even in her old age, as He had once overcome the barrenness of Sarah, the wife of the patriarch Abraham. They vowed that if the Lord gave them a child, they would dedicate that child to the service of God in the Temple.

Among their people a house without a child felt like a house God had forgotten. Childlessness was counted as a punishment. Joachim and Anna had to endure the hard words of their own countrymen. They never grumbled. They prayed. They trusted Him.

Then came a feast day at the Temple in Jerusalem.

The elderly Joachim brought his sacrifice to offer to God. The High Priest would not accept it. He counted Joachim unworthy, because Joachim had no child.

Those are the Church's words. We will not invent others.

Saint Joachim, in deep grief, went into the wilderness. There he prayed with tears to the Lord for a child. Saint Anna wept bitterly when she learned what had happened at the Jerusalem Temple. Never once did she complain against the Lord. She prayed to ask God's mercy on her family.

The Lord fulfilled their petitions when the pious couple had come to extreme old age, and had prepared themselves by a virtuous life for a sublime calling: to be the parents of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the future Mother of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Archangel Gabriel brought Joachim and Anna the joyous message that their prayers were heard by God, and that of them would be born a most blessed daughter, Mary, through whom would come the Salvation of all the World.

The Church also tells it this way: an angel told them that a daughter would be born who would be blessed above all other women; that she would remain a virgin; that she would be dedicated to the Lord and live in the Temple; and that she would give birth to the Savior.

We will not invent the angel's sentences. The Church has told us what the message was.

Obeying the heavenly messenger, Saints Joachim and Anna met at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem.

Then, as God promised, a daughter was born to them.

That is today's feast. Not the wilderness. Not the doorstep. The birth.

She was born in Nazareth, in the house God had been preparing. She was a real child. She had a mother who had waited a long time. She had a father who had prayed with tears. And now the wait was over.

They named her Mary.

Do you hear what the Church is singing now? Not only that an old house received a child. She is singing that the times themselves are turning. The great and comforting promises of God — the promises for the salvation of the human race — are about to be fulfilled. A girl-child has been born, and in her God is preparing a dwelling.

The Most Holy Virgin Mary surpassed in purity and virtue not only all mankind, but also the angels. She was manifest as the living Temple of God. So the Church sings in her festal hymns: "the East Gate… bringing Christ into the world for the salvation of our souls."

The kontakion of the feast already dares to shout it as a fact: "The barren woman gives birth to the Theotokos, the nourisher of our life."

That is why the Church calls this a day of universal joy. Joachim and Anna are freed from barrenness. Adam and Eve, from the corruption of death. And we, her people, celebrate and sing.

The psalm we heard this morning is not a lectionary appointment. It is a word to hold in the hand: "the Most High has sanctified his tabernacle." Mary is that tabernacle. God is making a holy place on earth, the way a careful father prepares a room before a guest arrives. He is sheltering His people by preparing the Mother.

And the feast readings are not an accident.

The Epistle says that Christ, being in the form of God, took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. Before He is laid in the manger, God is already at work. He is preparing the woman who will say yes.

The Gospel of the feast is the one the Church reads for her Mother. The Lord comes into a house. Martha is busy. Mary sits at His feet and hears His word. A woman in the crowd lifts up her voice: "Blessed is the womb that bare thee." And He answers, "Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it."

That is Mary's whole life, even before we hear her speak. She will hear. She will keep. Years from this night, when the same Archangel comes to Nazareth, she will say the words the Church has never forgotten: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word."

We do not tell the Annunciation as if it were today's story. We only say: God prepared this yes a long time. He prepared Joachim. He prepared Anna. He prepared a house in Nazareth. He prepared the living Temple. And today He has given her — the holy girl-child Mary — and the joy has begun.

The Theotokos is revealed to all of us by grace as a merciful Intercessor and Mother, to whom we have recourse with filial devotion.

And today, so many hundreds of years later, on the day the Church calls a Great Feast, we say her name once more, out loud, together — Most Holy Lady the Theotokos — and she is praying for us still.