The Theotokos, after having prayed, fasted, kept herself pure and chaste in body and mind through the grace and light of the Holy Trinity – she gave birth to Christ in the flesh. The theology in these next series of divine services shows us how the holy apostles, holy fathers, and all Christians become a Christ-bearer (theophoros) and give birth to Christ in the cavernous, noetic heart. Metropolitan Hilarion takes us through the Apostles’ Fast from the second week after Pentocost, which uses the liturgical book called the Pentecostarion, to the last feast of the Church’s yearly cycle of worship. There is a movable fast and feast followed by the synaxis or gathering of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul that marks the end of the Apostles’ Fast. The apostolic preaching was built on Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit starting on Pentecost. In Orthodox iconography, the feast of Pentecost is shown in a way that mirrors Christ’s baptism with the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles. It’s an image and reality of how the Church works, how it remains true and unified and powerful. It shows us how the Holy Trinity wills the message of the Gospel to be disseminated to the world in darkness. Usually, the center seat between Peter and Paul is unoccupied, but Christ the King is figured below and in the center of the image. The holy apostles are arrayed in a semi-circle to show the type of unity that characterizes the Church with the Holy Spirit taking a central role in descending upon each of them equally. That empty seat among the twelve apostles is reserved for the invisible head of the visible Church. Some Roman Catholics might see that as sede vacante but that’s not what it seems to be at all. The Orthodox Church has demonstrated that the reservation of the seat is the preservation of the Church. Sometimes the icon also shows the Theotokos, the Mother of God seated in the center among the apostles; that’s an idea rarely discussed or mentioned. The icon also depicts the apostles in an upper room like Mount Sion or Mount Tabor where Christ was transfigured before the holy apostles Peter, James, and John.
The Transfiguration of the Lord occurs on August 6 during the Dormition Fast, and it’s among “the Great Twelve” feasts. It was chosen at this time because of its link to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord. The Transfiguration was transferred to the summer so that it doesn’t happen during Great Lent but during the forty days before the Exaltation of the Cross. This feast celebrates “the uncreated divine light” that appeared as the glory of God. Christ has not changed. Christ was never isolated or separated from God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The divine light is experienced as an energy of the Holy Trinity that gives us “unwavering faith” and strength to endure; it abolishes doubts and fears. The poetic Menaion teaches us “… that Thou art truly the Radiance of the Father” (Transfig., Matins, Kontakion). The holy prophets foretold of Christ and the uncreated light. The Orthodox are unique in understanding the difference scripturally and theologically that we experience this divine uncreated light as God’s energy, not His hidden and unknowable essence. This teaching is important for our salvation because we imitate how the apostles and the Theotokos were filled with grace and the Holy Spirit and divine light, and they were unified to the Holy Trinity. We’re not interacting with God through a created object called grace, but we are deified and united through Christ’s divinity and humanity that was made possible through the incarnation and the Mother of God. We can bear Christ and Christ can bear us. This reality wasn’t invented by hyper-mystical monks on Mt. Athos, or an ideology called “Palamism.” The Athonite monks are imitating Mary the Mother of God. It’s entirely scriptural, traditional, and true by ascetic experience. We become “receptacles of glory” just like the Theotokos models for us who was born with natural weakness of human nature, who fell asleep and was taken up to Christ in her body and soul. The Transfiguration also connects Mount Tabor to the Old Testament Mount Sinai. Christ has shown us, “the nature of man, arrayed in the original beauty of the image” (Menaion, Transfig., Great Vespers, Aposticha). Sinai was dark and thundering, but Tabor was shining with gentle light. While there was nakedness, death, barrenness, fire, and the cross on the one hand, on the other hand there is victory, life, glorious robes, and radiance. Only the Holy Trinity can encompass or go beyond what we call “good and evil,” and bring eternal value on all negative values. Only the Cross can teach us that for every bad thing in existence, Christ intersects it with a connecting cross beam, and all opposites will have a trial in the fire and the light. Early in patristic theology, Dionysius the Areopagite also discusses in depth this topic of divine light and divine darkness, and the theology of illumination in the Orthodox tradition. The Cappadocian fathers taught that “the light of Christ is the light of the Father.”
On August 15, the Dormition of the Most-Holy Theotokos is celebrated as the last of the great twelve feasts of the yearly cycle. September 1 begins the Church’s year with the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. The Mother of God understands how people can quickly become hopeless, since she suffered much in her own life and watched her son die. She stands out in the ecclesial calendar and as a model for Orthodox Christians. The Theotokos is “Orthodox spirituality.” Her prayers have an “unfailing hope.” She is a model for how to live spiritual life and how to depart this world in peace and longing for Christ. Some Roman Catholics and Protestants ask and wonder if the Orthodox Church will ever reunify with them. If we tamper with the Orthodox tradition of venerating the Most-Holy Theotokos, we tamper with our own salvation. If we tamper with Dormition or the Nativity or the Conception of the Theotokos, we tamper with salvation itself. Likewise, if we change up the meaning of the Transfiguration and Pentecost, we eventually change what the Church originally has been. So, if it’s possible to “lose your salvation,” as some say, it could involve how we relate to the Mother of God because she is sitting in the middle of the foundation of the Church Itself and all the holy apostles. Next, Volume V discusses the Sacraments and Other Rites in Orthodox Christianity.