In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, we are celebrating the death of the Mother of God. We are also celebrating her resurrection, because, as the icon of this Feast shows us, the soul of the Mother of God is being taken away by Christ at the time of her death. However, we also know from the earliest Tradition of the apostles that when the apostles went to look for her body, they could not find it because it was already gone. Therefore, we have to say that she was the first-fruits of the Resurrection.
Why is this the case with her ? It is because she lived out the very last words that we heard today in the Gospel. She became, in the living out of those words, the example for the rest of us of how to live the Christian life, how to gain eternal life, and how to enter the Kingdom of God. The two readings today come together to show us precisely how.
Very many times I have heard certain people (who do not know the Scriptures very well) say that when someone in the crowd comments : “‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts that nursed You’”, and our Saviour replies : “‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it’”, these words are putting down the Mother of God, somehow. However, nothing of the sort is the case. Our Saviour is putting in their place the people who said such things. It is not simply because the Mother of God bore Christ that she is blessed as a woman. It is not only because she gave birth to the Saviour that she is “more honourable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim”. It is not only because she gave birth to the Son of God and raised Him to adulthood. It is because she heard the word of God and kept it.
The Apostle Luke tells us precisely that. The Mother of God kept in her heart the things that happened when Christ was a Child, and she treasured them (see Luke 2:19). She kept God’s word her whole life through. From her earliest childhood she was dedicated to the service of God. Her life, her whole life, was a life of obedient service to the Lord ; loving, obedient service to the Lord.
When the Archangel Gabriel, sent from the Lord, told her that she would give birth to a Son (and she was not even married), she said : “‘How can this be?’” (Luke 1:34). Nevertheless, she accepted the promise even though she could not understand. Also, Joseph, her betrothed husband (who had all sorts of doubts and struggles about the whole situation), when the angel visited him, trusted God and accepted His word.
These, our spiritual ancestors, heard the word of God and kept it. What does this mean : “to hear the word of God and to keep it ?” It means, in part, being like the Mother of God herself. It means being like Christ Himself, who did not think it “robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself”, as the Epistle says. He limited Himself – He who is not limitable. He who created everything, and is creating everything, became Himself a creature. He emptied Himself. He became a human being in order to save us, in order to save us from ourselves, in order to save us from our darkness, our fear, our fallenness.
Why did He do all this ? It was because of love, selfless love, love with no strings attached. Why did the Mother of God live such a life of obedient service, and hear the word of God and keep it the way she did ? She did this because of love, the same love of the same loving God. This is the way for you and for me – self-emptying, self-sacrificing, selfless love – not putting ourselves first and in front of everyone and everything (which Canadian society says we are supposed to do). We must do the opposite : to be the last, and to be happy to be the last ; not to be praised for everything, but to be satisfied to be serving Christ, to be doing good things in our lives, to be living according to the talents that God has given, and offering them to Him ; not to be asking to be thanked for everything that we do, but to be grateful that we can serve the Lord in helping other people, in feeding other people who are hungry, in consoling other people who are grief-stricken for one reason or another, in being useful to God according to the gifts He has given. I do not need the thanks of human beings. It is enough satisfaction to know that these things that are being done are being done to His glory.
“You can never please everyone”, my Mother said to me many times. “Do not even try to please everyone ; you cannot do it, because people are too different”. People are too different ; people are too moody ; people are too selfish. You cannot please all the people all the time. We have to be pleasing to the Lord. After all, God is eternal. God is our Creator. In God, we have hope of eternal life. Which is better : to try to please God or to try to please fickle people ? God, I believe. However, we usually fall into trying to please fickle people because we are so easily distracted.
The Mother of God, in her life and in her death, is an example of how to live our lives in hope and to come to the end of our lives in hope. We do not have eternal life just because we are human beings, just because God saves us, just because God loves us. We have eternal life because, already in this life, we begin to participate and share in it. Already, in this life, in our behaviour towards other human beings, in our behaviour towards the creation around us, we have the possibility of participating in the beginning of eternal life. That is how we find the hope of eternal life : in experiencing this love now, in practicing this love now, here, amongst each other. The life which we are now living is the preparation, the entry-way to eternal life with Christ. What this is going to be like very much depends on what we are doing with our life now.
The Mother of God was, and is salt and yeast (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33) because of her love, her obedience, and her service. Her whole life was love, and obedience in love and service. She lived this way not because she was even asked, but because she saw what needed to be done. She understood in her heart what God was directing her to do, and she did it. She became like Adam and Eve before the Fall, whose hearts were completely, 100 per cent in tune with God’s will. God did not even have to tell them what to do because their hearts told them what God would like them to do in certain circumstances : how to name this animal, how to name that animal, how to name this tree or that tree, how to live amongst these animals, how to be good and nurturing to these animals and these trees and these plants in the garden. Even when they fell, they did not lose all communication with the Lord right away.
The Mother of God became like that. You and I can become like that as well. Probably there are other people alive today who have, in the course of their lives, lived as salt and yeast in this world (and there certainly have been quite a few people who have lived this way before us). Salt and yeast are not visible – we cannot tell where they are. We cannot see them, but we can certainly tell what they do. When we taste bread, we can tell that salt and yeast have been at work. That is what you and I are to be like in this world – like the Mother of God.
The Saviour emptied Himself and became least of all so that the Father ultimately raised Him up and exalted Him above everyone and everything. Exaltation comes only after self-emptying humility. Humility is not being a grovelling creeper, like Uriah Heep. It is knowing who we are in Christ, having confidence in Christ’s love, and knowing that we were created to be good. At the same time, humility is understanding that we do not need to be noticed ; we do not need to be praised. We do what we do because of love of God, in the same manner as the Mother of God did, and still does. She loves God above everything.
Keeping the word of God means understanding what He wants us to do : to live according to His love, and to do what this love, this selfless love, directs us to do. Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who was a wonderfully holy man, was one of those imitators of the Mother of God in the way he lived his life in Alaska around 200 years ago. He said over and over again so that all the people in the region remembered his words after 200 years without writing them down : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”.
Let us indeed love God above all, and do His holy will. Let us ask the Mother of God to pray for us, to protect us, to support us, so that we will be able to love God above all, and do His holy will, as she did and does. Let us also ask Saint Herman to pray for us, too, and to support us by his prayers, so that we, in our imitation of their loving service, may imitate Christ as they imitated and do imitate Christ, and live in love, being yeast and salt in this world. May we come at the end to the heavenly Kingdom and hear our Lord say : “‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you’” (Matthew 25:34). May we love God above all, and do His holy will, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.