Why We Love the Virgin Mary

A Coptic Orthodox Understanding of Saint Mary

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, amen.

I want to start with a question that people ask us all the time. Sometimes they ask it kindly. Sometimes they ask it a little suspiciously. But it is a fair question, and it deserves a real answer.

The question is this: why do you love Mary so much?

Why do we sing to her in every liturgy? Why do we name our churches after her? Why do we fast for her? Why do our mothers whisper her name when they are frightened?

Tonight I want to give you an honest answer. And the answer has two parts, and the two parts are joined together so tightly that you cannot pull them apart.

1. We love her because she is the pride of our race

In the Coptic Church, one of the titles we love most for Saint Mary is that she is the pride of our race.

Not the pride of the angels. Our race. Ours. Human.

Let me say something very clearly, because this is where a lot of misunderstanding begins.

Saint Mary is not divine. She is not a goddess. We do not worship her. She was a real girl, from a real village, in a real country under real Roman occupation. She got tired. She got hungry. She had a body that ached and a heart that could be broken — and one day it was.

She is one of us.

And that is exactly why we love her.

Because out of the whole human race, out of all the generations from Adam onwards, God looked at this young woman in Nazareth and chose her. Listen to how the angel greets her:

"Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you." — Luke 1:28

"Highly favoured." Notice the direction of that sentence. Favour is something you receive. Grace is something that is given. The angel is not congratulating Mary on her achievements. He is announcing what God is doing.

So we do not say she was chosen because she was divine. We say she was human, like us, and God's grace rested on her in a way it has rested on no one else.

Here is why that matters so much.

When God came to save the world, He did not go around humanity. He came through it. Saint Athanasius of Alexandria — our own Coptic Pope, the twentieth Patriarch of Alexandria — spent his whole life defending this. In On the Incarnation he teaches that the Word of God took to Himself a real body, a body no different from ours, and prepared it for Himself in the Virgin as His own temple. That is a summary of his argument, not a word-for-word quotation. But this line is his, and it is famous:

"He became man that we might be made God." — St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, ch. 54

Do you see it? Our humanity was not discarded. It was taken up. It was healed from the inside.

And the place where God took our humanity was the womb of a daughter of Adam.

That is why we can stand up and say, without embarrassment, 'She is the pride of our race.'

2. We love her because we love the One she carried

Now here is the heart of everything I want to say tonight. If you forget the rest, keep this.

We never understand Mary on her own. We understand her because of her son.

Think about who was in that womb. He was not simply a good man who later got promoted. He was not a prophet who was upgraded at His baptism. The One in her womb was the eternal Son and Word of God, who has no beginning, through whom everything that exists was made.

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." — John 1:14

And Saint Paul:

"Who, being in very nature God… made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." — Philippians 2:6–7

Sit with that for a second. The One who holds the galaxies in place became small enough to be held. The One who feeds every living creature was fed by a young mother. He was carried. He was born. He grew up. He got splinters in a carpenter's shop. He wept at a grave. He was arrested, beaten, nailed to a cross, and he died. And on the third day He rose, and He opened paradise for us.

That is who Mary carried.

So when the Church calls her Theotokos — "the one who gave birth to God", which we usually say in English as "Mother of God" — please understand what we are doing. That title is not mainly a statement about Mary at all.

It is a statement about Jesus.

It means: the One born from her is truly God, come in the flesh.

And let me remove one more misunderstanding straight away. We are not saying Mary is the source of divinity. She did not give Him His Godhead. God the Word has no mother in His divinity and no father in His humanity. What she gave Him was our flesh, our blood, our human nature — and the Person who took that nature from her was already, eternally, God.

You do not become the mother of nature. You become the mother of a person. And that Person is God the Word.

3. Every true teaching about Mary protects a truth about Christ

This is the point I most want you to be able to explain to a friend.

Christian teaching about Mary was never designed to pull attention away from Christ. Rightly understood, it stands guard over Christ.

Look how it works:

• Theotokos, Mother of God — protects the truth that Jesus is truly God, not a creature, not adopted, not a good man wearing a divine costume.
• Virgin Mother — protects the truth that the Incarnation is God's own initiative. This is not the next step in human progress. This is a new beginning, and it comes from above.
• Her real motherhoo protects the truth that Christ became truly human, not a ghost, not an appearance, not a hologram of a man.
• Her place in salvation histor protects the truth that the eternal Word stepped into real time, real geography, and and real history. Under a real emperor. In a real town.

Take away any one of those and you have damaged the doctrine of Christ.

And that is precisely what happened in the fifth century. Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, was uncomfortable with "Theotokos". He preferred "Christotokos" — mother of Christ.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria — again, one of ours, Pope of Alexandria — saw the danger immediately. And I want you to hear that he was not simply protecting Mary's honour.. He was protecting the identity of Jesus Christ. Because if you cannot say that the One born from Mary is God, then you have quietly split Jesus into two — a divine one and a human one, standing side by side. And if Jesus is split, then it was only a man who died on the cross, and we are not saved.

