Mary in Orthodox teaching and piety
While worship (latreia) belongs to God alone, Mary is reverenced and honoured as ‘the most exalted among God’s creatures’.
To give Mary her full title: ‘Our All-Holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary.’
Theotokos (‘Mother of God’, ‘God-bearer’) was assigned to Mary by the Council of Ephesus in 431. She is venerated because of her relation to Christ. It is precisely on account of the Son that we honour the Mother. Mariology is the extension of Christology. Too often, a disinclination to honour Mary goes hand in hand with a neglect of the Word Made Flesh.
In the words of Nicolas Cabasilas:
‘The Incarnation was not only the work of the Father, of His Power and His Spirit… but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin… Just as God became incarnate voluntarily, so He wished that His Mother should bear Him freely and with her full consent.’
Aeiparthenos (‘Ever-Virgin’) was assigned by the Council of Constantinople in 553.
Panagia (All-Holy’), while never officially defined, is recognised by all Orthodox. She is the supreme example of co-operation between the divine will and human freedom. She gave her voluntary response, Lk 1:38. ‘If Christ is the New Adam, then Mary is the New Eve.’ What Eve lost through her disobedience, Mary gained through her obedience. Mary is ‘immaculate’ or ‘spotless’; that is to say, without actual sin. Whether she was without original sin (by being immaculately conceived, as taught in Roman Catholicism) is a moot point in Orthodox theology. The Bodily Assumption of Mary is affirmed; after death her body was taken up to heaven and her tomb was found to be empty. In this, she is not separated from the rest of humanity, but rather the bodily glory which she now enjoys, we all hope to share one day.
Unlike the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Assumption of Mary is not held as a dogma in the Orthodox Church: ‘they belong to the public preaching of the Church, but the glorification of Our Lady belongs to the Church’s inner Tradition’, In the words of V. Lossky:
‘It is hard to speak and not less hard to think about the mysteries which the Church keeps in the hidden depths of her inner consciousness… The Mother of God was never a theme of the public preaching of the Apostles; while Christ was preached on the housetops, and proclaimed for all to know in an initiatory teaching addressed to the whole world, the mystery of his Mother was revealed only to those who were within the Church… It is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of our hope, a fruit of faith, ripened in Tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not try to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God.’
Based on Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin Books, 1997.