Fair as the Moon, Bright as the Sun, Terrible as an Army Set in Array

A Sermon on the Nativity of the Theotokos

Thy nativity, O Virgin Theotokos, hath proclaimed joy to all the world; for from thee hath shone forth Christ our God, the Sun of Righteousness, Who, having annulled the curse, hath given His blessing, and having abolished death, hath granted us life everlasting.

My brothers and sisters, today’s feast is the turning point of all human history. Absolutely everything that came before — from the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden up until this great and holy day — had one purpose, and one purpose only: to bring the Most Holy Mother of God into the world. St. John Damascene tells us: “It is with justice and truth that we call holy Mary the Theotokos; for this name embraces the whole mystery of the Economy of salvation.”

Truly, the “whole mystery of… salvation” today begins to be revealed. Every promise that God ever made — from Adam to Noah, from Abraham to David, from the patriarchs to the prophets — now finally begins to be fulfilled, in the person of the Most Holy Theotokos. St. Andrew of Crete declares that She is the “clear fulfillment of the whole of prophecy, of the truth of Scriptures inspired by God, the living and most pure book of God and the Word in which, without voice or writing, the Writer Himself, God and Word, is everyday read.”

Today the Mother of God is born to Joachim and Anna, who — for all their virtue and righteousness — before were barren. And their barrenness was in truth a microcosm of the barren world itself. For what kind of world was it into which the Theotokos today is born? It was a world of sin and selfishness, greed and ingratitude, lust and impurity, hatred and anger, scorn and contempt, arrogance and pride. It was a world in which even the Israel of God — chosen by divine providence, taught by prophetic revelation, protected and inspired by countless wonders and signs — fell over and over again into apostasy and idolatry, even going so far as to “[sacrifice] their sons and their daughters unto demons” (Ps. 106:37). And even the great Prophet-King David, a man after God’s own heart (cf. Acts 13:22), nevertheless was an adulterer and a murderer — and the ancestor of the Mother of God.

Because it is precisely in the midst of the worst of all our sins that God Himself chooses to act. Apart from God, our best virtues will remain forever barren — but with God, even the greatest of sinners can still bear fruit. Nothing proves this more than the birth of the Mother of God: from the barren and withered tree of humanity, He today brings forth someone so pure, so good, and so holy that even a single glimpse of Her can cause the hardest of hearts to break. All the beauty in all is world is mere dust and ashes when set against that of the Most Pure Mother of God. Although She was formed of the same weak and passionate flesh as you and me, yet She stands now already resurrected and transfigured in the life of the age to come, immortal and incorruptible, "filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:19), before whom all the demons tremble and flee.

St. Dionysius the Areopagite, writing to the Apostle Paul, bears witness of his encounter with the spiritual majesty of the Queen of Heaven: “I witness by God, that besides the very God Himself, there is nothing else filled with such divine power and grace. No one can fully comprehend what I saw… when I was brought before the countenance of the Most Holy Virgin, I experienced an inexpressible sensation. Before me gleamed a sort of divine radiance which transfixed my spirit. I perceived the fragrance of indescribable aromas and was filled with such delight that my very body became faint, and my spirit could hardly endure these signs and marks of eternal majesty and heavenly power. The grace from Her overwhelmed my heart and shook my very spirit. If I did not have in mind your instruction, I should have mistaken Her for the very God. It is impossible to stand before greater blessedness than this which I beheld.”

As astonishing as his words are, yet even more astonishing is the great truth that each and every one of us sinners was created by God to attain nothing less than this same glory and blessedness. We, too, are called by Him to become like Her: “coming forth as the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array” (Song. 6:10). And on the great and terrible day when Christ comes in His Kingdom, all the children of God will partake — in some measure — of the same indescribable holiness and grace that already shines so brilliantly in the Mother of God.

If any doubt my words, consider those of the Savior Himself when the woman in the crowd cried out in today’s Gospel passage: “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee.” He answered her: “Yea indeed, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” And if He said in another place: “He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward” (Matt. 10:41), then what rewards of grace and glory will He not bestow on us who receive in fitting honor His own Most Pure Mother?

So on this day of Her birth, let all of us look to Her with hope and run to Her with faith and love. Let us never cease from entreating Her never to allow us, Her sinful children, to perish, but rather that where She is now, we too might all one day be. Through Her intercessions may “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen!