Against detractors of the Most Pure Mother of God

All God-inspired Scripture teaches and commands us to worship and have in all honor not only the most pure image of our Savior Jesus Christ and the Most Pure Mother of God and His other honorable saints, but also everything else that, as an offering, was dedicated to Christ the Savior - whether it be liturgical Church vessels, or various shrouds for the decoration and splendor of His most pure image, or the holy altar - all this should be revered and honored, as already part of the shrine. And this is clear from what the Savior Himself said to the Pharisees, reproaching them: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you say: whoever swears by the church eats nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the church must eat. Buoys and blindness, what is more, gold, or the church that sanctifies gold? And: whoever swears by the altar must eat for nothing, but whoever swears for nothing, whoever swears at the altar must eat. Buoys and blindness, what is more, a gift, or an altar, a holy gift? (Matthew 23:16–19). And what is surprising is that objects dedicated to God with good will and according to the rules of the church charter are made part of the shrine - when the copper censers of the two hundred and fifty men who rebelled against the seer of God Moses and the priest Aaron, the accomplices of Korah, Dathan and Abiron, some of whom the earth swallowed up alive with their tabernacles and all their property, and others were burned by the fire that came from God - when their censers, brought by them contrary to the command of God, God commanded Moses and Eleazar the priest, the son of Aaron, to take and make from them tilings, that is, for the covering of the altar, as if they were sanctified, he says, in their souls, and offered before the Lord (Num. 16: 1-38). This clearly and indisputably shows that every sensory object, which as an instrument of worship was dedicated to God, becomes part of the shrine and must be revered. If so, then how are some, who are completely alien to chastity, not afraid to reject the incomparable height of holiness and glory of the Most Pure and All-Sung Mother of God, the highest heaven and all the intelligent heavenly powers, daring to say that then only She was holy and glorious when she carried Emmanuel in Her most pure womb, and after she gave birth and nursed Him, She did not differ in any way from other women. Oh, what godless thoughts and words they have! Oh, what incomparable madness and unbelief! Oh, what extreme ignorance and ignorance of the inspired Scriptures! How did they not understand, the accursed ones, what was said about Her by her forefather to the Word who came from Her, God incarnate: The Queen appeared at Your right hand, in robes of gold, adorned (Ps. 44:10)? What kind of Queen is this, adorned with golden robes, O foolish and inert-hearted ones? And at the right hand of whom is She standing? Do you not know the highest seat of the Only Begotten, about which the Father who begat Him says: The Lord said to my Lord: sit at My right hand; from the womb before the morning star I gave birth to Ty; also: His throne is like the sun before Me, and like the moon is perfect forever (Ps. 109:1,3, 89:37–38). There, the Queen and Mistress of all stands at the right hand of the King of all, her Son and Creator, praying to Him unceasingly for the salvation of all who approach Her with faith and firm hope and seek Her help and deliverance from the troubles with which they are possessed. But hear, O deaf ones, what Her forefather says to Her: Hear, O Daughters, and see, and incline Your ear, and forget Your people, and Your father’s house, And the King will desire Your kindness (Ps. 44:11-12), that is, incomparable purity and chastity, and her immaculate virginity, for before You is Your Lord, that is, for He, her Creator and God, deigned to become her son. Therefore, worship Him as Your God and Son. And the daughters of Tire, that is, the peoples who were formerly idolatrous, for such was the city of Tire, subsequently, having become a daughter of God by faith in Christ and the divine bath of rebirth, will resort to You with gifts, as to the Most Pure Mother of their God. Also, the riches of Thy people will pray to Thy face with fear and love, kneeling before the most pure and venerable icon of Thy, which is actually being done to this day by all not only the Orthodox, but also by all the generally wise heretics, the Latins and Armenians, starting from the very times of the apostles, when the divine evangelist Luke wrote an honest image of it and brought it to Her, who was still arriving in this life. Being pleased with this, She (as tradition says) said: “Let the grace that abides in Me be with this image.” Let us listen further to the same prophecy, how excellent and true it is. All the glory of the Tsar’s Daughter is inside, covered with golden robes and speckled. By the glory of such a Daughter of the King and Creator of all, what else should be understood, unless her incomparable purity and equal virginity are incomparable with anything, while the golden robes corresponding to purity mean divine virtues, such as: humility, meekness, quietness, a gentle and sincere disposition, benevolence, love of mankind and similar virtues that adorn the created in the image and according to in the likeness of God's man. With all these virtues this all-praised Daughter of the heavenly King is adorned, with which She stands above all the daughters of Jerusalem in general, just as the wise Solomon clearly speaks about Her: Many daughters have acquired wealth, and created many strength; You have prospered and exalted yourself above everyone. False gratification and vain feminine kindness are not in You (Prov. 31:30–31). To whom are these wonderful praises of Solomon most befitting, if not only the Most Pure and Immaculate Mother of God? Although