S1:E3 - Who Do You Love?

City of Bridges Podcast - Theology Towards Unity

City of Bridges Podcast - season one – episode 3 – Who Do you Love?

In a world fixated on fame, we often find ourselves admiring those in the spotlight. But beyond the buzz, who is truly worthy of our attention? 🔭

This episode, we explore the quiet beauty of Christian veneration—honoring lives shaped by Christ, marked by humility and love. It’s not about idolizing personalities, but lifting our eyes from the fleeting to the eternal. ✝️

Let’s rediscover the grace of turning our gaze from celebrity to sanctity. ❤️

The Creation affirms that matter is good, and the Incarnation reveals that matter can bear God’s presence—together making veneration not only possible, but proper, as we honor the ways God’s grace is made visible through the material world and His holy ones. 😇

Veneration means honoring, not worshipping. In the language of the early Church, worship—latria—is given to God alone. ✅

Veneration—dulia—is the respect we offer to saints and holy things, because they reflect God’s glory. 😌

We don’t adore them as gods. We honor them as faithful witnesses—lives made radiant by grace. Like stained glass, they let the light of Christ shine through.🔆

So when we kiss an icon or ask a saint to pray for us, we’re not worshipping the image or the person— we’re remembering what God has done through them, and seeking communion with the Body of Christ, across all time. ⏳

Veneration is not a distraction. It’s a way of drawing near to God through those who already dwell in His light. 💡

In a world that prizes charisma and celebrity, we often elevate those who shine brightest in the public eye. But Scripture offers us a different vision of greatness—one embodied in the quiet, radiant life of the Theotokos. 🤰

When Mary magnified the Lord, she did not seek glory for herself. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she proclaimed, “and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior… For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:46–48). Her greatness was not in fame, but in faith. Not in power, but in surrender. 🛐

The saints follow in her footsteps. They are not icons of self-promotion, but windows into Christ. Their lives point beyond themselves—to the One who is holy, merciful, and true. In them, we see the communion of witnesses: a family of faith that spans centuries, praying with us and for us. 🙏

Meanwhile, the modern world offers its own pantheon—pop stars, influencers, politicians—figures celebrated not for holiness, but for visibility. Yet their fame fades. Their influence often distorts more than it heals. 🤑

So we ask: who do we love, and why? As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). The ones we admire shape the people we become.💪

To love well in this age is to choose wisely. To turn our gaze from the fleeting to the eternal. To learn from the saints, and from the Mother of God herself, who shows us that true glory is found in humility, obedience, and the quiet courage to say, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). 🗣️

📚Additional Resources:

“Evangelical Orthodox Church Worship” Talk by Bishop Jakob Palm at Horizon College & Seminary - https://youtu.be/ny8AyWz9pOo?si=KSyhFTQNW_9wx2aU

St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313–386)

“We mention those who have fallen asleep in the faith… first the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition.”— Catechetical Lectures, 23:9

St. John of Damascus (c. 675–749)

“I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake… I honor all matter through which salvation came to me.”— On the Divine Images, 1.16

St. Basil the Great (c. 330–379)

“The honor given to the image passes to the prototype.”— On the Holy Spirit, 18.4

St. Augustine of Hippo (c. 354–430)“The miracles that were wrought through the relics of the martyrs are not to be lightly esteemed… God gives testimony to their holiness.”— City of God, 22.8

St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397)

“We love the martyrs with all our devotion… we kiss their relics, we embrace their bones as if they were alive and give healing.”— Letter 22

Origen (c. 184–253)

“There are places and objects where the divine presence dwells in a special way, and these we must approach with reverence.”— Homilies on Exodus

Martyrdom of St. Polycarp (c. 155 AD)

“We took up his bones, more precious than jewels, and more purified than gold, and laid them in a suitable place… where we may gather in joy to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom.”

Proverbs 31:30

“Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.”

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 44:1–2

(Deuterocanonical)

“Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through His great power from the beginning.”

Isaiah 5:20–21

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil… who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!”

St. Jerome (c. 347–420)

“If the Apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, how much more after their crowns, victories, and triumphs are they able to implore the Lord on our behalf?”— Against Vigilantius, 6

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From EOC Catechism Lesson Three: The Mystery of God Made Flesh:

III. Mary and the Mystery of Incarnation

The first Christological aspect is summed up in the title Theotokos, usually translated “God-bearer” or (more elegantly if less literally) “Mother of God.” This one word provides the key for the whole Orthodox understanding of Mary. Immediately it makes evident the close link between devotion to Mary and the doctrine of the Incarnation. When we venerate the Virgin, we do not honor her by herself and apart from her Son, but precisely because she is the Mother of Emmanuel. Honor shown to Mary, if offered in a truly catholic and Orthodox spirit, is necessarily honor shown to her Son; it is impossible that such honor should in any way detract from the worship due to Jesus Christ, for it is specifically on account of the son that we honor the Mother. When the Fathers of the council of Ephesus (431) insisted on calling Mary Theotokos, it was not from any desire to glorify her on her own, but because only so could they safeguard the correct doctrine of the Incarnation. They were concerned not with some optional title of devotion but with a dogma that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith: the essential unity of Christ’s person. As St. Cyril of Alexandria realized, if we are to confess that “Emmanuel is truly God,” we must always confess that “the Holy Virgin is Theotokos, for she bore, according to the flesh, the Word of God made flesh.”What Mary bore was not just a man more or less closely linked to God, but a single indivisible person who is God and man at once. “The Word was made flesh” (John 1:14): that is why Mary must be termed Theotokos, and that is why she is of such high importance for Orthodox theology and worship.

