THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Birth of the Theotokos: “Freedom of Choice”

Is 8:16-18; Heb 3:1-6; Lk 11:27-32

Celebrating birthdays is a natural and fun part of life. We often celebrate the day with parties, the gathering of family and friends and the giving of gifts. As we are growing up, we anticipate birthdays knowing that something special is likely to happen on that day. It is a day when we not only mark the passing of the years of our lives and possibly remember special events in our lives, but it is also a day that marks the beginning of the next phase of our lives. Birthdays are like milestones along the path of life.

It is no surprise that the church also uses some birthdays to mark special events within the yearly cycle of feasts. Of course, the birth of Jesus on December 25th is the most significant, but other births are also highlighted such as the birth of John the Baptist and this feast in early September, the Birth of the Theotokos. One might wonder why this particular birth is so special. There is no mention of Mary’s birth or of her parents in the canonical books of the Bible. And yet in Orthodox tradition, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, are always remembered in the litany of saints, in the concluding phrase: “Joachim and Anna and all the saints, have mercy on us and save us.” If Mary’s parents and Mary’s birth are not in the Bible, what are they doing in our tradition?

One might conclude that these realities are so ordinary that there was no need to mention them in the Bible. Since they occurred and are part of the human connection to God through Christ, the Church felt that they needed to be part of the remembrances of the church. They are flesh and blood realities that are part of the story the church tells us about our salvation.

Mary is the source of the flesh that God takes on in the person of Jesus Christ. Why her? She is just an ordinary Jewish girl! That is the point, she is ordinary, but her actions are not ordinary, they are, in fact, extraordinary. Her birth is ordinary, yet the sign value of that birth and the events it points to, are anything but ordinary.
In today’s gospel, Jesus speaks of the signs that will be given us, and one is that the Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear the Wisdom of Solomon. Earlier in the same reading, when someone in the crowd says “blessed is the womb that bore you” his reply is “more blessed still are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” In a sense he is saying, if you value the one who bore me, then even more should you value those who hear and keep God’s commandments, that is the word of God. And of course the one who bore him, Mary, is the pre-eminent example of an ordinary human being doing just what Jesus extolled: she heard the word of God and kept it, that is, fulfilled it. The story of the Queen of the South is a corollary on that theme, she was seeking wisdom, and the source of wisdom, is God, in this case revealed through Solomon.
Of course Mary’s response to God’s word all happened after Mary’s birth. And yet the birth itself is another sign for us. Another passage from scripture that we recite at every matins service gives us a further insight into the extraordinary meaning of Mary’s ordinary birth. It is Psalm 51 (50). King David is crying out for forgiveness of his sins which he characterizes as being so great that they go back all the way to his birth. In our translation we say:

“In guilt itself was I born, a sinner my mother conceived.” But immediately after that David says: “But you love truth at the heart of my being, teach me wisdom deep within me” The New Jerusalem Bible says it somewhat differently: “remember, I was born guilty, a sinner from the moment of conception. But you delight in sincerity of heart, and in secret you teach me wisdom.”

In either case this Psalm, known to Joachim and Anna and all Jews, is setting out the dual reality of our human condition: that we are born carrying within our inmost beings both sin and truth and God’s constant call to us is to seek out wisdom, to seek out the word of God and do it. This is the extraordinary story of Mary’s ordinary birth. She, like all of us, was born with the capacity to sin and to seek the truth. She was brought up by her pious parents to seek God and when the ultimate test comes, she does what Jesus calls on all of us to do: hear the word of God and keep it. The church places before us the very ordinary example of Mary’s birth and family to remind us that like Mary we are all endowed by our creator with the same capacity for good and evil, and we are called to make the choice for good. Or as we heard in the letter to the Hebrews, that we “share the same heavenly call…” to “turn [our] minds to Jesus… and fearlessly maintain the hope in which we glory.” Or as the prophet Isaiah says: “My trust is in the Lord.”

As families celebrate birthdays and mark the time of their children’s growing up, that period when kids are learning the lessons that will help them throughout their lives, may we be aware of the importance of teaching youngsters to seek out, to really thirst for, the wisdom of God, which is the ultimate truth. May we always strive to live in that awareness and remember that out of even the most ordinary circumstances of life, we are always given the possibility to choose to seek the wisdom of God.

Glory be to Jesus Christ!