The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a feast of the Lord and of the Mother of God. It is a feast of the Lord because it is Christ who was conceived in the womb of the Virgin, and it is a feast of the Mother of God because it refers to the one who helped to bear the Word of God and to incarnate Him, namely the Most Holy Virgin Mary.

Mary, the Mother of God, has a great value and an important place in the Church, precisely because she was the person awaited by all generations and because she gave human nature to the Word of God. Thus the person of the Mother of God is closely linked to the person of Christ. Moreover, the value of the Virgin Mary is due not only to her virtues but also primarily to the fruit of her womb. For this reason, the theological study of the Mother of God (Theotokology) is closely linked to the theological study of the person of Christ (Christology). When we speak of Christ, we cannot neglect the one who gave him flesh. When we speak of the Virgin Mary, we refer at the same time to Christ, because grace and destiny flow from him. This is clearly shown in the service of praise, where the Mother of God is praised, but always in accordance with the fact that she is the Mother of Christ: “Hail, crown of the king! Hail, bearer of the bearer of all creation.” This connection between Christology and Theotokology is also shown in the lives of the saints. Love for the Virgin Mary is a characteristic of the saints, true members of the Body of Christ. It is impossible to become a saint who does not love her.

The Annunciation of the Mother of God is the beginning of all the feasts of the Lord. In the troparion of the feast we sing: “Today is the beginning of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery that preceded the ages…” The content of the feast refers to the Archangel, the angel involved in all the events related to the Incarnation of Christ, who visits the Virgin Mary, at the command of God, informing her that the time has come for the incarnation of the Word of God, and that she will be His mother (see Luke 1:26-56).

The word gospel (in Greek) is composed of two words, good and message, and it means good message and good announcement. This refers to the announcement given by the archangel that the Word of God would become incarnate for the salvation of mankind. Essentially, this is the fulfillment of God’s promise given at the fall of Adam and Eve (see Genesis 3:15), called the proto-evangelion. For this reason, the announcement of the incarnation of the Word of God is the greatest message in history.

According to St. Maximus the Confessor, the Gospel of God is God’s intercession and consolation of men through his incarnate Son. At the same time, it is the reconciliation of men with the Father who bestows unbegotten theosis as a reward on those who obey Christ. Theosis is called unbegotten because it is not begotten in those who deserve it but rather revealed to them. Consequently, the theosis bestowed through the incarnate Christ is not a birth but an enhypostatic revelation of enlightenment to those who deserve it.

The good news, the Gospel, the Annunciation is a correction of the events that took place at the beginning of the creation of man in the sensual paradise of Eden. There the fall and its consequences began with a woman, and here all good things begin with a woman. Thus, the Virgin Mary is the new Eve. There was the sensual paradise, and here is the Church. There is Adam, and here is Christ. There is Eve, and here is Mary. There is the serpent, and here is Gabriel. There is the serpent’s whispering to Eve, and here is the angel’s greeting to Mary. In this way the sin of Adam and Eve is corrected.

The Archangel called the Virgin Mary full of grace, saying: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you! Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:28-29). Mary is called full of grace and is described as blessed because God is with her.

According to St. Gregory Palamas and other Fathers, the Virgin Mary was filled with grace before the Annunciation, not that she was filled with grace on that day. Being in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, she attained the Holy of Holies of spiritual life, that is, deification. If the courtyard of the church was established for the catechumens and the temple for the priests, the Holy of Holies was reserved for the high priest. There the Virgin Mary entered, symbolizing that she attained deification. It is known that in Christian times, the nave of the church was reserved for the catechumens and the profane, the church for the enlightened, that is, the members of the Church, and the Holy of Holies and the temple for those who had attained deification.

Thus, the Virgin Mary attained deification even before she received the Archangel. As St. Gregory Palamas explains in a wonderful and divinely inspired way, Mary used a special way of knowing God and of communing with Him, for her goal was deification. This refers to stillness, the hesychast way. The Virgin Mary knew that no one can understand God with reason, the senses, imagination, and human glory. Thus she mortified all the powers of the soul that come from the senses, and through noetic prayer she activated reason. In this way she attained enlightenment and deification. For this reason it was given to her to be the mother of Christ and to give her body to Christ. She possessed not only virtues but the deifying grace of God.

