THOUGHTS OF A MONK

“Destiny”

Gn 28:10-17; Gal 3:26-4:5; Lk 1:39-55
August 15, 2006

Just over a week ago I was with my dog Goldi when she gave birth to a litter of 10 beautiful puppies. There were 7 males and 3 females.  However, two of the males were still born. I have dealt with that experience before, as have many of the brothers and sisters here. It is never easy helping to deliver a puppy, discovering that it is not breathing and then trying to revive it, and failing to do so. This is part of the reality of a breeding program: There is the joy of ushering in a new life coupled with the pain of helplessness in the presence of a lifeless puppy.  But even more it is part of the reality of life. In whelping, we humans are sideliners who can assist the process but we do not control it.  Likewise, before the ultimate reality of human life and death we are also not in control.

Our human situation might be compared to a dance in which the dance partners are life and death. This dance, however, is not as well scripted as the dance on the ballroom floor.  In the dance of life and death we do not control who the lead partner will be. At any moment the partner of death can take over and we must dance to its lead no matter how much we want to control (or believe ourselves to be in control of) the situation. Today’s Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos helps us to see that attempting to control our life and its outcomes rather than being open to its God given endless possibilities, is pointless. The Dormition is not about life or death but about destiny. 

The Gospel reading for the Dormition, the Magnificat, is Mary’s hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God. In that paean of praise we find a clue as to what our destiny is. God’s might has routed the arrogant, torn imperial powers from their thrones and raised the humble ones on high. Those who imagine themselves to be in control of their lives will find out that they are not, and those who are humble, that is open to do the will of God, will find out that their destiny is to be raised on high. Not raised on high to take over the positions of power from which the arrogant were just ejected, but rather raised on high to be with God forever.

However, since the centerpiece of our faith is Christ’s death and resurrection, one might ask what does Mary’s story have to add to that? We celebrate Christ’s resurrection at every Sunday and feast day Eucharist and as Fr. Arida reminded us on Saturday, we are called to live in the transfiguring light of Christ’s resurrection every day. God became one of us in Jesus, and yet Christ is both human and divine. Mary, on the other hand didn’t become one of us, she is one of us. We are given the path to becoming like Christ, to elevate our reality to a level that can move ever more closely to God and God’s divinity through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. And yet all of this was made possible because “a humble one,” a mere mortal, chose to say yes to God. It is through the example of Mary that we are given the possibility to know God through Christ because she assented to God’s opening to her to become that pathway for the savior to enter into this world. That is the fruit of humility, which becomes the destiny of our human existence. 

One of my favorite patristic figures is St. John of Damascus. He was a skilled orator: an art, if you will, that was highly prized in the Patristic Age, but little valued in today’s society, which is characterized by 30-second sound bites and millisecond attention spans.  We get a glimpse of what wowed people of that era each Paschal season when we sing the Easter Canon of St. John of Damascus.  But St. John, like St. Romanos and St. Ephrem, to name only two who are the most studied and translated today, could wax eloquent on numerous topics and the Dormition of the Theotokos was one of his favorites.  Even though the “falling asleep” of the Virgin Mary is not described in the canonical Christian scripture, it was easy for someone like St. John of Damascus to speculate on how it might have been understood.  In one of his sermons on the Dormition he says:

“How can she, who has received the life that knows no beginning or ending, the life free from the boundaries of both birth and death, not live herself for endless ages?“ (p. 206)

The life free from the boundaries of both birth and death! Of whom does he speak, just Christ? Christ and Mary? Or everyone! Her humility, her openness to God’s word, her willingness to listen for, hear and carry out God’s will is how she became the pathway to salvation for us all. When she found herself in that position she rejoiced as we heard in this morning’s Gospel (and at every Matins) and declared:

“My soul tells out the greatness of the Lord and my spirit leaps for joy in God my savior who has looked so tenderly on this handmaid, humble as she is.” 

Sometimes people struggle with the common Orthodox prayer to Mary: “Most Holy Theotokos, save us.” She saves us because she made salvation possible by her assent to God. Without Mary there is no Jesus. So maybe another way to understand that short prayer is to think of it this way: Thank you, Most Holy Theotokos, for giving birth to the one who came into the world to save us. When we ask her to put in a good word to her son on our behalf, we do so with the understanding that her role as the Mother of God is special, but we are also acknowledging that her role, first and foremost, as a simple, humble, human being who listened to God, is what opened the pathway to our destiny which is neither death nor life, but to be “raised on high.” Or as St. John of Damascus says in the sixth Ode of his Canon for the Dormition:

“You sheltered life as its sanctuary;
Now life without end is your inheritance.”

May we strive to live in a way that makes that a reality for us all.