March: Day 25: Teaching 2:
Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos
(On the Communion of Human Nature With the Divinity in the Incarnation of the Son of God)
By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos
(On the Communion of Human Nature With the Divinity in the Incarnation of the Son of God)
By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
I. Contemplating with faith the great mystery now revealed, the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, you do not know, brethren, what to marvel at more: the degree to which God emptied and humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming man (Phil. 2:7); or the degree to which human nature was exalted through this emptiness of the Divinity?
II. a) Human nature was amazingly exalted, first of all, in the person of the incarnate Lord Himself. The Son of God took upon Himself human nature forever, and accepted it into the unity of His Divine hypostasis, so that although there are now two natures in Him - Divine and human, they are united in Him inseparably and constitute one person, one Divine hypostasis. He, both after the incarnation and in human nature, is still the same one true Son of God and true God as He was before the incarnation. As a result of such a hypostatic union of two natures in Christ, humanity in Him became partaker of the Divinity and became deified, that is, it assimilated from the Divinity everything that it was capable of assimilating without losing its limitations and human properties, and was enriched by the Divinity with wisdom, holiness, life-giving power, and other Divine perfections. Following this, humanity, deified in the person of the Lord Jesus, became in Him a participant in Divine worship. Now He will sit on the throne of glory at the right hand of God the Father in His human nature; now to Him, already in the flesh, has been given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18); now, even in human nature, every tribe of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth worships Him as God (Phil. 2:10). Well, tell me, what could be higher than what our human nature was honored with in Christ?
b) If not to such a degree, then still to an amazing degree our nature was exalted in the person of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the Lord. She gave birth to Him, without a doubt, not according to His Divinity, but according to His humanity. But since the humanity in Christ from the very moment of His conception was inseparably and indivisibly united with the Divinity into His one Divine hypostasis: it means that the Most Holy Virgin conceived, and bore in her womb, and gave birth to the true Son of God, namely the true God. Consequently, she is truly the Mother of God (Theotokos). And having been deemed worthy to be the Mother of the Lord, the Creator of all that exists, She naturally exalted herself thereby above all His creations, not only earthly, but also heavenly, and is rightly confessed to be more honorable even than the cherubim, and more glorious, without comparison, than the seraphim, that is, the highest created spirits. She is the first according to God, she is the Queen of heaven and earth!
c) If not to such a degree, then to an amazing degree human nature can be elevated in each of the people who only believe in the incarnate Son of God. While one of the daughters of men was deemed worthy to be the Mother of the Lord, all of us who believe in Him are deemed worthy to be His brothers, sons of His heavenly Father, partakers of the Holy Spirit. In the Mystery of Baptism we are born of God, we are clothed in Christ. Through the Mystery of Chrismation we receive the Holy Spirit. Through the Mystery of the Eucharist we are truly united with Christ, so that He abides in us, and we in Him (John 4:15). And if after this we live piously, in a Christian manner, then we more and more form Christ in ourselves (Gal. 4:19), and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20). Now we are children of God, brethren of the only begotten Son of God (1 John 3:2), heirs of God, co-heirs of Christ (Rom. 8:17), we will reign with Him (2 Tim. 2:12) and sit with Him on the throne of His glory (Rev. 3:21).
III. Shall we add, brethren, a moral instruction? It is obvious to everyone. If our nature has been exalted to such a degree in the person of the now incarnate Lord and His Most Pure Mother, and can be exalted in each of us, then let us learn to respect our nature and to behave in accordance with its high dignity. Let us firmly remember that it is truly exalted in the righteous alone, true Christians, through their piety, and in sinners it is only more and more humiliated, and while the former, ascending through the degrees of moral perfection, will finally ascend to heaven to reign there with Christ, the latter, gradually falling, will finally fall into the abyss of hell to be eternally tormented there with the devil.
Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
