Below are four of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God, for Thanksgiving Day, for the Feast of St Nicholas, and for the Feast of the Conception of St Anne, 2007.

Today we celebrate the feast that is known in the Byzantine tradition as the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple. Many saints of the Old Testament, and a few of the New, have entered the Temple in Jerusalem, but we don't have feast days for any of their entrances into the Temple. What is it about Our Lady's entrance that makes it special enough to merit a solemn feast day?

I think we have first to understand what "entrance" means in her case. It's not simply a matter of stepping over the threshold into the building. Thousands of people, both good and bad, have done that in past centuries, with no special effect or fruit of it, outside of what God might have done in a hidden manner in their souls. But Mary's entrance has a deeper meaning. Let us look at the word "entrance" not so much as a simple moving from one physical place into another, but rather in the sense that one would, for example, enter a monastery.

When someone says, "I'm going to enter a monastery," he doesn't mean: "I'm going to pass through the gates, attend a few services and then leave." He means: "I have discerned a divine calling and so the monastery will henceforth be my home, the place where I make my lifelong commitment to the Lord. I am becoming a member of the monastic community."

Tradition has it that the child Mary did stay in the Temple for an extended period of time, though she did not make it her permanent home. But for her to enter the Temple still carries with it a similar meaning to one who is entering a monastery. This was a response to a divine calling, her unique election as the one who would be the indispensable instrument of God in the incarnation of his Son. At the age of three, she would not have understood this, but her parents were moved by the Holy Spirit to consecrate her to God from the very beginning, and so God took over. This entrance was a declaration, a hidden manifestation—how's that for a paradox?—of a divine mystery. It is hidden because no one really knew at that time what was happening on the mystical plane as that little girl was ushered into God's holy place. But for us who have the hindsight of faith and tradition, we see a girl manifestly entering the Temple—a girl who was chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of God. Her presence in the Temple declares this truth.

So this was the beginning of a commitment, a life of service to God. From this moment on she can truly be considered the Handmaid of the Lord, something she grew to understand more deeply until she was finally ready to offer her unhesitating "yes" to the Father when the moment came for the Son of God to become the Son of Man. Perhaps when the Angel was with her she reflected briefly on her past: her study of the word of God, her humble service, her prayer and worship, and yes, maybe even that day of her entrance into the Temple, which was perhaps the first time she had begun to appreciate the beauty and majesty of the things of God. In any case, conscious of her total commitment to God, her membership in his chosen people, and her faith in Him whom her heart loved, she was able to completely surrender to his will.

But at the moment of the Annunciation, she most likely did not know all that his will would demand of her. She did know she was taking a serious risk in allowing God to impregnate her without the aid of a husband. She knew very well that she could be stoned to death, being suspected of adultery. But she couldn't have known what she would suffer as she would stand by the Cross of this Son whom she was now welcoming into the world with such tenderness and love.

So there's something else that we can say about the entrance of Mary into the Temple. It was kind of a "Great Entrance," as we have in the Divine Liturgy when the prepared gifts are brought to the altar to be consecrated. The bread and wine are placed on the altar, and the deacon says to the priest: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." These are the words that Mary would hear from the Angel. Perhaps as Mary entered the Temple and was received by the priest to be consecrated to God, the Angels were already singing prophecies in Heaven: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the Child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

It is not Mary, however, but Christ who would actually be sacrificed on the altar of the Cross. He is both the High Priest and the Sacrificial Victim of our redemption. But Mary's entrance into the Temple is like her bringing the gifts to the altar. She herself is consecrated as a sacred vessel for the Holy Mysteries, and she would provide the bread and wine, that is, the flesh and blood of Christ, by giving birth to Him, and this flesh and blood would be the Sacrifice that would save the world.

A priest cannot celebrate the Holy Eucharist without bread and wine. The Son of God could not die for our sins without the Incarnation, without a human body and blood to offer in sacrifice. So Our Lady's "Great Entrance" into the Temple is the moment in the long Liturgy of Salvation History that points directly toward the Incarnation, which in turn points to the offering, the sacrifice. Before Mary was present in the world, the mystery of the Incarnation was still something remote, something that could only be hinted at in prophecy. But once she is here, it is clear that the plans of God will soon be concretely realized, that the time of fulfillment is at hand—it is only a matter of a few years before our Redeemer would Himself appear in the flesh, visible to the eyes of all.

