Memorial of BVM

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Memorial of BVM

January 14, 2023

On the Mother of God
A Meditation by St Silouan the Athonite

When the soul abides in the love of God – how good and gracious and festive
all things are! But even with God’s love, sorrows continue and the greater the love,
the greater the sorrow. Never by a single thought did the Mother of God sin, nor did
she ever lose grace, yet vast were her sorrows; when she stood at the foot of the Cross
her grief was as boundless as the ocean and her soul knew torment incomparably
worse than Adam’s when he was driven from paradise, in that the measure of her
love was beyond compare greater than the love which Adam felt when he was in
paradise. That she remained alive was only because the Lord’s might sustained her,
for it was His desire that she should behold His Resurrection, and live on after His
Ascension to be the comfort and joy of the Apostles and the new Christian peoples.

We cannot attain to the full the love of the Mother of God, and so we cannot
thoroughly comprehend her grief. Her love was complete. She had an illimitable
love for God and her Son but she loved the people, too, with a great love. What,
then, must she have felt when those same people whom she loved so dearly, and
whose salvation she desired with all her being, crucified her beloved Son?

We cannot fathom such things, since there is little love in us for God and man.

Just as the love of the Mother of God is boundless and passes our
understanding, so is her grief boundless and beyond our understanding.

Oh holy Virgin Mary, tell us, thy children,
of thy love on earth for thy Son and God.
Tell us how thy spirit rejoiced in God thy Saviour.
Tell us of how thou didst look upon His fair countenance,
and reflect that this was He
Whom all the heavenly hosts wait upon in awe and love…
Tell us of thine agony
when the Lord was delivered up to be crucified,
and lay dying on the Cross.
Tell us what joy was thine over the Resurrection…

Once when I was a young novice I was praying before an ikon of the Mother of
God, and the Jesus Prayer entered into my heart and there began to repeat itself of
its own accord. And another time in church I was listening to a reading from the
prophet Isaiah and at the words, ‘Wash you, make you clean,’ I reflected, ‘Maybe the
Mother of God sinned at one time or another, if only in thought.’ And, marvellous to
relate, in unison with my prayer a voice sounded in my heart, saying clearly, ‘The
Mother of God never sinned even in thought.’ Thus did the Holy Spirit bear witness
in my heart to her purity. But during her earthly life even she was not quite perfect
and complete – she did make some mistakes that did not involve sin. We can see
this from the Gospel when on the return from Jerusalem she did not know where her
Son was, and together with Joseph sought Him for three days…

The Mother of God committed to writing neither her thoughts nor her love for
God and her Son, nor her soul’s suffering at the Crucifixion, because in any case we
could not have understood, for her love for God is stronger and more ardent than the
love of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and all the hosts of angels and archangels
marvel at her.

And though the life of the Mother of God is hidden, as it were in a holy
silence…she embraces the whole world in this love of hers, and in the Holy Spirit
sees all the peoples of the earth, and like her Son pities all men and has compassion
on them…

And this most pure Mother of His, the Lord has bestowed on us. She is our
joy and our expectation. She is our Mother in the spirit, and kin to us by nature, as a
human being, and every Christian soul leaps to her in love.

Archimandrite Sophrony. Saint Silouan the Athonite. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999. 390-393

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Date:
January 14, 2023
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