All Generations Will Call Me Blessed: Sermons on the Mother of God

by St Philaret of Moscow

I will quickly say here that I would earnestly desire that of our wandering brethren, who, before the judgment of Christ, have abandoned the priesthood, look at the example of the mother of God. For they have punished themselves through the willful abandonment of priesthood to complete chaos, allowing themselves to be guided by women in services, women who are doubtless not wise but foolish! For what Virgin other than a foolish one would dare put on herself, within the Church, that which the most holy Virgin Theotokos herself did not dare assume? Now let us look at a different spectacle, also too immense in space, but now visible because of the light that revealed itself after the death of the mother of God. As soon as she died, the entire assembly of apostles, as pious tradition tells us, was gathered from all direction by the Spirit of God, not to lament her passing, but rather to celebrate her burial. As once before the doubt of Thomas became proof of the resurrection of Christ, so now the dilatoriness of Thomas becomes the means of glorifying the ascension of the mother of God, which to that point was hidden, just as her life on earth was hidden. Having accepted the glory of God in the heavens, from that moment she no longer rejected human glory on earth, which up to that moment was not appropriate for her humility, and which now has become beneficial and useful for all who live on earth.