We should consider all this as we celebrate the feast. The provisional revelations of the past were about to give way to the definitive and eternal revelations. The Temple in Jerusalem would soon be destroyed (and to this day it has not been rebuilt), but God had prepared a holy and living Temple for the Incarnation of his Son—Mary, the Maiden of Nazareth, the Handmaid of the Lord, full of grace from her conception but publicly consecrated to God from the age of three, from the time of her entrance into the Temple. In turn, the body of her Son would become the indestructible and eternal Temple. When Jesus spoke of raising up the Temple in three days, St John comments that He was speaking of the temple of his body. So even though He sacrificed his body on the Cross, since the time of the resurrection He is forever in immortal glory, and He calls us to join Him—in the mystery of his sacrifice as well as that of his resurrection, for one cannot expect the glory of the resurrection without first enduring the pain of the cross.

At every Divine Liturgy we perform the Great Entrance: the gifts are brought to the altar to be offered to God, to be transformed into the sacrificed Body and Blood of Jesus. Let us also enter the Holy of Holies, at least in spirit, and let us offer ourselves as gifts prepared for sacrifice, ready to be united to the Lord in the mystery of his death and resurrection. We eat his sacrificed body and drink his shed blood, so let us not shrink from the cost of discipleship, the cross that the lovers of Jesus must carry.

Let us ask the Mother of God to enter with us, to strengthen and encourage us as we make our offering to the Lord, as we strive to live out the consecration we have already made and should renew in some way at every Holy Eucharist. The Holy Spirit will come upon us and the power of the Most High will overshadow us, as we come with Our Lady to the altar of God, the God of our joy. And we shall become, as St Paul reminds us, temples of the living God.

It's a rather curious custom that on Thanksgiving Day the majority of Americans celebrate it by overeating and over-drinking. It is curious that people give thanks—presumably to God, though many probably leave Him out of the celebration—by doing things that are displeasing to the Lord. Most people don't think of the gross and intolerable inequity between the hungry of this world and those who have more than enough of everything, whose greatest sufferings are the discomforts of obesity.

Here at the monastery we are taking a little break from our Advent fast for Thanksgiving, but even in our fasting, we don't really know what hunger is. Here is an excerpt on hunger from Solzhenitsyn's memoirs of the gulags: "Hunger rules every hungry human being, unless he has himself consciously decided to die. Hunger, which forces an honest person to reach out and steal (‘When the belly rumbles, conscience flees'). Hunger, which compels the most unselfish person to look with envy into someone else's bowl, and to try to painfully estimate what weight of ration his neighbor is receiving. Hunger, which darkens the brain and refuses to allow it to be distracted by anything else at all, or to think about anything else at all, or to speak about anything else at all except food, food, and food. Hunger, from which it is impossible to escape even in dreams—dreams are about food, and insomnia is over food…" He goes on to speak about how some desperately hungry men, "jealously watching their competitors out of the corners of their eyes, stand duty at the kitchen porch waiting for them to bring out the slops in the dishwater. How they throw themselves on it, and fight with one another, seeking a fish-head, a bone, vegetable parings. And how one [of them] dies, killed in that scrimmage. And how immediately afterward they wash off this waste and boil it and eat it" (The Gulag Archipelago, III, 7).

Perhaps only a small fraction of the world's population are in such brutal captivity, but the vast majority of the world's population suffers from a degree of hunger that we will never know in our own lives. How can we be content with that? How can we load up on rich food while most of the world is desperate for a bowl of rice? It is true that we cannot personally or individually solve the crisis of world hunger. But we can do something. We can give more than we think we can afford to those who work directly with the destitute, feeding and clothing and sheltering them. We can voluntarily reduce our consumption and deny ourselves that which we don't really need. We can pray, do penance, for the conversion of the wealthy and powerful who can really change things in the world if they wanted to. St Paul says in the epistle (1Tim. 6:6-11, 17-19) that the rich are to be "rich in good deeds, liberal and generous," for experience shows that the rich are usually much stingier than the poor, hoarding their wealth and increasing it. "Who will have all this wealth when you are suddenly taken from this world?" says the Lord in the Gospel (Lk 12:13-31). And not just taken, but ushered in to the tribunal of Christ, who will say, "I was hungry and you gave Me no food."