Here is Cyril, from his letter to Nestorius that the Council of Ephesus later approved:

"Since the holy Virgin gave birth in the flesh to God united hypostatically with the flesh, for this reason we call her Theotokos." — St Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius

"United with the flesh" — from the very first moment. Not a man who was later joined to God. One person, from the womb.

At the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church confessed the title Theotokos, and the story goes that the people of Ephesus carried the bishops home through the streets with torches. They were not celebrating a new devotion. They were celebrating that their Saviour had not been taken away from them.

In one of the homilies he preached at Ephesus, Cyril greets her as the Theotokos, the treasure honouredd by the whole world, through whom the Trinity is glorified, through whom the cross is celebrated, and and through whom churches are founded across the earth.

Notice — even his praise of Mary is running at full speed toward Christ.

4. This is not a mediaevall invention

Sometimes people say honouringg Mary is something the Church invented later, in the Middle Ages, when things got complicated.

The evidence says otherwise. Let me walk you through a few centuries very quickly.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, writing around AD 107 on his way to be eaten by lions in Rome, insists that Jesus was truly born of a virgin, truly ate and drank, and and truly suffered. He is fighting people who said Christ only seemed human. Mary's real motherhood was his proof.

Saint Irenaeus, around AD 180, gives the Church one of its most beautiful images — Eve and Mary:

"The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith." — St Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.22.4

One woman said no. One woman said yes. And the second woman's yes opened the door for the Saviour.

Saint Athanasius, in the fourth century, uses the word 'Theotokos's' in his writings against the Arians — a full century before Ephesus. The title was not invented at the council. The council defended a title the Church was already using.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian, the great poet of the Church, sings about her constantly. Summarising his imagery: he marvels that the One who feeds all creation was fed at His mother's breast andthat the Child she carried in her arms is the One who carries the whole world.

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus is blunt about the stakes:

"If anyone does not accept the holy Mary as Theotokos, he is cut off from the Godhead." — St Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101

Again — that is a statement about Christ.

Saint Ambrose of Milan points to her as the pattern for every believer:

"Let Mary's soul be in each of you, to magnify the Lord." — St Ambrose, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke

And Saint Augustine gives us the line that keeps everything in proportion:

"Mary was more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ." — St Augustine, On Holy Virginity

Read that again. Even her physical motherhood is not her greatest glory. Her faith is. And faith is something you and I can imitate.

Also today is the Transfiguration feast,east, and yes, the early Church Fathers and theologians drew profound typological and theological connections between the Virgin Mary and the Transfiguration. They saw both the Annunciation and the event on Mount Tabor as pivotal moments where the hidden glory of God interacted directly with humanity.

Here are the three primary ways the Church Fathers connected them:

1. The Linguistic Connection: "Overshadowing"

One of the most striking connections is found in the original Greek text of the Gospel of Luke, centringon the word 'episkiazein'n' (to overshadow).

• The Annunciation: In Luke 1:35, the Archangel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you."
• The Transfiguration: In Luke 9:34, as Peter is speaking on Mount Tabor, "A cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud."

The Fathers recognised that the exact same divine presence—the Shekinah glory cloud of the Holy Spirit—that overshadowed the apostles on Mount Tabor is the one that overshadowed the Virgin Mary's womb. Mary was the first "Mount Tabor", experiencing the enveloping presence of God's uncreated glory before the apostles did.

2. StEphrem the Syrian and the Two Natures of Christ

StEphrem the Syrian (who is highly venerated in the Coptic and Syriac traditions) explicitly connected the Virgin Mary and the Transfiguration in his famous Sermon on the Transfiguration. He used both Mary and the events on Mount Tabor to defend the Orthodox understanding that Christ is fully human and fully divine.

To prove that the Transfigured Christ was not a phantom or just a spirit, StEphrem anchored Christ's humanity in Mary:

"If He was not flesh, why was Mary introduced at all? And if He was not God, whom was Gabriel calling Lord? ... If He was not flesh, whom did Mary suckle? And if He was not God, to whom did the Magi offer gifts?"

For StEphrem, the blinding light of the Transfiguration proves Christ's divinity, but it only matters for our salvation because that same God took real flesh from the Virgin Mary.

3. The Vessel of the Uncreated Light

Later Fathers, particularly StGregory Palamas and StJohn of Damascus, wrote extensively about the "Uncreated Light" revealed at the Transfiguration. They emphasised that Jesus did not "become" radiant on Mount Tabor; rather, He briefly allowed the apostles to see the divine light.. He already possessed it.it.

When applying this to the Virgin Mary, theologians note a powerful parallel:

• Mount Tabor was permitted to hold the uncreated fire of Christ's divinity for a brief moment without being consumed.
• The Virgin Mary held that exact same uncreated fire within her womb for nine months without being consumed (which is why she is frequently likened to the Burning Bush of Moses).

In patristic thought, the Transfiguration reveals on the outside what the Virgin Mary contained on the inside.

And one more, and it comes from home. The oldest known written prayer to Saint Mary that we have—thene we call Sub tuum praesidium, "Beneath your protection"—survivesn a scrap of papyrus discovered in Egypt. Scholars debate the exact date; it is usually placed in the third or fourth century. That means Christians in our own country were asking for her prayers while the Roman persecutions were still going on. Some form of that prayer is still sung in our churches today.

