Why is Mary Considered Ever-Virgin?
A Protestant inquirer recently wrote the Orthodox Christian Information Center to ask why it is a dogma of the Orthodox Church that the Blessed Virgin Mary is ever-virgin. This page was compiled as a response.
Two dogmas
concerning the Mother of God are bound up, in closest fashion, with the dogma
of God the Words becoming a man. They are: a) Her Ever-virginity, and b) Her
name of Theotokos. They proceed immediately from the dogma of the unity of the
Hypostasis of the Lord from the moment of His Incarnation – the Divine
Hypostasis.
When the
heretics and simple blasphemers refuse to acknowledge the Ever-virginity of the
Mother of God on the grounds that the Evangelists mention the "brothers
and sisters of Jesus", they are refuted by the following facts from the
Gospel:
a) in the
Gospels there are named four "brothers" (James, Joseph, Simon and
Jude), and there are also mentioned the "sisters" of Jesus – no fewer
than three, as is evident in the words: and His sisters, are they not ALL with
us? (Matthew, 13:56).
b) in the
account of the journey to Jerusalem of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus, where
there is mention of the "kinsfolk and acquaintances" (Luke, 2:44) in
the midst of whom they were seeking Jesus, and where it is likewise mentioned
that Mary and Joseph every year journeyed from faraway Galilee to Jerusalem, no
reason is given to think that there were present other younger children with
Mary: it was thus that the first twelve years of the Lord's earthly life
proceeded.
c) when, about
twenty years after the above-mentioned journey, Mary stood at the cross of the
Lord, she was alone, and she was entrusted by her Divine Son to His disciple
John; and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home (John,
19:27). Evidently, as the ancient Christians also understood it, the
Evangelists speak either of "half' brothers and sisters or of cousins.
From Fr. Michael Pomazansky, trans. Fr. Seraphim Rose,
Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
1994), pp. 187-189.
It is likewise
incorrect to think that the brothers and sisters of Christ were the children of
His Most Holy Mother. The names of "brother" and "sister"
have several distinct meanings. Signifying a certain kinship between people or
their spiritual closeness, these words are used sometimes in a broader, and
sometimes in a narrower sense. In any case, people are called brothers or
sisters if they have a common father and mother, or only a common father or
mother; or even if they have different fathers and mothers, if their parents
later (having become widowed) have entered into marriage (stepbrothers); or if
their parents are bound by close degrees of kinship.
From St. John (Maxomovitch), The Orthodox Veneration
of Mary, The Birthgiver of God (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
1994), pp. 31-33.
Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/evervirgin.aspx
