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The Son of God, born of Mary, made the Virgin a mother, and preserved the Mother a virgin. The God and Creator of the Virgin became her Son, at the same time remaining Her God and Creator; being Her Son, He was simultaneously Her redeemer and Saviour. The first Adam produced a woman without the help of a wife; the Holy Virgin conceived and gave birth to the new Adam without the help of a husband. However, despite all the majesty of the Mother of God, Her own conception and birth occurred in accordance with the universal law of mankind; consequently, the general status of mankind concerning conception in iniquity and birth in sin applies also to the Mother of God. Sensing the presence of the long-awaited Saviour in Her womb, under the influence of spiritual, grace-filled joy She spoke the following wondrous words: My soul doth magnify the Lord, and My spirit hath rejoiced in God My Saviour. The Mother of God confesses before the whole of mankind, in the Gospel which is read by all, that the God She has born is also Her Saviour. If God is Her Saviour, then She has been conceived and born in sin, in accordance with the universal rule of fallen mankind. God is the Creator of both angels and men; but He is the Saviour of men only; in regard to angels, who had not fallen, He is their Lord, but not their redeemer, nor their Saviour. The acceptance of God by sentient creation as its Saviour is at the same time a confession on the part of this creation of its own damnation. The Virgin Mary was conceived in a fallen state and was born in a fallen state common to all mankind. But Her giving birth to God, Her Saviour and the Saviour of all people, endowed Her with a majesty higher than that of the sinless angels, who had not succumbed to mortality and had no need of a Saviour.
The Mother of God’s righteous parents, who were of a venerable age and who had restrained their flesh by means of many long spiritual labors, were not, consequently, influenced by the strong feelings of passion that inevitably accompany the marital relations of couples who are still young and full of energy, and whose inner state represents a far cry from the pious frame of mind of Joachim and Anna. In Her conception and nativity the Mother of God was subjected to the original sin that had been passed to mankind by the forefathers. However, having been born of righteous parents, She Herself lived a most righteous life. Purity and humility were Her chief virtues. She engaged in constant prayer, divine contemplation, the reading and the study of the Holy Scriptures. Not only was She foreign to all mortal sins, but also to all words and deeds contrary to the Law of God in which She was instructed and brought up. Nevertheless, despite the righteousness and purity of the Holy Virgin’s life, up to the time that the Holy Spirit descended upon Her and the apostles, and endowed them with Christian perfection, the “old man” was made manifest in Her. We see proof of this in the Gospel. Thus, for example, prior to being enlightened by the Holy Spirit, Her mind, like the minds of the apostles, remained obscured, and She did not understand the words of the 12-year-old Saviour, spoken to Her in the temple. Death and sin, inculcated into human nature, could not but show themselves. Such is the true and exact teaching of the Orthodox Church on the Mother of God, in regard to original sin and death which had infected humanity.
The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Mother of God occurred twice. The Holy Spirit descended upon Her for the first time after the Archangel Gabriel’s annunciation, made divinely pure the One who was already pure in human terms, made Her capable of containing within Herself God the Word and becoming His Mother. Her virginity was sealed by the Spirit: She, who up until then had kept Herself free of all voluptuous thoughts and feelings, was made impregnable to such thoughts and feelings. That was only natural for the Virgin who was appointed to serve God more closely than even the Cherubim and the Seraphim. Not only was She to conceive and give birth to the Son of God, but She was to spend Her life in the closest proximity to Him. She suckled Him; in Her arms He spent His infancy and childhood; with Her He spent His entire youth up to manhood, up to the age of thirty, when He appeared to the world as the promised redeemer. But even during the three-and-a-half years in which the Lord taught people the way of salvation, the Mother of God often accompanied Him, as we can see from the Gospel. At the time of His first descent upon the Holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit made Her capable of such supreme service and worthy of such service.
The Holy Spirit descended upon the Virgin for the second time on the day of the Pentecost, when He also descended upon the apostles, with whom the Theotokos remained inseparable after the Lord’s ascension into heaven. This time the Holy Spirit destroyed within Her the hold of death and original sin, raised Her to the supreme stage of Christian perfection, made Her a new person in the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps some people may wonder why the hold of death was not destroyed within the Holy Virgin during the Holy Spirit’s first descent upon Her? The answer lies in the fact that this destruction of death was the fruit of redemption: it could not take place before redemption itself had taken place. Similarly the holy apostles, although possessing various gifts of grace prior to their enlightenment, such as: the healing of illness, expulsion of demons and resurrection of the dead, - were fully transformed into a state of supreme spirituality only on the day of the Pentecost, as a result of redemption.
All of the above shows up the absurdity of the two opposing Western teachings, in which the Catholics teach that the Mother of God was conceived, like the Saviour Himself, without original sin (immaculate conception), while the Protestants do not acknowledge the Ever-virginity of the Holy Virgin. Truth, however, is foreign to all exaggerations and diminishments: it places everything in proper perspective.
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