Let us return to this curious Thanksgiving holiday. It is a day set aside to give thanks to God for his blessings. People have a strange way of doing that: over-indulging in food and drink, sprawling before the TV to watch parades and football games, and in general making it more of a pagan feast than a Christian one. Webster's dictionary provides an insight here. In its definition of "thank," we find the following: "used in such phrases as ‘thank God, thank goodness' … to express gratitude or more often only [one's] pleasure or satisfaction in something" (emphasis added).

So perhaps people aren't really thanking God or anyone else on Thanksgiving. They are merely expressing their pleasure or satisfaction in their food, drink, material abundance, and recreation. I once saw a rather rude cartoon in which someone was asked to give thanks to God at a meal. He replied: Why should I thank God? I'm the one that worked to earn the money to pay for the food, and I'm the one who went out and bought it. To God I say: thanks for nothing!

Those who spend Thanksgiving Day merely expressing their pleasure or satisfaction in something would seem to have a similar attitude. But what about those who do give thanks to God on Thanksgiving? Often, after a few pious words, their celebration is indistinguishable from their pagan counterparts. Yet what if someone decided to give thanks on this day, not by eating and drinking a lot, but by serving the poor in a soup kitchen? Some people do just that. What if someone decided to give thanks by visiting the sick or elderly shut-ins? Some people do that too. What if someone gave thanks by reconciling with an estranged friend or relative? Some people do that. What if someone gave thanks to God directly by coming to worship Him in church and participate in the ultimate act of thanksgiving, the Holy Eucharist? Some people also do that. What if still others gave thanks by quietly and patiently accepting the cross of loneliness, illness, or some heavy responsibility? Some do this too, but all of these truly grateful people constitute a small minority of the people of our wealthy and self-absorbed nation.

If we have food and clothing, says St Paul, we shall be content with that. And Jesus says not to run after even these things, since the Father knows we need them, and He will be glad to supply them if we seek first his Kingdom, get our priorities straight. We have to learn how to give thanks even when there isn't an abundance of material goods, because Thanksgiving isn't meant to be only about that. It has come to mean that in a society that worships more at the altar of Mammon than at the altar of the true God, but we are supposed to be giving thanks for more important things first. "Though the fig tree blossom not, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, in the God of my salvation" (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

Do we thank God for the gift of faith, without which we cannot be saved? Do we thank Him for protecting us from countless evils and dangers, for giving us angels to guard us, and saints and our heavenly Mother to intercede for us? Do we thank Him for the Scriptures and the Sacraments, by which we come to know and love Him more, and to become more deeply united with Him? For the monks and priests, do we thank Him for the high calling and special graces of our monastic consecration and/or priestly ordination? Do we thank Him for sparing us the lot of many who have turned against Him, for there but for the grace of God go you and I?

And how do we thank Him? Just a simple, "Thank you, Lord," followed by "please pass the turkey"? Or do we thank Him with the way we live our lives, with the time and effort we take to do our very best in our prayer and work and relating with others, in order to please God? Do we thank Him by willingly and patiently accepting and offering penances and the various hardships or demands that belong to our commitment? Thanksgiving isn't merely a matter of words or feelings, it is a way a life. Our life isn't long enough for us to adequately respond to all the graces God has given us, but we should at least try to avoid all those negative attitudes or behaviors that mark us as ungrateful and selfish people, who get upset at some slight or snub or unpleasant experience, while those who really are suffering in the world give thanks to God for the smallest blessing. When I read about how those who live in places that are constantly ravaged by natural disasters which leave them in perpetual destitution—when someone donates some food or clothing to them, they give thanks to God and continue to persevere in trust, while we, with too much of everything, complain over the smallest things.

So let us learn to give thanks with our whole life, making it clear by the way we speak and act that we are a faithful and grateful people. Let us be content with what God provides and seek first his Kingdom, as at least the beginning of a worthy response to his goodness to us. We won't be able to solve the world's problems, but let us, when the Lord returns, be found doing our utmost to minister to the hungry and needy Christ, wherever we may find Him. And let us now approach the spiritual banquet of the Holy Eucharist, and offer our lives to Him who offered his life for us. So many people "give thanks" by indulging their appetites. Let us give thanks by wholeheartedly worshiping and serving the Lord our God.