Compared with other people, the Virgin Mary has the fullness of God’s grace. Of course, Christ, as the Word of God, has the fullness of grace, and the Virgin Mary has gained the fullness of grace from the fullness of grace of her Son. For this reason, she is inferior to Christ compared with Him, for Christ has grace by nature, while Mary has grace by participation. Compared with believers, she is superior to them.

The Virgin Mary acquired the fullness of grace from the fullness of the graces of her Son before conception, during conception, and after conception. Before conception, the fullness of grace was complete, during conception it became more perfect, and after conception it became even more perfect (St. Nicodemus of Athos). Thus the Virgin Mary was a virgin in body and a virgin in soul. This physical virginity in her is higher and more perfect than the virginity of the souls of the saints, which is achieved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

No human being is born free from original sin. The human race inherited the fall of Adam and Eve and the consequences of this fall. The words of the Apostle Paul are clear: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). This apostolic passage shows that sin is the loss of the glory of God and therefore no one is free from it. Thus, the Virgin Mary was born with original sin. But when was she freed from it? The answer to this question must not be based on scholastic views.

First of all, we must remember that original sin is the deprivation of the glory of God, alienation from Him, and loss of communion with Him. This has tangible consequences because corruption and death entered the bodies of Adam and Eve. In the Orthodox tradition, speaking of the inheritance of original sin does not mean the inheritance of guilt for this sin, but primarily the inheritance of its two consequences, corruption and death. Just as the branches and leaves of plants become sick when their roots die, so it happened with the fall of Adam. The entire human race became sick. The corruption and death that man inherited are the favorite climate for the passions, and in this way man’s mind became darkened.

This is precisely why Christ’s assumption of this mortal and suffering body through His incarnation helped to correct the consequences of Adam’s fall. There was deification in the Old Testament, and there was enlightenment of the mind, but death had not yet been abolished. This is why all the prophets who saw God went to hell. Through the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, human nature was deified and thus every human being was given the possibility of deification. In holy baptism we become members of the deified and risen body of Christ, and this is why we say that through holy baptism man is freed from original sin.

When we apply these things to the case of the Virgin Mary, we can understand her relationship to original sin and her liberation from it. The Virgin Mary was born with original sin and inherited in her body all the consequences of corruption and death. By entering the Holy of Holies she attained deification. This deification was not sufficient to free her from the consequences of the fall precisely because the divine nature had not yet been united with the human nature in the hypostasis of the Word. Thus, at the moment of the union of the divine and human natures in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit, she tasted liberation from original sin and its consequences. Moreover, the fall occurred at the moment when Adam and Eve failed in their personal free struggle. For this reason, at the moment of the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary attained a state greater than that in which Adam and Eve had been before the fall. She was given a taste of the purpose and goal of creation, as we shall see in the next analysis.

For this reason, there was no need for Pentecost for the Virgin, nor was there any need for her baptism. What the apostles experienced on the day of Pentecost when they became members of the body of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and what happens to us all through the sacrament of baptism, happened to the Virgin Mary before the day of Pentecost. She was freed from original sin, not in the sense that she was rid of guilt, but she attained deification herself and her incarnation through her union with Christ.

In these contexts, the words of Saint John of Damascus should be interpreted that the Virgin Mary on the day of the Annunciation received the Holy Spirit who purified her and gave her the power to accept the divinity of the Word with the power of birth at the same time. That is, the Virgin Mary received from the Holy Spirit a purifying grace but also the grace to accept the Word of God as a human being and to be able to give birth to Him.

The Virgin Mary’s response to the Archangel’s announcement that she would be given the right to give birth to the Messiah was expressive: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Here the Virgin Mary’s obedience to the Archangel’s words and also her obedience to God in the face of an event that was strange and abnormal according to human logic appears. Thus she subjected her logic to the will of God.

