Synaxis of the Most-Holy Mother of God – Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
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“What shall we offer to You, Oh Christ,
Who for our sake has appeared on earth as a man?
Every creation which You have crafted offers You thanks.
The angels offer you a song.
The heavens, their star.
The wise men, their gifts.
The shepherds, their wonder.
The earth, its cave.
The wilderness, the manger.
And we offer You a Virgin Mother.
Oh Pre-eternal God, have mercy on us!”
This sticheron from the evening service for the Nativity of Christ made me thinking and gave me an inspiration to write the following lines. I ask for great forgiveness from God and from you that I dare to write on the topic of the Mother of God (Theotokos) at all; it’s a lot easier for me to write about anything else. Some things simply require worthiness from the writer – as real and continual repentance. But such is the teaching service – a double-edged sword: a man blankly signs that he accepts the verdict for himself, according to the criteria he preaches.
We, all mankind, in the person of the Most-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary offer our most valuable gift to God. She, for us, is all we have, that is, we have nothing but Her. I will leave this last (previous) sentence for each of us to think about and experience it in our own personal way, depending on the relationship with Her. As for me, it will sound a little tempting without interpretation, but I will say it: “I need nothing but Her …”
What is the theological and practical consequence of the fact that we, all mankind, in the person of the Most-Holy Theotokos and the Ever-Virgin Mary offer our most valuable gift to God?
The theological and ascetical-hesychastic consequence of that fact is that we, nevertheless, are not saved impersonally, as a whole of humanity or as a whole of human nature, but personally-catholic, as unique and unrepeatable persons in the Church of the Theotokos and all Saints: by giving ourselves, that is, by offering, Eucharistically, our own selves, with each another, and our whole life to Christ the God-Man, in the grace of the Holy Spirit.
The question arises: What is it that we as individuals, specifically, similarly to the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, should offer to God in order to hope that our offering can be accepted by Him? Not that God will not accept our offering; but why do I say; that we may have hope that the offering may be accepted? Because of the not-crossable, on our part, the ontological gap that exists between the Creator and the creation, which only the love of God can cross.
Thus, that which we have to offer to God, similarly to the Theotokos, so that Christ can be born in our heart is the virginity of our souls and bodies. In accordance with the aforementioned, He is born in us when He wants and because He wants, and not simply because of our virginity. That is why His birth in our hearts is a gift, not a merit – a gift manifested concretely and unequivocally as an ascetic prayer of the mind in the heart.
The very gift of the ascetic prayer of the mind in the heart is a testimony that our soul, and our body, are to some extent virgin, chaste. The formulation of “a level of virginity” means the same as (when I express myself) that the heart is sufficiently purified and free from passions, and thus we are free from the critical influence of demons in our lives. It is clear to you that I am talking to you about the second stage of the spiritual growth – enlightenment of the mind.
A virgin mind has a man who has prayerfully united the energy of his mind with the essence of his mind, which is found in his heart. Because this union is an action of the grace of God and prayerfully-ascetically takes place within it – in the heart, a virgin mind in the proper sense is the same as an enlightened mind. To the extent this union is constantly graceful, and not temporarily ascetic, then a virgin mind is the same as a deified mind. The deified mind is a mind introduced into all truth by the Spirit (see John 16:13). Therefore, in the biblical-anthropological sense, worship in spirit and in truth means self-sacrifice with a virginal, chaste mind.
Consequently, we can say that only the one who has a healed, deified mind can be truly chaste and virginal, and to truly love, in a humanly accessible dimension of these notions, in this world and age. Only the one who truly loves has love as an unmistakable point of orientation in his life. The rest of us should be guided by the level of our spiritual development, so as not to confuse: the ascetic with the gracious, the spiritual with the mental, the eros with the friendship and true love – because then we will wander a lot in the no-through roads.
Our soulful (mental), and physical virginity is a regular condition for the manifestation of the uncreated grace of Baptism in our hearts and for the gift of ascetic prayer of the mind in the heart. If we have received such a gift, then we have a testimony from Above that we are virgins to an appropriate measure, even if we have ever lost our virginity – physically. And vice versa, if we do not have that gift, then we do not have a testimony from Above that we are virgins, even if we have preserved our virginity – physically.
Do you see how great is the gift from God of repentance, of “a change of mind”? This gift from God makes adulterers become virgins and robbers inhabitants of Paradise.
But repentance is a very concrete struggle (endeavour); it is a harmonisation of our way of life and struggle with the stage of spiritual growth we are at. No matter how much one tries philosophically and practically to avoid this harmonisation, of which I keep talking about repeating, in the end, if he does not repent, he will face the harsh reality of the absence of the acquired gifts of God in his life; and the life slowly passes by. It is one thing to have an innate gift of God or talent, and another to have an acquired (or adopted) gift of God – such as, for example, virginity. In the first case, we usually feed our self-love, and with the second one, the Church of God is built up.
Virginity is a sign of graceful adoption (becoming son of God). To the one whom God is Father, to him the Mother is the Theotokos, life in his spiritual youth is a game; demons are his toys, and his skill and experience in dealing with them help him grow and mature.
But one day the game stops, the toys are no longer interesting and the mature man takes responsibility for the fight for the salvation of all people. Then the personal-liturgical prayer turns into a hopeless-hopeful silent cry for forgiveness and remission of the sins of every single person, which can be asked only through the Theotokos, and, from Christ our God. And simply, one knows that if prayer does not embrace all mankind, nothing is worth it.
Now it remains for us to set a new beginning of repentance by entering into the wholehearted obedience to our spiritual father, striving to offer to God an undivided (collected), pure prayer. Because unfocused prayer is the fornication of the mind, and pure prayer is the virginity of the mind. And the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary is love – absolutely realised love in absolute virginity. All Her children weep at the mentioning of Her Name.
Most-Holy Theotokos, save us!
Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
(07.01.2022 19:25)