St Nicholas is dear to all Eastern Christians and one of our most popular patron saints. What he is for us in his present heavenly life flows from what he was for the Church in his earthly life, and this is where the readings for his feast day give us some insight, as we'll see in a minute.

St Nicholas is one of the few saints that not only has his own feast day, but also a weekly commemoration in the daily Offices. Along with the Apostles, St Nicholas is commemorated every Thursday. He is invoked as an intercessor to save us from unjust adversity, from trials and affliction, from heresy, from disordered passions and evil thoughts and temptations, and from just about anything that could threaten our spiritual well-being and salvation.

So the Church expects a lot from his intercession (we here at the monastery do, too, since our church is dedicated to him). That is one reason we have the readings that we do today. When we see what Gospel has been chosen (Lk 6:17-23), we say immediately, Oh, it's the beatitudes. But the beatitudes are only the second half of this reading. Let's look at the first half for once and see how this might apply to St Nicholas.

Before Jesus started preaching the beatitudes, He was doing other things, for the Gospel says that people came to Him for two reasons: to hear Him (that's where his preaching comes in), and also to be healed of their diseases. And even more than healing of physical diseases, it says that those who had unclean spirits were delivered from them. "All the crowd sought to touch him," says St Luke, "for power came forth from him and healed them all." Sometimes I have focused on the "all" in that and similar texts—especially if I'm praying for healing for myself or for others. I say to the Lord: "You healed all who came to you, and so I come to you now seeking the same." For some reason hidden in the divine will, Jesus doesn't heal all who come to Him today, though He does heal many, and sometimes in ways that may not be exactly what we are asking for, but rather what He knows we need. For whatever reason, though, when Jesus walked the earth, He healed all who came to Him in faith.

Perhaps there are some healings that Jesus would like to work through his friends the saints, glorifying them in Heaven who glorified Him on Earth. So maybe He's waiting for us to ask for our healing, or the healing of others, through the intercession of St Nicholas or the Mother of God or of one of the other saints. In any case, St Nicholas seems to be one of God's favorite intercessors, at least for the needs of Eastern Christians, who invoke him in many of their necessities. So then, it may be that this Gospel was chosen not only because the earthly life of St Nicholas expressed the spirit of the beatitudes, but also because the heavenly life of St Nicholas is characterized by his intercession for our healing and deliverance from evil spirits.

The earthly lives of the saints are offered to us for our admiration and emulation, so that we may walk the way of faith and love and total commitment to God as they did. Their heavenly glory is a means for us to seek help from God through their intercession in our present needs and sufferings. This life is full of suffering, and in other places and former times, the suffering was much greater that what most modern Americans experience. Many people have had so much hardship in life that sheer survival was a daily struggle. So people relied more on the saints and on the grace of God just to get them through each day! Today people often look elsewhere, because their faith is lacking, but the ones who believe will always be rewarded by God.

I was reading something on the demographics of Christianity, how churches are emptying throughout Europe and urban North America and filling in the so-called Third World countries. Secularism has robbed many of their faith, but in places where people live the blessed life of the poor and hungry and persecuted, the Gospel is alive, faith flourishes, and—guess what?—divine power flows forth from believers to heal the sick and cast out evil spirits. The author of the book recalls this incident: "I remember an African preacher who visited a church I used to attend in Northern Virginia. He insisted that through God's grace he had performed innumerable healings. When one of the assistant pastors looked at him a bit doubtfully, he pointed to the Bible and said, ‘Young man, there is a big difference between you and me. You see this book right here? We believe it'" (Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity).

This is what the saints are here to tell us, and this is what they do, both on Earth and from Heaven. They believe in God and so miracles happen. This is why we ask help from St Nicholas and the saints. They know how to do it; they can help us—through the witness of their lives and their prayers from on high—to connect to the grace of God, to grow in faith and then watch miracles happen. That doesn't mean that we're going to walk around "healing them all," but it does mean we believe that all things are possible with God, and that He can do a lot more through fervent believers than through wavering skeptics. The saints are the fervent believers; they are the friends of God and our friends as well. God likes to work through them because He loves them and likes to spread his glory and grace through as many members of the Body of Christ as possible.