Some claim that at that moment all the righteous of the Old Testament, indeed all of humanity, waited anxiously to hear the Virgin Mary’s answer, fearing that she would refuse and not obey God’s will. They hold this because whenever a person finds himself in such a predicament, precisely because he is free, he can say yes and no, as happened in the case of Adam and Eve. The same thing could have happened to the Virgin Mary. In any case, she could not refuse, not because she was without freedom but because she had true freedom.

St. John of Damascus distinguishes between natural will and stubborn will. A person clings to his will when he is characterized by ignorance of something, doubt and ultimately by inability to choose. This refers to hesitation about what to do. A person has natural will when he is led naturally, without hesitation or ignorance, to do what is right.

Thus it seems that the natural will is linked to desire, while stubbornness is linked to how we want, and moreover to how we want to be achieved, but with doubts and hesitation. In conclusion, the natural will includes the perfection of nature, while the stubborn will includes the imperfection of nature, because it presupposes a person without knowledge of the truth and is not sure of what he should decide.

Although Christ had two wills because of His divine and human nature, He had a natural will from the point of view we are studying here. He did not have a stubborn will. As God, He always knew the will of God the Father, and there was no hesitation or doubt in Him. The saints also experience this by grace, especially the Virgin Mary. Because she had attained deification, it was impossible for her to reject the will of God and not accept the incarnation. She had complete freedom, and therefore her freedom always worked naturally and not against nature. We have incomplete freedom because we have not attained deification, our stubborn will, and therefore we hesitate in what we do. Her question, “How can I do this, since I have never known a man?” (Luke 1:34), shows the humility and weakness of human nature, but it also shows the strangeness of the matter, since in the Old Testament there were miraculous births, but not without seed.

On the day of the Annunciation, Christ was conceived directly by the power and action of the Holy Spirit. In one of the Theotokias we sing: “When Gabriel spoke to you, O Virgin, greetings, the Lord was incarnated in you.” This means that the conception did not take hours and days, but happened precisely at that moment. The Archangel Gabriel told Joseph, the fiancé of the Mother of God: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:20). The Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ as a human being, but His conception was of the Holy Spirit.

In his interpretation of this verse, and specifically the phrase “born of the Holy Spirit,” St. Basil the Great says that everything that proceeds from something other than itself is indicated by three words. The first is “by creation,” that is, as God created the world by His power. The second is “by birth,” that is, as the Son was born of the Father before the ages. The third is “naturally,” just as power proceeds from every nature, that is, the radiance from the sun, and more generally, the work from its doer. Concerning the conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit, the correct expression is that Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit by creation, not by birth nor naturally.

St. John of Damascus teaches that the Son and Word of God, by the pure and immaculate blood of his mother, joined to himself a living body with a rational and noetic soul, not of seed but created by the Holy Spirit. Of course, when we speak of the conception of Christ in the womb of the Mother of God by the power of the Holy Spirit and his creative action, we must not separate the Holy Spirit from the Holy Trinity. It is known from patristic teaching that the power of the Triune God is shared. The creation of the world and the re-creation of man and the world were and are being accomplished by the shared power of the Triune God. Consequently, the Holy Spirit created not only the body of Christ, but also the Father and the Son, that is, the entire Holy Trinity. The expression of this truth is that the Father confirmed the incarnation of his Son, the Son and Word of God himself brought about his incarnation, and the Holy Spirit accomplished it.

Christ was conceived in Mary’s womb in silence and secrecy, without any noise or commotion. No one, neither man nor angel, could understand these great things that were taking place. The great prophet David had foretold this event, saying: “He shall come down like rain upon the fleece, like showers that pour down upon the earth” (Psalm 71:6). Just as the rain falling upon the fleece does not cause any noise or corruption, the same thing happened during the Annunciation and the Conception. Christ, by His conception, did not cause any confusion or corruption to the virginity of the Virgin Mary. That is why the Virgin Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth. These are the three stars that icon painters always place on the forehead and shoulders of the Virgin Mary.

The union of the divine and human natures in the hypostasis of the Word, in the womb of the Virgin, includes the direct deification of human nature. This means that from the first moment, when the divine was united with human nature, its deification began. The saying of St. John of Damascus is characteristic: “At the moment of the Annunciation, at that moment God the Word became incarnate.” This means that there was no time difference between the conception of human nature and its deification, but this happened immediately at conception.