Notice the pattern running through every single one of these Fathers. Their teaching about Mary is never free-floating. It is always fastened to Christ, to the Incarnation, to salvation, to the Church.

5. Christians once shared far more of this than most people realise

Here is a piece of history that surprises people on all sides.

For most of Christian history, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox like us, Roman Catholics — and the early Protestant Reformers — held a great deal in common about Saint Mary:

• the Virgin Birth,
• that she is the mother of Jesus Christ,
• the title Theotokos, Mother of God, understood as a confession about Christ,
• her unique blessedness,
• and her real place in the history of salvation.

Martin Luther never dropped the title Mother of God. He defended it, he confessed the virgin birth in the Lutheran confessions, and he wrote a long, tender commentary on the Magnificat in which he praises her precisely for her humility and for pointing away from herself to God.

John Calvin firmly held the virgin birth, and in commenting on Elizabeth calling her "the mother of my Lord", he takes it as evidence of the unity of the two natures in the one Person of Christ. He was far more cautious about devotional titles and about anything he thought could turn into superstition — but the Christological point at Ephesus, he did not dispute.

Now let me be honest with you, because honesty is part of apologetics.

Not everything about Mary has been agreed by everyone, always. Later teachings defined in the Roman Catholic Church — the Immaculate Conception in 1854 andthe Assumption as defined in 1950 — are not held by us in the same way. We keep the ancient feast of her Dormition and her body's departure, and we confess her as Ever-Virgin, but we do not use the Latin formulation of the Immaculate Conception, partly because we understand ancestral sin somewhat differently. So we should never pretend the whole Church has always said exactly the same thing on every point.

What we can say is that the ancient common ground is much wider than people assume.

And then, particularly from around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries onwards,, in many Protestant movements, Marian devotion became very quiet. There were reasons. Some were reactions against genuine excesses. Some came out of revival movements that wanted everything stripped back to Christ alone.

And I want to say something generous here: that concern was not stupid. It came from love for Jesus. Anyone who worries that honouringg Mary might crowd out Christ is worrying about the right thing.

So here is our answer, and it is not a defensive one:

True honourr given to Saint Mary does not compete with Christ. It points to Christ.

A window does not compete with the sunlight. It lets the light in, and the whole room fills up.

6. Mary herself tells us how to understand her

You do not have to guess how to think about her. She tells you. In her own words, in the Magnificat:

"From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me." — Luke 1:48–49

Look at both halves of that sentence, because people usually only quote the half they like.

Some Christians are uncomfortable with the first half. But there it is, in the Bible, from her own mouth: all generations will call me blessed. That is not our invention. That is prophecy, and when we sing to her, we are simply doing what she said would happen.

But she does not stop there. In the very next breath she explains why:

"For the Mighty One has done great things for me."

She does not say, "Look what I achieved." She says, "Look what God did." Her greatness is God's grace and God's work in her — received, not manufactured.

And that is the rule for all Orthodox honour of Mary. The moment our love for her stops pointing at God, we have stopped following her example.

7. Mary never keeps the attention on herself

Let me take you to a wedding.

Cana, in Galilee. A family party, and something has gone badly wrong — the wine has run out. In that culture this is a humiliation the family will be talking about for years.

Mary notices. Mothers notice. She goes to her Son and tells Him.

And then she turns to the servants. Now — this is the moment. She could say anything. She could say, "Bring the problem to me. I'll sort it out."

She does not. Here is what she says:

"Do whatever he tells you." — John 2:5

Five words. And here is a detail I love: those are the last recorded words of Saint Mary in the entire Bible.

Her final message to the Church, preserved for two thousand years, is an instruction to obey her Son.

If you ever want a one-sentence summary of true Marian spirituality, it is right there. She stands beside Christ, she turns to us, and she says:

"Do whatever He tells you."

She does not replace Jesus. She points to Jesus. She does not ask us to stop at her. She leads us to her Son.

And that is exactly where we find her at the end — at the foot of the cross, standing, saying nothing, staying with Him when almost everyone else had gone.

8. So — why do we love the Virgin Mary?

Let me bring it home.

We love her because she is the pride of our race — a real human being, one of us, from whom the eternal Word truly took our humanity so that our humanity could be healed.

We love her because she is Theotokos, the Mother of God — not because she gave Christ His divinity, but because the One born from her was already, eternally, God.

We call her blessed because the Mighty One did great things for her — and she was the first to say so.

And every time we look toward Saint Mary, if we are looking properly, we will find her pointing past herself toward her Son.

Her message has never changed:

"Do whatever He tells you."

So let me finish by turning where she is pointing.

The greatest honour we can possibly give to Saint Mary is this: to love the Son whom she loved, to believe in the Lord whom she carried, to worship the God who became man from her, and to obey the One to whom she still points us —

Jesus Christ our Lord, crucified and risen for our salvation.

Glory be to God, now and forever. Amen.