By Father Leonidas Contos, LOS ANGELES, August 2, 1962
Orthodox theology refuses to see Mary as only the physical instrument of Christ’s birth. She is seen as a cooperating instrument in the work of redemption. Christ did not save the world, so to speak, automatically. He was not on earth as an alien thrust in, but lived as part of humanity, sharing its weakness, knowing its need. The grace He released into the world became effective, and can only be operative, through the moral goodness, the obedience, of men and women responding to it. Of all these Mary is the supreme example, though it is not merely as an example that we revere her.
This “analogy” of St. Irenaeus is further and more fully traced in Christ’s own obedience. Even the temptations of Jesus are seen as a parallel to the tempting of the serpent. As it was by means of food that the enemy persuaded man to rebel against God, so it was by means of food that Christ resisted the temptation of the devil and overcame it by an act of will. It is significant for Irenaeus that the whole “drama of salvation” is played out under a tree. “It is clear,” he writes, “that the Lord suffered death in obedience to his Father. And the trespass that came by the tree was undone by means of the tree of obedience when, hearkening unto God, the Son of Man was nailed to the tree.” What the great second century Father means of course is that the disobedience of man which had taken place at the beginning by the occasion of a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that disobedience was cancelled out by Christ’s own obedience which resulted in His saving death on the tree of the Cross.
The fruit of that first tree was forbidden. God had said to Adam, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” But the fruit of the Cross is offered for the life of men: “Take, eat . . .” we are told in the words of the Divine Liturgy. And Jesus said it clearly: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you . . .” (John 6:53 RSV).
It is in this word that the whole matter of disobedience and obedience sums itself up. The rebellion of man against God is resolved in his perfect surrender to Christ. This is why the season of the August fast is so important; it gives us the classic lesson in surrender. It is not the preoccupation with food, or abstinence from certain kinds of it, that gives it meaning. More than anything else it is our preoccupation with the principle that becomes so real in the life of Mary, the principle that God’s grace can operate in our lives only if we will be willing vessels to contain it. The Sacraments of the Church are often spoken of as channels of grace. But the primary sacrament in human life, as that human life touches, or is touched by, the divine, is the sacrament of obedience.
These evenings when we sing the Office of Supplication to the Theotokos are times of great comfort to many of us. The very word “Paraklesis” implies it; for it means not only supplication, but consolation. The Paraclete, as the Holy Spirit is known, is the Comforter. But it is not the Church’s sole purpose to give us comfort, at least not in the sense of making us comfortable. Most of us are far too comfortable as it is. It is also her purpose to show us the supreme example of human obedience in the person of Mary, a creature “full of grace,” and to challenge us to imitate her.
~Adapted from Leonidas Contos, In Season and Out of Season: A Collection of Sermons by Father Leonidas Contos
