Sermon for the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary – 14th August 2022
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
The 15th August (tomorrow) is the universal date on which the church celebrates the Blessed Virgin Mary. This celebration is kept by the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican traditions.
On this date the Orthodox speak of the Eternal Sleep of the Mother of God, and Blessed Mary is referred to in Orthodoxy as Panaghia – (All holy). The Roman Church celebrates what they now call the Assumption, a dogma that is barely 200 years old as currently understood, and a dogma which does not rest at all comfortably with Anglican theology, and may be a major cause for Anglicans to be ‘cautious’ about absorbing Mary into a theological system. In Greece the 15th August is always a public holiday.
The Anglican tradition is more akin to the East than to Rome, and for centuries since the Reformation we have commemorated the Dormition, the ‘falling asleep’ of the BVM on this date.
Blessed Mary is the human mother of the incarnate Jesus, the fully human Jesus. We must remember however that in Christian theology this same Jesus is also fully divine, so Mary is indeed the mother of Jesus as the bible witnesses, but at the same time, the Church accords her the exalted title of Mother of God, since Jesus of Nazareth is both fully human and fully divine. Her title is agreed in the ancient Councils of the church as Theotokos – God-Bearer, a title that emerges from the seriously dangerous debates in the 4th and 5th centuries concerning the humanity and divinity of Christ. Her title makes Blessed Mary a ‘protectress’ of the of the human-divine Jesus.
It is on account of this that Blessed Mary is worthy of the titles ascribed to her by the Church. So she is indeed Panaghia (All Holy One) in all three traditions, even if only the Orthodox use this distinctive Greek word.
In the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin, we learn something through her, as the Theotokos, God-Bearer, about our own calling to inhabit and participate in the divine life. Blessed Mary is both sign and message about the continuity of our everyday earthly lives into the life that does not come to an end. In our faith we believe that when we die our lives are not ended, but transformed, changed. As we have worshipped God in Christ here on earth, so when we pass from earthly life to heavenly life, we are infused with the company of all faithful believers, living and departed, and we take our place with the Archangels, angels and saints, not least St. Mary.
As Anglicans we may not necessarily have been exposed to a high profile of Blessed Mary, and if you are nurtured in some parts of the Anglican tradition you might even be forgiven for thinking that the Anglican Church ‘doesn’t do Mary’. Yet this would be an entirely wrong analysis of our own tradition.
To neglect Blessed Mary would be a willful rejection of scriptural witness, and very specifically the first two chapters of St. Luke’s gospel where we are informed of ‘Mary’s first introduction into the divine story’ to use a phrase of the great Anglican priest and theologian, Austin Farrer. (Interpretation and Belief, SPCK 1976, p107).
Although the reformed Church of England in the 16th century removed all excessive cultic worship of Mary that had accrued in the mediaeval western church, and never adopted the Roman Catholic dogmatic statements of her Assumption into Heaven, nor the official title ‘Immaculate Conception’, nonetheless our annual holy calendar marks the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 2nd February; the Annunciation on March 25th; her visit to her kinswoman Elizabeth on May 31st; her Dormition on the 15 of August; September 8th on which we commemorate the Birth of Mary; and December 8th when we mark her conception.
Our liturgical year is punctuated and adorned with commemorations of Mary, thanks be to God, for God chose her to be the means by which the mystery of the birth, life, and death of Christ became possible in the divine economy. The womb and the tomb give birth to our renewal as children of God.
The great Anglican hymn writer, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Ken (1637-1711), wrote a beautiful hymn which begins “Her Virgin eyes saw God incarnate born”. Bishop Ken was no supporter of Roman Catholicism, yet he penned this beautiful hymn about Blessed Mary. The final stanza runs as follows,
Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced,
Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed;
And here below, now she’s of heaven possest,
All generations are to call her blest.
Mary has her especial place in the divine economy of our salvation in Christ. Austin Farrer says, ‘when we think of Mary, or of any saint departed this life, we are thinking of an actual citizen of Paradise. (ibid p101). As the church, we are the Body of Christ, and so Mary is a co-citizen with us in that Body, and thus we do not expel her from our Anglican theology, nor from our liturgical and prayerful practice. This reference to ‘prayerful practice is well preserved Her in one of the prayers of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, the influential 17th century Bishop of Ely, later of Winchester.
‘Commemorating the all holy, immaculate, more than blessed Mother of God and ever virgin Mary, with all saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ God: unto Thee, O Lord, for unto Thee is due glory, honour and worship’. (Preces Privatae of Lancelot Andrewes, Methuen 1958, p85.) These introductory ascriptions are none other than the great titles given to Mary by the churches of East and West alike.
As Anglicans we may not grant Mary the high profile in the way the Orthodox and Roman Catholics do, but we fool ourselves if we think her imprint is not present in the life of our church; if we think that her place in the Body of Christ is not unique, and therefore worthy of honour; if we think that she is simply incidental to the work of salvation that God is doing in Christ. Again, Austin Farrer offers us a worthy reflection on this.
‘If she is loved, it is because she is; she has her place in the Body of Christ and it is a place no other creature can share. Christ is worshipped for what he uniquely is in each of his sainted members; the relation of Mary to Jesus is an endless subject of fruitful contemplation, and her will is a handle to take hold of the will of God. Her glory is that she is the virgin mother of God; what more can be added to it?’ (Interpretation and Belief, p123).
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