I want today to unpack the doctrine taught by the Church Father S. John of Damascus, which is included on our service bulletin. S. John of Damascus says, “The day of the Nativity of the Theotokos [that’s the title of Mary, it means “bearer of God”] is the feast of joy for the whole world, because through the Theotokos the entire human race was renewed and the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy.” The Church rejoices at Mary’s nativity, in other words, for two reasons. The first is that through it the entire human race was renewed, and the second is that through it Eve’s grief was changed into joy.
I will start with the second reason. We rejoice because through the Nativity of Mary, the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy. Eve grieved because of her disobedience to God’s will. Her disobedience is her saying “No” to what God ordained for their food. Eve’s “no,” is a refusal of God’s plan of creation. In this, her “no” summarizes and embodies our sinfulness, for we are all sinners in a fallen world. And her “no” summarizes and embodies the entirety of the disobedience toward God seen throughout Old Testament Scripture; the Old Testament is an extensive elaboration of Eve’s refusal of God. Eve’s grief is heard in Moses and Joshua bemoaning the disobedience of the sons of Israel; Eve’s grief is heard in the prophets, rebuking Israel of their stiff-necked hardness of heart. Eve’s grief is the grief of a people lost and alienated from God. Mary changed all this. She counters Eve’s no with a holy and obedient “yes.” Her yes to God comes in her whole life and especially at the annunciation – Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word – her yes, which cooperates with God’s plan of creation, redeems and transforms Eve’s no. Mary’s whole life was a yes to God, and yes which opens the doorway to Christ. Mary’s yes changes the grief of the people of God into joy.
That’s the second part of the teaching of S. John of Damascus. For the first part of S. John’s teaching, let us consider the Gospel passage from Matthew. There are two genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament. These are the genealogy in S. Matthew’s Gospel account, which we just heard, and also that in the Gospel account of S. Luke. Neither make for the most gripping narrative or story, yet there are details of Matthew’s genealogy to notice.
For one, Jesus is described both as the son of David and the son of Abraham. This identification of Jesus as the son of David echoes the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary at the annunciation. To Mary, Gabriel says, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there will be no end.” In 2nd Samuel, chapter 7, God tells David, through Nathan, that “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” Jesus being the son of David, therefore, ratifies the testimony Christ Himself gave anonymously to David, and makes the physical lineage traced from David also sacred lineage. It is holy because it is physical: body to body, mother to mother.
The identification of Jesus as the son of Abraham creates a specifically spiritual lineage to go along with the physical lineage from David. Abraham expresses faith in God. Genesis 15:6: “And he [Abraham] believed the Lord; and he [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham is known as a father of our faith, because those that believe in the Holy Trinity share in Abraham’s faith, and are children of Abraham: spiritual children, sharing and participating in the Holy Spirit. As S. Paul said to the church in Corinth: “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Cor 6.16). As the Holy Spirit lives in us and moves among us, we are participating in the Kingdom, which is life in the Holy Spirit, the same life initiated in Abraham. S. Paul is even more specific in his Epistle to the Galatians, when Paul writes, “So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. . . . Those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.” Hence within the faith community of the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ. He is part of that spiritual lineage.
Yet Jesus is more than a mere part or participant in the spiritual lineage of Abraham and the physical lineage of David. For the genealogy of S. Matthew concludes by acknowledging Blessed Mary, of whom Jesus was born, Who is called Christ. Jesus is the anointed one, which is what “Christ” means. He is the anointed King Who reigns over the kingdom. He reigns as King on the throne of David over the house of Jacob, and He is the anointed King of the historical faith community of Abraham. Thus the entirety of the revelation was made manifest in Christ; in the words of S. Paul, “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.”
We see clearly that Mary’s role in the economy of God’s plan of salvation is unmistakable. She is part of the physical lineage, and she is part of the spiritual lineage. While salvation history had been unfolding long before she was born, God’s plan of salvation began to come into clarity when the person of Mary herself was born. Without the birth of Mary, the King would not be known. Hence her birth is a feast of joy for the whole world, as S. John of Damascus teaches.
Because of Christ, through her the entire human race was renewed, he also teaches, not because she is the savior, but because He Who is the Saviour, the King, Christ Jesus, is known through her birth of Him, physically and spiritually. Physically, because He was actually born from her; and spiritually, because of Mary’s faith. Because all of the Church celebrates Mary’s acceptance, her cooperation with grace, her yes to God’s initiative to reveal through her the fullness of His plan for salvation, which is Jesus Christ, which came from her yes – because of all this the Church celebrates Mary’s nativity.
In Luke 11 we hear this: “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Blessed is Our Lady because of the physical (the womb that bore, the breasts he sucked), but even more so, Blessed is Our Lady because of the spiritual (hearing the word of God and keeping it); Mary recapitulating Abraham’s obedience and doing so on behalf of us all, changing the Eve’s grief into Gospel joy, for Christ redeems Eve’s disobedience and loss of paradise through the Gospel: the Gospel which is Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.