other human daughters before her acquired wealth and created strength, that is, virtue and wonderful corrections, such as: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Mariam, Esther, Judith, Anna the prophetess, Susanna, Jael, but not one of them can compare with the Most Pure Ever-Virgin - the Mother of Emmanuel. In those, false gratification was also seen, that is, various external decorations of the body with vestments and headdresses and rubbing with aromas and the like, invented by married wives for the sake of their husbands, which the wise called all vain kindness. But nothing like this has ever been invented regarding the Most Pure Mother of God, but all the glory of her goodness is within, that is, natural and adorned with venerable and splendid virtues. With such and such great glory and majesty of the god-like shrine, the common Queen of all is adorned in the divinely inspired scriptures. Let the madmen be ashamed who utter blasphemies against Her, who dare to belittle the incomparable height of Her god-like greatness and, like the iconoclast Copronymus, liken Her to a bag, which, they say, has a great price while it is full of gold, but when the gold is poured out, it no longer has any value or has very little. A similar thing, say the atheists, happened with the Most Pure Mother of God: while She carried the divine and worshiped Emmanuel in her womb, until then she was holy and glorious and had great dignity; after His birth, She lost all these virtues and became, they say, the same as all the other wives. Oh, what madness and ungodly slander of those who dare to say this! How did they, the fools, not understand what was said: Az rekh: you are gods of nature, and you are all sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6). And again: You will be holy, for I am holy (1 Pet. 1:16). And again: God is in the assembly of gods, but in the midst the gods will judge (Ps. 81:1). If the Most High Himself calls ordinary people, who strive to please Him with all virtue and righteous deeds, gods and sons of the Most High, commanding them to adhere to what is holy and to be like Him in all holiness and purity of life, then how could She who is above all the heavenly powers, incomparably more honorable and more glorious than them, lose Her incomparable glory and majesty and God-like shrine, Which was all sanctified by the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Her, as the divine Gabriel who appeared to Her announced? But even before him, her holy forefather said: The Most High has sanctified His village. God is in the midst of it, and does not move (Ps. 46:5-6). Hear, deaf ones, understand, foolish ones, and disappear: God, he says, is in the midst of her, that is, carried in her womb like a baby; for this reason, he says, she does not move, that is, she will not lose Her glory and the incomparable shrine that the worshiped divine Paraclete gave Her through His overshadowing and the nine-month stay of God the Word in Her. Tell me, O fools, what kind of earthly queen, after she bears sons and daughters to her husband, ceases to be and be called a queen and to have power in the entire kingdom of her husband? She is not only recognized and called a queen during the life of her husband, but also after his death remains for all her husband’s subjects a glorious and fearsome queen, honored and protected and loved by the entire synclit; and if she dies before or after her husband, she is buried royally, and after death she is called queen by everyone and is not deprived of this title. If this good and just order is observed in relation to short-lived and perishable kings, then how is it that God chose from all generations into the most honorable dwelling of the King of all, Christ God, who is a Virgin both at birth and after death - how is She considered by you, the God-fighters, to be an ordinary woman who has no glory, honor and power? And if the countless and glorious miracles performed by Her throughout the entire universe do not convince you to always give glory to Her, then although the wondrous and sudden gathering of the holy Apostles from all corners of the earth on the clouds for Her glorious burial, let it convince your unreasonable thought that just as before, when She conceived and carried Emmanuel in her womb, so after His birth and after Her sacred repose She was, is and always She will remain glorious and whatever she asks of Her Son and Creator, she is able to fulfill everything for those who call upon Her for help with faith and firm hope. Do you not hear, O insensible ones, the sacred singing, proclaiming: “Terrorized by the angelic powers in Zion, beholding His Master, holding a woman’s soul in his hands; pure, for she who gave birth to her son, proclaimed in a glorious manner: Come, O Pure One, be glorified to Thy Son and God.” If her Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Himself took into His hands the all-bright and all-holy soul of her and called on Her, saying: “Come, My honorable Mother, enjoy the same divine glory, splendor and greatness as I do,” then understand what and how great in heaven her glory and other divine splendor are, and stop speaking against Her blasphemy together with the evil iconoclast Copronymus, for this satanic annoyance against the Mother of God belongs to him. Stop, I ask you, stop, if you want to get rid of the bitter torment with Copronymus and with the annoyancers and blasphemers of the Most Pure Mother of God, whose glory and splendor and everything else concerning her is a divine and ineffable mystery, secretly foretold by various types of God-bearing prophets. And, firstly, Patriarch Jacob marked Her with a ladder, which he saw in a dream established on the earth, and its top extended to the very sky, and at the very top he saw the Lord and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. What else did the Lord secretly show with