mary


The celebration of the Nativity of the Virgin marks the beginning of the Orthodox Church Year. The Dormition of the Virgin Mary marks the ending. Since neither of these stories can be found in Holy Scripture, they are not given importance in the Protestant Church. However, an attempt to understand why the Orthodox Church chooses to begin the Church Year with the birth of His Mother and complete it with her death is a source for rich contemplation. e stories of Mary’s birth come from a work of the second century known as the Book of James. You can find these stories in The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden, World Publishers. The document tells us that Mary’s parents are Joachim and Anna. Joachim, from Nazareth, is of the royal family of David; Joachim is a variation of Heli the grandfather of Jesus mentioned by St. Luke. This establishes that the genealogy in his Gospel refers to Mary not Joseph. Anna is from Bethlehem and a descendant of the priesthood of Aaron. I mention this because Christ will be the Eternal King and Priest. Joachim and Anna are comfortably wealthy, but barren. For many years they pray for a child whom they vow to dedicate to the service of the Lord. They make a yearly offering of a third of their income to the temple and a third to the poor, keeping a third for their own use. After many years the priest in Jerusalem spurns Joachim’s offering, chiding him for their childlessness. What follows is an increase in faithfulness. An Angelic visitation occurs with the message that God has heard their prayers and that the child they so desire will be a girl. The child will love the Lord from infancy and “while yet a virgin, in a way unparalleled,” shall bring forth the “Son of the Most High God who will be the Savior of the world.” In scripture this is an ancient and recurring theme. The child who is long awaited is the answer to much prayer and becomes the instrument of God’s special grace. Consider that Jesus, our Savior, is the most eagerly expected child in the history of Israel. Now consider that Mary, his mother, is also a child of prophecy. (A conclusive accounting of these prophecies can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia.) I will choose the first mention of Mary to meditate upon: In Gen. 3:15, God speaks to the serpent and Eve:
“I will put enmity between Your seed and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heal”
From the moment that God discovered Adam and Eve’s disobedience, He had a plan for salvation. From this perspective we see that the seed of the woman is Jesus, the Christ, who though wounded in the battle, won total victory over Satan through the Resurrection. But what does this prophecy tell us about his Mother? “I shall put enmity between you and the woman. And between your seed and her seed.” The enmity between the woman and Satan has the same manner and measure as that between her conquering Son and Satan. Mary’s virginity has a depth of purity untouched by Satan or the human condition of sin. Her long awaited birth is a gift of life-giving Grace to the barren state of mankind and her seed will be a “new creation”. Mary is the new Eve and the spiritual mother of those born in the Spirit. The importance of her birth begins to unfold for us. This introduction lays the groundwork for understanding the two icons that are viewed side by side. The icon of the Nativity of the Virgin shows a typical birth scene. Because of her long faithfulness, the central character is Anna who is slightly oversized. Behind her we see Joachim, watching over her care. The caregivers are in keeping with a family of wealth and they are bringing her food and drink. Anna is inclined toward her child, who sits on the nurse’s knee while another servant prepares the ritual bath of cleansing.
The child is wrapped in swaddling cloth. You will note that the infant Mary is similar to the child Christ holds in the Dormition. While the Nativity represents the birth of Mary into the world, the Dormition shows the rebirth of Mary’s soul from death into Life Everlasting.
As in all icons the architecture is in reverse perspective. The characters float rather than occupy the space. What we are viewing is after all not a normal birth, but a heavenly scene revealing a moment lifted from space and time and invested with eternal truth. Behind and above Anna and Joachim we see the curtain of red that we always see in an icon representing a scene from the life of Mary. The red is the blood of life; the curtain represents the veil of human sin under which we struggle.
We call Mary the Theotokos, the God Bearer. She was a virgin to the unique degree of being untouched by the stain of sin, yet she was human like us, created in the likeness and image of God. Through her, Christ received his human nature. Yet Christ is begotten of the Father, not made as we are, and therefore Very God Himself. So we say that Christ fully possessed two natures. The Nativity shows us the humanity of his mother, Mary, the Dormition, shows us the Glory of His Divinity
In the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, the central figure is Christ and he is oversized. The strongest element in this composition is that of an upside-down cross. In this cross Christ and the candle before the bier form the vertical bar while Mary on her bier forms the horizontal one. Christ receives Mary’s soul in an upward motion while her body connects her to the gathering.
	As the leader and foundation of the church, Peter is at Mary’s head, censing the bier and leading the prayers. Paul is at her feet on his knees. The disciples are gathered along with the Bishops and the holy women who represent the fledgling church. Notice their grief and how they comfort one another. This detail speaks to the closeness that is part of God’s plan for the community of His Church.
In the Nativity Mary is surrounded by her parents and the servants attending her birth. In the Dormition she is surrounded by church leaders, evangelists, dear friends, neighbors, angels, and saints, who are all servants of her Son, our Lord.
The nimbus that surrounds Christ is referred to as a mandorla. This shape is a symbol used to designate a holy and sacred person. The small mandorla is dark to set off the brightness of Christ in His Glory, for “the light has come into the darkness and has not been overcome.” The outer mandorla is filled with angels and encompasses the realm of heaven.
At the top of the mandorla, we see a many-winged creature. He represents the Seraphim, the guardian of the Holy of Holies, whom God gave the responsibility of protecting the Tree of Life.
The candle burning before the bier represents the light of Christ that has come into the world. Christ is revealed in the truth of the Divine Glory; He is our salvation. His victory over death through the resurrection has opened the way to Eternal Life. The strong vertical serves to illuminate the verse, “I am the way, the truth and the light, no one comes to the Father but through me.”

At the top we glimpse a scene that completes the vertical thrust of the icon. Two Angels are seen pulling back the portals of Heaven as others usher in Mary’s physical form. Mary bends toward earth with her arms outstretched in benediction.
Mary held the God of the universe in her body. Through the Incarnation, the Light of God penetrated the darkness of nature. Therefore, all matter has been changed, recreated to be the means of the presence of God on earth. Through this new creation all creation now has the potential to be the vehicle by which man touches God and God touches man. God in Christ has become God in us. Mary’s entrance into heaven is a prefiguring of our own.
These two icons invite us to place the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, firmly within human history and experience. The pattern of the Christian’s life is to be first like Mary, penetrated by the Holy Spirit, then to allow Christ to grow in us. Pregnant with the spirit, Christ through our lives becomes a presence in the world. Finally, affirmed in our hope we gain Eternal Life with Him whom we, like Mary, have come to love first and best. AMEN
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