As a result of this event, the Virgin Mary should be called the Mother of God because she actually gave birth to God, whom she carried for nine months in her womb, and not to a human being who bore the grace of God. For this reason the Virgin Mary is called the Mother of God, precisely because she bore Christ by the Holy Spirit. This should be emphasized because in the past there was a great theological dispute about whether the Virgin Mary should be called the Mother of God and the Mother of Christ. The Christological debate has its result in the theotokological debate. The great theological debate of the past was caused by the existence of heretical teachings. Moreover, the final confirmation of the teaching that the Virgin Mary gave birth to God, and that immediately with the assumption of human nature this nature was deified, was made at the Third Ecumenical Council. The heretic Nestorius, using philosophical terms and a human speculator, said that the Virgin Mary was human and therefore it was impossible for her to give birth to God. The child who was in her was not divine but human. God only “passed through her” and “passed through” the Mother of God. Of course, there was a problem in his theology about the relationship between the two natures of Christ. Nestorius believed that the body of Christ was implicitly united to the nature of God. The Word was not God, but was united to and indwelt in man. On the basis of these assumptions he called the Virgin Mary the Mother of Christ, not the Mother of God.

In any case, Christ is God-man, fully God and fully man, and each nature acted “in communion” in the hypostasis of the Word. We will touch on this subject when we speak of the birth of Christ. However, here we must emphasize that the human nature was deified directly with its union with the divine nature in the Word in the womb of the Mother of God. For this reason the Virgin Mary is called the Mother of God, because she gave birth to God in human form.

The direct deification of human nature by the divine nature of the Word does not mean that the attributes of human nature were abolished. This shows that the formation, the conception in the womb, and also the birth of Christ were all accomplished both naturally and supernaturally. Supernaturally, because the All-Holy Spirit accomplished it creatively, and not by natural implantation, because the conception in the womb was accomplished in the same way as children are conceived in the womb. In any case, there is a point that we should emphasize. In every pregnancy there are stages until birth is completed. The formation is the beginning, then after some time the organs of the body are formed, then little by little they grow and according to the degree of their growth comes the movement. Finally, when they are complete, He comes out of His mother’s womb. As for the divine child, we have a gradual increase, and yet there was no period of time between the formation and the formation of the organs. Basil the Great says: “Immediately what was formed was complete in the flesh, the form was not formed gradually.” We have to look at this from the point of view that the members of his body were drawn directly, he was created a complete human being, but yet he did not exist in the form of nine months. They were done gradually, although his body was formed from the beginning.

The conception of Christ in the womb of the Mother of God was accomplished by the Holy Spirit in a creative way and not by implantation, because Christ had to take on the pure nature of Adam which he had before the fall. Of course, Christ adopted a body that was perishable and subject to death, like the one Adam had after the fall, in order to overcome corruption and death, but in all cases it was completely pure and without blemish as it was before the fall. Thus, the body of Christ was in terms of purity as the body of Adam was before the fall, while in terms of perishability and corruption it was like the body of fallen Adam.

Consequently, the conception was by the Holy Spirit because the way in which man is born today, that is, by sowing, is after the fall. According to St. Gregory Palamas, the movement of the body towards birth is not free from sin, because while God has determined the mind to govern man, it has acted without submission through the movement of the body. Thus, the pure nature of Christ is linked to creation and not to conception through sowing.

This particular event is closely related to the fact that Christ’s conception, carrying in the womb, and birth are all effortless, painless, and pleasureless. So Christ was conceived, carried in the womb as a baby, and born without pleasure, without toil, and without pain. He was conceived without seed for two primary reasons. The first was to bear the pure nature of humanity, and the second was to be born without corruption and in a painless manner.
In the same way that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus without pleasure, so she carried Him in her womb for nine months without effort or weight. She felt no weight, even though the divine child was growing normally and had the weight of a fetus. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, the Lord rides on a swift cloud” (Isaiah 19:1). The phrase “swift cloud” refers to the human body, which was so light that it caused no weight or effort to the Virgin Mary during the nine months of carrying Him in her womb.