There's another expression of this mystery in the epistle for today (Heb. 13:17-21). Again, when we look at this, beginning as it does, "Obey your leaders and submit to them," we might think, Oh yes, this is the common epistle for bishops. But there's more to it than that. It also says this: "May God… equip you with everything good, that you may do his will, working in you what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ…" St Paul says in another place that God equips the saints for every good work. So here is another reason we ask the intercession of St Nicholas: God has equipped him with everything good to do his will on our behalf. So he is able to help us when we ask his prayers. Now God intends to equip us all to do the work of saints, but some of us are a little slow yet, we have a lot to learn, so in the meantime we turn to those already perfected in love and grace, that they might help us along the way to our own ultimate perfection.

Finally, in the Matins Gospel (Jn 10:1-9), we hear Jesus speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd (He's actually called the great shepherd in the epistle for this feast!). St Nicholas, as one who was chosen to guard the flock entrusted to him, was one of the good shepherds of the Great Shepherd. Since he learned how to take care of his flock while a bishop on Earth, Jesus grants him now to help tend the universal flock from his vantage point in Heaven. Again, this is why we have recourse to him. God has given him a special function in the Body of Christ, to protect and pray for those who rely on his intercession, those who are in need of both spiritual and temporal help. It must give the Lord great joy to share his grace and gifts with many others, who use them to serve his people and to help lead them to Heaven. Once we are in Heaven—at least before Judgment Day has arrived—we don't limit ourselves to frolicking in the fields of Paradise. We still have work to do intercede for those still struggling on Earth. We will continue to do this until, as the Book of Revelation says, "the number of [our] fellow servants and brethren should be complete" (6:11).

So let us thank St Nicholas that he is still keeping busy on our behalf, interceding with us until we too are safely in Heaven. Let us thank him for the witness of a life lived in the spirit of the beatitudes, and for the healings that he obtains for Christ's flock, because the power of the Lord still flows through his saints to bring healing and deliverance. If we make the necessary sacrifices to live the life of the beatitudes ourselves, we can have confidence that we will one day join St Nicholas and all the saints, doing good to those still on Earth, and giving all glory to God in Heaven.

Today's feast has been celebrated for many centuries. It was known in the East as the feast of the Conception of St Anne long before it was known in the West as the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. We see from our liturgical typikon that the readings are actually the common readings for a feast of St Anne and not the common readings for a feast of Our Lady. It is also the general tradition in the East that this feast is celebrated on the 9^th instead of the 8^th of December. We have always celebrated it here on the 8^th, though. As Eastern Catholics we are generally in traditional communion with the Orthodox Churches and also in canonical communion with Rome—and hopefully in spiritual communion with both, and with all those who sincerely believe in the Gospel of Christ. Perhaps the thing that tips the scales to the 8^th is the fact that our country has been formally placed under the patronage of the Mother of God as the Immaculate Conception by the US Bishops in 1846, and the 8^th was the day set aside for this celebration. So we also want to be in communion with American Catholics in the celebration of the Patroness of our nation. In our own monastery, it also conveniently forms the third day of the "triduum" begun by the feast of St Nicholas (patron of our temple) and the anniversary of this temple's consecration and dedication. All of that, however, is irrelevant to the mystery of the present feast.

Advent is a time for hidden mysteries, things obscurely indicated in prophecies, a time of anticipation for something not yet fully revealed. So this is an appropriate feast for this time of year. The mystery of Christ is in fact quite hidden in this mystery of Mary. On the great feasts of the Lord, even though his divinity is often somewhat hidden in his humanity, at least his face can be seen and his voice heard and his works recognized. In today's feast, and unlike the general Advent awareness, Christ is not merely hidden in the womb of his Mother—his Mother is still hidden in the womb of her mother! This is truly a feast of humble yet holy beginnings.

We hear in the Gospel of this feast (Lk 8:16-21): "Nothing is hidden that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light." The secret mystery that was hidden in the womb of St Anne has since been made manifest and come to light: it is the mystery of the all-holy Mother of God, chosen to be the only one who would give flesh to the eternal Son of God, who would thus be our Savior, offering his humanity in sacrifice so that our sins might be forgiven and we be judged worthy of Paradise.

The early fathers of the Church spoke of Mary as the "New Eve" who perfectly obeyed the will of God, unlike the first Eve. Mary was, in a sense, a new Paradise—pristine, holy, untouched by evil—from which the New Adam could emerge, the Son of God who would raise up those afflicted with the mortal corruption of the fallen first Adam.

