Holy Youth: Saint Mary

St. Mary is the greatest saint, because through her God the Son became incarnate. No one else ever bore God the Son in the body. She is the one whom Jesus Christ took His humanity from.

St. Mary is an example to us because of her many virtues. She is not mentioned a lot in the Bible, but through what is mentioned about her we can perceive these many virtues.

The first virtue that we see in her is silence; she didn’t talk a lot. While so many youth in this generation talk so idly, and gossip, and hurt each other’s feelings, and waste time, St. Mary did not. After the greeting by Gabriel the Archangel, she “considered what manner of greeting this was,” (Luke 1:29) not argued. After the shepherds came and worshiped Jesus Christ shortly after His birth, she also remained silent and “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). And when Simeon the Elder took up Jesus in his arms and prophesied about Him, she and Joseph “marveled at those things which were spoken of Him” (Luke 2:33). Also after they had lost Jesus from their company when He was 12 years old, she did not yell at Him and scold Him, but after hearing what He said to them, she “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).

This virtue of silence actually has another virtue contained within it, which is actually the third degree of prayer; contemplation. As Orthodox Christians, we know that St. Mary lived in the Temple until she was 12 years old. So being under the tutelage of the people serving in the Temple and seeing the priests and the Levites in their service, praying, offering incense, singing Psalms and hymns, and the people coming to the Temple to pray, she definitely had a very strong spiritual childhood. So she learned how to pray, and this contemplation no doubt, must have grown from her hearing the priests teaching the people in the Temple. Father Markos Hanna said, “St. Mary didn’t mix playing with praying.”

We also see in her the virtue of very strong faith. After the Annunciation that the Christ would be born through her, a virgin, she didn’t argue, but asked how it would happen, and after Gabriel answered her, “Mary said, ‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38). This faith cannot be paralleled, because the result of this faith caused the Incarnation to happen in her womb. If she didn’t have that faith, the Incarnation would have taken place elsewhere. God would not have become incarnate through one who didn’t believe, but only through one who believed with unshakable faith. It was through a lack of faith that the transgression happened, because Eve didn’t believe God with unshakable faith but when Satan tempted her, she sinned. So for the transgression to be destroyed, it must have left the same way it entered, and Mary’s strong faith set the way, “when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). The Holy Spirit bears witness of this faith when He filled St. Elizabeth causing her to prophesy, “Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45).

The virtue of humility is seen in her more than any other Saint for this reason alone: she gave birth to God the Son in the flesh and still remained humble. The satanic, burning pride that could have come from this is stronger than any other temptation, because she became the one through whom He took His humanity; the only one from the human race who bore God in the flesh. This humility is seen when St. Mary went to Elizabeth, as it says, “Now Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth…And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her house” (Luke 1:39-40, 56). Elizabeth was old and Mary knew that the pregnancy would be very hard for her, so she didn’t think to herself that she should be the one served, but rather went to serve. This showed St. Mary’s humility.

The list of the virtues of St. Mary goes on, but for the sake of the length of this article we will stop here and talk about the deeper things, the theological things. As Orthodox Christians, we believe that the Saints are praying for us and are united with us. This is why in the Church’s Architecture (which is a form of expressing theology) we have a dome (symbolic of Heaven) and a rectangular building (symbolic of the earth). The Gospel of John bears witness of the Divinity of Christ, and in John’s Gospel he records that at the Wedding at Cana of Galilee, when the wine ran out, St. Mary came to Jesus saying, “‘They have no wine.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come’” (John 2:3-4). The interesting thing is that in the original language, Jesus response more literally means, “What is that to Me and you?” St. Mary was interceding for the servants of the Wedding, and she knew that her Son would know what to do. This verse shows how close the relationship between Jesus and Mary was, for she didn’t say to Him what to do, but said, “They have no wine.” This resulted in the first sign Jesus did.

The intercession of Saints in prayer works this way. Firstly, why should the Saints stop praying for us in Heaven, if they prayed for us here on Earth? And secondly, when we get into an argument with someone, and we want to go apologize, and the other party is not very close to us, they more than likely will not accept our supplication. But when we know someone who is very close to them, we ask them to intercede for us, and most of the time it works, because the relationship between the intercessor and the other party is much stronger than the relationship between us and the other party.

We just had the Feast of the Assumption of St. Mary a little over a week ago, and at my church, we had several priests come as guest speakers throughout the last week of the fast. The first one of these guest speakers, Father Daniel Habib, said something very profound, he said something like “We aren’t led to Christ through Mary, but we are led to Mary because of Christ. We are supposed to be at the Cross with Jesus Christ daily, and there we find His Mother and the Disciple John.” He then spoke about how in many of our churches (The Coptic Orthodox), we have an icon at the very top of the iconostasis which portrays the Crucifixion and Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross.

Let us learn from the example of the greatest Saint, Saint Mary, so we can become closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May her prayers be with us all and glory be to God both now and ever and unto the age of all ages. Amen.