So, the Lord Jesus gives us this possibility to unite
with God and return to the primary purpose which God ordained for man.
Therefore He is described in Holy Scripture as the
way, the door, the good shepherd, the life, the resurrection, the light. He is
the new Adam who rights the wrong of the first Adam.
The first Adam separated us from God with his
disobedience and his egotism. With His love and His obedience to the Father,
obedience unto death, to “death on the cross,” the second Adam, Christ, brings
us back once more to God. Once again He orients our freedom towards God, so
that by offering Him our freedom, we unite with Him.
The work of the new Adam pre-supposes the work of the
new Eve, the Panagia who put right the wrong done by the old Eve. Eve drove
Adam to disobedience. The new Eve, the Panagia, contributes to the incarnation
of the new Adam who will guide the human race towards obedience to God.
Therefore, as the first human person who achieved Theosis – in an exceptional
and, of course unrepeatable, way – the Lady Theotokos played a role in our
salvation which was not only fundamental, but both necessary and irreplaceable.
According to St. Nicholas Cabasilas, the great 14th
century theologian, if the Panagia, in her obedience, had not offered her
freedom to God, had she not said “yes” to God– God would not have been able to
incarnate. Once God had given freedom to man, He would not have been able to
violate His gift, so He would not have been able to incarnate if there had not
been such a pure, all-holy, immaculate psyche as the Theotokos, who would offer
her freedom, her will, all of herself totally to God so as to draw Him towards
herself and towards us.
We owe so much to Panagia. This is why our Church
honours and venerates the Theotokos so much, so that St. Gregory Palamas,
summarising Patristic theology, says that our Panagia holds the second place
after the Holy Trinity;that she is god after God, the boundary between the
created and the uncreated. “She leads those being saved,” according to another
fine expression by a theologian of our Church. Recently St.Nicodemus of the
Holy Mountain, the steadfast luminary and teacher of the Church, pointed out
that the angelic ranks themselves are illumined by the light they receive from
the Panagia.
Therefore, she is praised by our Church as “more
honourable than the Cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim.”
The incarnation of the Logos and the Theosis of man
are the great mystery of our Faith and Theology. Our Orthodox Church lives this
every day with its Mysteries, with its hymns, with its icons, with its whole
life. Even the architecture of an Orthodox Church witnesses to this. The great
dome of the churches, on which the Pantocrator is painted, symbolises the
descent of Heaven to earth; it tells us that the Lord “bent down the Heavens
and descended.” The Evangelist St.John writes that God became man “and dwelt
among us” (John 1:14).
So, we represent the Theotokos in the apse of the
altar to show that God comes to earth and to men through her, because He became
man through the Theotokos. She is “the bridge by which God descended,” and
again, “she who conducts those of earth to Heaven,” the Platytera of the
Heavens, the space of the uncontainable,who contained the uncontainable God
within herself for our salvation.
To continue, our Churches show deified men; those who
became gods by Grace because God became man. In our Orthodox Churches we can
picture not only the incarnate God, Christ, and His immaculate Mother the Lady
Theotokos,but we also show the saints around and below the Pantocrator; on all
the walls of the Church we paint the results of God’s incarnation: sainted and
deified men.
Thus, when we enter an Orthodox Church and see the
beautiful holy icons, this is an immediate experience through which we learn
what God’s plan is for man; what is the purpose of our life.
Everything in the Church talks to us about the
incarnation of God and the Theosis of man.
By Archimandrite George,
Abbot of the monastery of St. Gregorios on Mount Athos
Source: https://stjohntheforerunnerblog.blogspot.com.by/2016/11/theotokos-she-is-bridge-by-which-god.html
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