For her unique task, the Godbearer had to be uniquely holy. For how could anything marred by sin or any sort of imperfection bring the all-holy Lord into this world? Wordsworth famously called Mary "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." When the Archangel came to announce the Incarnation to her, he said that nothing is impossible for God. So it was possible for God to make of Mary a "new creation" in anticipation of, and for the sake of, the salvation to be wrought by her Son.

In a common liturgical text to the Mother of God, we call her "the ever-blessed and completely sinless one." Some say she was sanctified at the time of the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit came upon her and the Power of the Most High effected the conception of the incarnate Son. But when the angel greeted her, he said that she was already full of grace (Gk. Kekharitomeni—for more on this, click here, and don't ask me why the font is so tiny!). The tense expresses something done in the past that stands true in the present, as when the Scriptures quote a text, saying: "It is written…" That means it was written in the past and stands written today. So the angel was saying to Mary: "You who have been filled with grace and remain so even now."

If she had been previously filled with grace, when did that occur? Where can a line be drawn? Should a line be drawn? At conception, an hour later, six months later, three years later, seven years later? The Mother of God is known in the East as the Panaghia, the "all-holy woman." If it is in fact true that she is "all-holy," could there ever have been a moment when she wasn't holy?

St John writes of a "beginning" that eternally precedes all other beginnings (though there really is no adequate word for God's eternal being): "In the beginning was the Word…" And the author of Genesis writes of the creation of the universe at the beginning of time: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…" So I (with fear and trembling) propose another "in the beginning" for Our Lady: "In the beginning of the existence of the Theotokos, the Lord God had made her holy…" It's pointless to call her the Panaghia if we are to maintain that she was sanctified at some point in her life subsequent to her conception, necessarily implying that before that point she was not sanctified.

I think that the polemics surrounding the 19^th-century papal definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception have somewhat deflected everyone's attention from a simple and heartfelt devotion to the unique holiness of the Mother of God, and have forced people to "take sides" on the issue. For if the Pope is right, the others must be wrong, and if the others are right, the Pope must be wrong, so come, good Christians, let us go to war! I do not think this is pleasing to Christ or to his Mother. I do not believe that every point on which theologians of East and West disagree is sufficient to throw the whole economy of salvation into a tailspin, though one can get that impression by reading some of them.

As I've said before, I don't think I'd make either a good apologist or a good ecumenist. I'm too conciliatory for the former and too uncompromising for the latter. I'd rather remain at the contemplative heart of divine mysteries than at the academic periphery. I'd rather pray than argue, but I've nothing against sharing thoughts or insights on what God has revealed to us. Sometimes it can actually be downright helpful!

Today's Gospel also says: "To him who has, more will be given." This, with the necessary caveats, can be applied to the concept of "development of doctrine"—a concept that can certainly be abused, but one that still has been used fruitfully throughout the history of the Church. The Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils developed and formulated the doctrines of, for example, the Trinity and the Incarnation, which are indicated but not clearly spelled out or explained in the Scriptures. It is the Holy Spirit, working through the Church that "leads [us] into all the truth," a truth so vast that it cannot be instantly grasped by our human minds, and sometimes takes centuries of prayer and reflection and study to come to an adequate expression of it.

This applies to the mysteries of Our Lady as well, some of which are only hinted at or implied in the Scriptures. But I submit that to the one who has humbly welcomed the Scriptures and their gradually fuller interpretation and application in the Tradition of the Church, more will be given: more insight, further elucidation, deeper understanding, new perspectives on the unchanging truth revealed by God—while remaining true to the initial revelation. (An acorn does not look like an oak tree at first, but eventually it becomes one through an organic growth process.) So a feast of St Anne can become a feast of the Mother of God as the profound character of the mystery is more clearly recognized, as theology develops and prayer deepens. And inspired inferences concerning the holiness of Mary can develop into solid doctrine.

An Eastern Christian ought to be able to use the word "immaculate" for the Godbearer without raising eyebrows, suspicions, or hackles. For she is the Panaghia, the holy one consecrated and set apart by God as part of the mystery He planned from all eternity, to be revealed in human history—the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son, whose holy nativity we soon will celebrate in wonder and awe.

So let us now, as we pray so often in our services, "call to mind our all-holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady, the Mother of God and Ever-virgin Mary, with all the saints, and let us commend ourselves, and one another, and our whole life to Christ our God."

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