Theotokus, “Joy of All” Icon – orthodoxmonasteryicons.com
Deacon Tom writes,
“Theotokus”
Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God_ Year C
I don’t know of a better way to begin the New Year than by celebrating the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God….In honoring Mary today we have the opportunity to reflect on the fact that God had an infinite number of ways that He could have chosen to make good on His promise to Adam and Eve after the fall…The time, circumstance and conditions as to how He would redeem us were endless.
Yet, during this holy season, we celebrate that God chose the most improbable way imaginable…He chose to fix the mess we got ourselves into by becoming one of us; by choosing to be born not to a woman of high status – a queen,
a princess, a wealthy woman. No, he chose a simple young girl of little or no means. And setting aside His Divinity… He crept into our history and joined our humanity.
It took years of before we recognized the depth of this mystery. In the year 431, the Council of Ephesus declared Mary to be “Theotokus” meaning, “Mother of God” the title of the Feast we celebrate today, as we look forward in hope to the dawning of a New Year.
In recognizing Mary as the “Mother” of God we are able to glimpse ever so slightly the depth of the Incarnation when we reflect on the Christ Child born into human poverty. In this image of Mother and Child we come to understand the reality and depth of God’s unconditional love of the highest of His Creation, the human family in all its brokenness, fragility, and fear.
This is the message Mary’s child carried into our world. We all belong to God’s Holy family….Where everyone is called to share in the life-sustaining, unconditional love of God and even in His very nature.
As the New Year dawns on us, let us ponder the wondrous gift of Mary, the Mother of God--- Theotokus. Let us place our hope and trust in her for all our needs as she abides in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May her favor be upon us as we welcome this New Year.
Through the intercessions of Mary, Mother of God, may……
The Lord bless us and keep us!
The Lord let his face shine upon us and be gracious to us!
The Lord look upon us kindly and give us peace!
Wishing you and your families a…Happy, Holy, and Healthy New Year‼!
Deacon Tom
OTHER RESOURCES
Recommended Reading: Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses by Robert Ellsberg
Since the early centuries, Christians have held up the saints as models of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Blessed Among Us explores this eclectic “cloud of witnesses”—lay and religious, single and married, canonized and not, and even non-Christians whose faith and wisdom may illuminate our path. In two stories per day for a full calendar year, Ellsberg sketches figures from biblical times to the present age and from all corners of this world—ordinary figures whose extraordinary lives point to the new age in the world to come.
Blessed Among Us is drawn from Ellsberg’s acclaimed column of the same name in Give Us This Day, a monthly resource for daily prayer published by Liturgical Press
Recommended Podcast: Things Not Seen Podcast hosted by David Dault speaks with Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, on his friendship with Sister Wendy Beckett -- a friendship based on several hundred letters, exchanged on an almost daily basis, during the last three years of Sister Wendy's life. Initially they dealt with lives of saints, the meaning of holiness, and the spiritual life, but they soon expanded into a deep and intimate exchange that encompassed our whole lives, the subject of love, suffering, joy, and the presence of grace in everyday life. The correspondence is collected in the recent book, Dearest Sister Wendy.
Sister Wendy, who died in December 2018, was a consecrated hermit who lived on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery in England. For some years she achieved highly unlikely fame when she was discovered by the BBC and given her own TV series to comment on art. From this there followed many books on art and spirituality. But eventually she reverted to her solitary life. Many had urged Sister Wendy to write more about her interior life--but she always refused. That is what changed in the course of our correspondence, to the point that she observed that the book I had been seeking was to be found in our correspondence.
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