this vision, if not the One through whom He, the lover of mankind, was pleased to descend from the height of His divine glory to the weak and humble nature of man and put on the image of a slave, in order to clothe him in the original garment of incorruptibility that he had lost? At the same time, the steps of the ladder indicate the secret theophany that occurred at different times to the holy prophets, by which the indescribable vision of His incarnation, which was to take place in recent times, was gradually revealed. The angels of God ascending and descending along it mean: by ascent - the greatness of the Divine, and by descent - the badness of humanity, which God the Word was pleased to perceive. Secondly, Moses the seer of God was taught the mystery regarding it when he saw a bush engulfed in the flames of fire and not being burned. The bush signified the weakness of human nature, for the plant itself - the bush - is powerless, bruised, and all knotted, indicating the variety of our sins with twigs. The fire with which the bush burned and which did not burn it, denoted the Divinity of the Only Begotten Son of the Most High. For our God consumes our sins with fire, says the divine apostle (Heb. 12:29). This vision marked the perfect union of the Only Begotten with humanity, which He arranged through the Most Pure Mother of God, dwelling in Her and not scorching her, that is, preserving her incorruptible. Also, Daniel the Mysterious Verb, taught by God, taught us, calling It a mountain, from which, without the help of human hands, a stone separated and struck the polysyllabic body seen in a dream by King Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:34). About this mystery and about this mountain her forefather says: Mountain of God, fat mountain, damp mountain (Ps. 67:16). The mountain is fat, that is, overflowing and strongly pressed with spiritual gifts, and there is no other one that would be just like It, beautiful and pleasing to the Son of the Most High for His dwelling. The divine prophet shows this when he says: you do not feel all things, O people, other strewn mountains; there is, he says, no other mountain, that is, a pure virgin maiden, except this divine mountain. That’s why he adds: The mountain where God is pleased to live in it, for the Lord will dwell to the end (v. 17). Be ashamed with the nasty Copronymus about your faith, who says that She lost the glory and honor of the ever-virgin after she gave birth to the worshiped Emmanuel. For the Lord, he says, will dwell to the end, that is, She will remain inseparable in the glory of His Only Begotten Son. Another secret verb calls Her a rod that grew from the root of Jesse, saying clearly: And a rod will come out of the root of Jesse, and a flower will arise from its root (Is. 11:1), and other further prophecy, which I leave, so as not to be burdensome for some. But why did the prophet call the Ever-Virgin a rod? Because the Flesh-Bearer God, who arose from Her, crushed all the heads of poisonous snakes, that is, the various demonic charms throughout the universe, with which they, the wicked, enslaved themselves and separated the accursed human race from God. That is why what was born by Her without seed is called Her color, for the sake of the purity and fragrance of the incarnation of God the Word, and since by His coming the church made up of pagans blossomed, allegorically called the wilderness, which it was before, as it was afflicted by the ignorance of God and drowned by all wickedness, as the Irmos of the third hymn of the second tone clearly teaches, which is sung like this: “The desert flourished like a cranium, Lord, the pagan barren church, by Your coming, and my heart was established in it.” And why is it not said that the desert blossomed like a rose, but like a creen? After all, the rose is very fragrant and beautiful to look at; because the krin (lily), with its most pleasant fragrance, has three more leaves, with which it forms the three divine hypostases of the Holy Trinity, in the name of which the divine bath of rebirth is performed, I mean saving baptism, in which and through which the former desert, that is, the church made up of pagan peoples, was purified and flourished, that is, renewed as a color called krin. Although the rose is fragrant and has a beautiful appearance, it does not serve as an image of the Holy Trinity, since it has many leaves and grows on a thorny plant, which is why it is not suitable for showing the mystery of the Holy Trinity. For thorns in the Holy Scriptures are taken to designate sin, as for example when he says: I returned to passion when the thorns fell (Ps. 31:4), that is, having sinned, I did not care about my sin, did not pass by as if I were guilty of nothing, but immediately armed myself against it with fasting, prayer, tears and sighs, vigils and frequent kneeling, depressing himself and torturing his flesh. Therefore, I advise you, brethren, into whom the most terrible thorn of blasphemy of the nasty Copronymus has been pierced, take care to quickly retreat from it and throw out this blasphemy from your thoughts, as the invention of an iconoclast and the most cruel persecutor of the Orthodox, as a Jewish invention, or more correctly, satanic, for this fighter against God does not cease from the very beginning to sow the weeds of his malice among the good. seed in the village of the Heavenly Worker, and the wicked one strives to turn man away again from the Orthodox faith in the Holy Trinity. Having recognized his great malice and uncontrollable fury against us, retreat from such dishonor of the Most Pure Mother of God and the terrible blasphemy against Her, so that She too may come closer to you and preserve you without harm from all the wiles of the evil one and make you worthy to stand at the right hand of her Only Begotten Son, to Whom is due all glory, honor and worship, forever and ever. Amen.