We call her Theotokos, God-bearer. That’s the heart of it. Mary gave birth to God incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity made flesh. She’s not just the mother of Jesus’ human nature. She’s the Mother of God.
This isn’t sentimentality. It’s Christology. When the Church fought Nestorius in the fifth century, the question was whether Jesus is one Person or two. Nestorius wanted to call Mary “Christotokos” (Christ-bearer) instead of Theotokos because he couldn’t stomach the idea that God could be born, could nurse, could be held by human hands. But the Council of Ephesus in 431 said no. Jesus isn’t two persons, one divine, one human, somehow sharing a body. He’s one Person, fully God and fully man. And if Mary gave birth to that Person, she gave birth to God. Theotokos protects the gospel itself.
Ever-Virgin
We believe Mary was a virgin before, during, and after Christ’s birth. This is what “ever-virgin” means. It’s not a late medieval invention. The Church Fathers taught it from the beginning.
I know what you’re thinking if you grew up Baptist. What about Matthew 1:25, which says Joseph didn’t “know” Mary “until” she gave birth? Or the “brothers” of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels? Here’s the thing. “Until” doesn’t imply a change afterward, Scripture says Michal had no children “until the day of her death,” but that doesn’t mean she had kids after she died. And “brothers” in both Hebrew and Greek can mean cousins, stepbrothers, or kinsmen. James and Joses, called Jesus’ brothers, are identified elsewhere as sons of another Mary.
The real question is why perpetual virginity matters. It’s not that sex or marriage are bad. It’s that Mary’s womb became the holy of holies, the dwelling place of God himself. Just as the Ark of the Covenant wasn’t used for ordinary purposes after it held the tablets of the Law, Mary’s body wasn’t used for ordinary purposes after it bore the Word made flesh. This isn’t about shame. It’s about holiness.
Purity Without the Immaculate Conception
Mary was the holiest human being who ever lived. We’re clear about that. But we don’t teach the Immaculate Conception the way Catholics do.
The Catholic dogma says Mary was conceived without original sin, that from the first moment of her existence, she was preserved from the guilt inherited from Adam. Orthodoxy doesn’t frame it that way. We don’t think of original sin as inherited guilt in the first place. We see it as mortality, corruption, a wounded nature. Mary was born like the rest of us, into a fallen world. But God’s grace prepared her from the beginning to be the vessel of the Incarnation. She cooperated with that grace perfectly. Her purity came from God’s work in her and her complete “yes” to his will.
When the angel came to her in Nazareth, she could have said no. She didn’t. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” That’s the hinge of salvation history right there.
Veneration, Not Worship
Let’s be direct about this because it trips up every Protestant who walks through our doors. We don’t worship Mary. Worship (latreia in Greek) belongs to God alone. What we give Mary is veneration (proskynesis), honor, respect, asking her prayers. It’s what you’d give any saint, just more of it because she’s the greatest of the saints.
Think of it this way. If you asked your Baptist grandmother to pray for you, you wouldn’t be worshiping her. You’d be asking someone who loves God to intercede for you. We do the same with Mary. She’s alive in Christ. Death didn’t end her relationship with us. We ask her prayers just like we’d ask yours, except she’s closer to God than any of us will ever be in this life.
And everything we say about Mary points to Christ. Our most common prayer to her ends with “and grant us thy Son.” She’s not an end in herself. She’s the one who shows us her Son, the way she did at the wedding in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.”
The Dormition
We believe Mary died. We call it the Dormition, her falling asleep. The Church has always taught that her body was taken up into heaven, resurrected and glorified by God’s power. This isn’t the same as the Catholic dogma of the Assumption, which was only officially defined in 1950. We’ve celebrated the Dormition on August 15th for over a thousand years, but we hold it as received tradition, not a late papal decree.
Mary’s death and resurrection are a promise. What happened to her will happen to all of us. She’s the first fruits of redeemed humanity, the new Eve, the one who shows us what we’re being saved into.
How We Honor Her
Walk into St. Michael’s on any Sunday and you’ll hear Mary’s name constantly. We sing to her in nearly every service. The Liturgy includes a hymn called the Theotokion in almost every set of prayers. We celebrate her feast days, the Annunciation on March 25th, the Dormition in August, her Nativity in September. We have an Akathist hymn to her that’s prayed especially during Lent. Her icon stands in the front of the church, usually to the left of the Royal Doors.
This isn’t extra. It’s biblical. Elizabeth called her “the mother of my Lord” and said she was “blessed among women.” We’re just agreeing with Scripture.
If you’re new to Orthodoxy and all this feels like a lot, that’s normal. Most people from Protestant backgrounds need time to get comfortable with how much we talk about Mary. But here’s what I’d say: come to a service on one of her feast days. Listen to the hymns. You’ll hear that everything we say about her is really about what God did through her. She’s the yes that opened the door for God to become man. She’s the model of what it means to cooperate with grace. And she’s our mother too, given to us by Christ himself from the cross: “Behold your mother.”
Start there. The rest will come.
