The New Testament gives us the following vivid example of the power of her mediation with motherly boldness before the Lord. When the Savior attended the marriage at Cana, the time had not yet come according to the divine plan for His public miracles to begin. Therefore, replying to His mother’s mediation to Him because the host’s wine had been exhausted, He said, “Woman, what hath this to do with Me and with thee? For My hour is not yet come.”18
Nevertheless, through her motherly boldness and intercession, the divine plan and will granted that the first public miracle of the Incarnate Logos be the changing of water into wine. The narrative also repeats to us her sublime admonition to all who would ask for her intercession, “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it!”
Chosen from before the ages and generations to be mother of the Creator, she is also the Mediatress of His unceasing energies of love, rule, will, mercy, and sustaining power and providence in the universe unto eternity.
She “has honors second after the Τrinity and directly receives the fullness of the gifts of God, transporting them to all, to angels and to men.”19 As the “provider of life, the life of the living, the co-cause of life,”20 she mediates every energy or operation of God to His creatures.
And before this stunning mystery, the minds of men, even of the greatest Fathers, are insufficient; the wise are shown unwise, and “philosophers are made fools.”21
Power to do all that she wills
The Theotokos’ intercession and mediation, therefore, are not only incomparably greater but incomparably different in nature from those of the angels and saints. The intercessions of all other saints are only supplicatory in nature.
Without Mary the mother of the Incarnate Logos, however, there can be no saints. She is one of the two persons in the mystery of the Incarnation. By her words “Be it done unto me” she became the co-cause of the sanctification of all flesh:
“No one is filled with the knowledge of God except through you, All-Holy One. No one is saved but through you, O Theotokos. No one is delivered from danger but through you, O Virgin Mother. No one is redeemed but through you, O Mother of God. No one receives the gift of mercy but through you who contained God.”22 For “in birthgiving, you preserved virginity, and in dormition you did not abandon the world, O Theotokos.”23
It is natural, then, for the body of the Church to sing, “For it is you whom I have as Mediatress before the man-loving God.” 24 And the faithful pledge to her, “We shall never silence our speaking of your powers, O Theotokos.”25
~Adapted from George S. Gabriel, Mary: The Untrodden Portal of God
18. Jn. 2:3-4. Our translation of the passage is accurate and refutes the translations in Protestant Bibles that present Christ as disdainful of His mother.
19. Andrew of Crete, Op. cit.
20. Andrew of Crete, Third Homily on the Dormition, PG 97, I108B.
21. Akathist Hymn, Third Stasis.
22. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, Second Homily on the Dormition, PG 98, 349B, C.
23. Apolytikion of the Dormition Feast.
24, An Exapostilarion in the Service of Supplication in the Dormition fast period.
25. A Troparion of the Small Supplicatory (Paraklesis) canon.