The Virgin Mary’s conception without seed or pleasure, the pregnancy in the womb without effort, is similar to the birth of Christ without sin and without pain. According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, there is a close connection between pleasure and pain, because every pleasure is associated with some pain. The pleasure and pain felt by Adam were transmitted to the human race. So too today, through the liberation from pleasure, joy comes to the human race. The birth of Christ did not harm the virginity of the Mother of God, precisely because the conception was not accomplished with pleasure, the pregnancy in the womb was not accomplished with effort and weight. Where the Holy Spirit works, “the order of nature is overcome.”

The length of the gestation period in the womb of the Virgin Mary is a foreshadowing of the unbroken communion of the saints in the Kingdom. It is known that there is an organic relationship between the mother and the child she carries in her womb. Modern researchers have demonstrated that the child is greatly influenced not only by the physical condition of his mother, but also by her psychological constitution. Since the divine child was conceived by the Holy Spirit but developed naturally, he was in communion with the body of the Virgin Mary, and for this reason there is an intimate relationship between Christ and the Mother of God. Naturally, from this point of view, we see that the Virgin Mary gives her blood to Christ, but He also gives her His grace and blessing. Moreover, Christ, while being carried in the womb, did not cease to be at the same time seated on the throne of the Father, united with His Father and with the Holy Spirit.

Human nature was united with the divine nature spontaneously at the moment of conception without change, confusion, division or separation. This means above all that the Virgin Mary tasted the blessings of the divine incarnation, that is, deification. From the first moment of conception and the presence of the fetus in the womb, the Virgin Mary lived all that the disciples of Christ tasted at Pentecost, what we live through baptism, in the mystery of the divine Eucharist when we participate in the body and blood of Christ, and what the saints will live in the Kingdom.

As a result, Christ nourished the Virgin Mary with His holy blood for nine whole months, day and night. This is a preannouncement of the unbroken divine communion and the continuous relationship between the saints and Christ which will be accomplished primarily in the afterlife. For this reason, the Virgin Mary is a preannouncement of the time to come. From this perspective, she is Paradise.

In his discourse on the Annunciation of the Mother of God, Saint Nicodemus of Mount Athos takes a personal and existential approach to this event. It is not enough for us to celebrate the events of the Divine Incarnation externally, but we must approach them existentially and spiritually. For this reason, he has collected many passages from the sayings of the saints, where the speech is essentially within this existential approach.

The words of the prophet Isaiah are characteristic: “We have conceived, we have given birth as though we had given birth to wind” (18:26). According to the interpretation of the Fathers, the seed is the Word of God and the mind is the womb and heart of man. By faith the Word of God is planted in the heart of man and he is conceived with the fear of God. This fear is that man should remain far from God. With this fear begins the struggle to purify the heart and to possess the virtues, a struggle similar to pain and especially to the pain of pregnancy. In this way the spirit of salvation is born, which is deification and sanctification.

The formation of Christ in us does not take place without spiritual suffering. The Apostle Paul says: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Travails are spiritual struggles and formation is deification and sanctification.

According to the Holy Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos and others) what happened physically in the Virgin Mary happens spiritually to every person with a virginal spirit, that is, one who is purified from passions. Christ, who was born once in the flesh, wants to be born, always in the spirit, of those who seek Him, and thus becomes a child, forming Himself in them through virtues.

Spiritual conception and birth are understood from the fact that the blood flow ceases, that is, the desires to commit sin cease, the passions lose their activity in man, he steadfastly hates sin and desires to do the will of God. This conception and birth are acquired by fulfilling the divine commandments, primarily by the return of the mind to the heart and by unceasing individual prayer. Then man becomes the temple of the all-holy Spirit.

The Annunciation of the Mother of God is an Annunciation to the human race, an announcement that the Son and Word of God has become incarnate. The universal feast must help to become a personal feast, in a personal Annunciation. We must accept the introduction of our salvation, which is the greatest notification of our life.

Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos
Arabization of Father Antoine Melki
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