It is significant that not only the appellation Theotokos but most of the other titles and symbolic descriptions applied to Mary in Orthodox devotion refer directly or indirectly to the Incarnation. The Burning Bush (Exodus 3:2), The Mountain overshadowed by the forest (Habakkuk 3:3), the East Gate through which none may pass save the Great Prince (Ezekiel 44:1-3), the Fleece of Gideon (Judges 6:36-38; Psalm 72:6), “Chariot of fire,” “Bridal Chamber of the Light,” “Book of the Word of Life,” “living heaven,” holy throne,” “mystical Paradise”—all these and countless other such designations are emphatically Christological, underlining Mary’s role as God’s Mother, her place in the Incarnation.

Here, then, is the basis of all true “Mariology”—in the fact that the Word was made flesh. But there is a further and vitally important point concerning Mary and the Incarnation. Mary did not become God’s Mother against her will. When God made man after His own image and likeness, He endowed His creature with the gift of free will; and despite the distortion of man’s nature at the fall, this divine gift of freedom has never been withdrawn. The relationship between man and God is one of love; and it is therefore essentially a free relationship, for where there is no freedom there is no love. We are, in St. Paul’s phrase, “fellow workers (synergoi) with God” (1 Corinthians 3:9); as St. Augustine put it, without God we can do nothing, but without us God will do nothing. To quote the Homilies of St. Macarius, a book much loved by John Wesley: “the will of man is an essential precondition, for without it God does not do anything” (xxxvii. 10).

This cardinal principle of liberty applies to the Incarnation as at all other times. In St. Luke’s account of the Annunciation, Mary is revealed as the supreme example of synergia or voluntary co-operation. Had God become man without His Mother’s consent, this would have constituted an infringement of man’s free will, a denial of the divine image of man. And so the archangel waited for her response, “be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Mary could have refused, although God in His foreknowledge knew that she would not in fact do so—just as He also foreknew that Judas would betray Him, even though Judas acted in entire freedom. Thus, even though Mary was “preordained from generations of old as Mother and Virgin and Receiver of God,” this “preordaining” in no way deprived her of personal autonomy.

We honour Mary, then, not only because God chose her as His Mother, but also because she herself chose aright; not only because the archangel addressed her as “high favoured,” but because she answered “behold the handmaid of the Lord.” She was not merely a passive and external ‘instrument’ but the positive and indispensable ‘condition’ of the Incarnation. In the word of Nicolas Cabasilas, a lay theologian of 14th century Byzantium: the Incarnation was not only the work of the Father, of His Power and His Spirit…but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the consent of the All-Pure Virgin and the cooperation of her faith, this design would have been as impossible of realization as it would have been without the intervention of the three Divine Persons themselves. Only after teaching and persuading her does God take her for His Mother and receive from her the flesh which she wills to offer Him. Just as He became incarnate voluntarily, so He willed that His Mother should bear Him freely and with her full consent.

It is in this context that the idea of Mary as the second Eve acquires its full significance: Ever chose freely when she fell, and in the same way Mary chose freely when she obeyed.

This insistence upon the freedom of Mary’s response is clearly evident in the selection of the Gospel reading at feats in her honour (September 8, October 1 and 22, November 21, July 8, August 15, and the Saturday of the Akathist). The story of the woman in the crowd is read: “a certain woman in the company lifted up her voice and said unto Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou has sucked.’ But he said, ‘Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28). At first sight these must appear strange word to choose for a festival of the Blessed Virgin, since seemingly they imply that no special veneration is due to her as Christ’s Mother. But our Lord, so far from slighting her in His answer, is in reality indicating where the true glory of her divine Motherhood is to be found. The woman in the crowd referred to the physical fact; Christ directed attention to the spiritual attitude which underlay that physical fact, and without which the physical fact would not have been possible. “Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it:” Mary is blessed because she heard the word of God and kept it when the archangel spoke to her at the Annunciation, for if she had not first heard the word and been obedient to it, she would never have borne the Saviour in her womb or nursed Him at her breast.

But her response to Gabriel, “be it unto me according to thy word,” if it is the chief instance of Mary’s obedience, is not the only occasion on which she heard the word of God and kept it. The same acceptance of God’s word was manifested throughout her life. At the end of the Nativity story St. Luke writes, “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (2:19); and again, after the account of Jesus at twelve years old in the temple—“but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart” (2:51). Mary displays the same obedience to God’s word, the same humble acceptance of what she does not yet fully understand, at Cana in Galilee when she says to the servants, “whatsoever He saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5). This is her last utterance recorded in the Gospels: and it is instructive that it should be an expression of submission to God’s word.

IV. Mary and the Mystery of the Church

Mary is thus throughout her life the supreme example of those who “hear the word of God and keep it,” who make the divine will their own, and who are therefore truly “blessed.” This brings us to the second ecclesiological aspect of the Virgin’s life. To a member of Christ’s Church, there can be nothing higher or more glorious than this: that he or she should willingly and joyfully accept God’s plan and answer Him as Mary did, “be it unto me according to Thy word.” As a pattern of obedient union with the will of God, the Mother of God shows us what a human being can and should be. She is, in Wordsworth’s phrase, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” She is the gift which a fallen—and, for that Nicolas Cabasilas, “On the Annunciation 4-5,” in Patrologia Orientalis xix, page 488. matter, a redeemed—humanity can most fittingly bring as an offering for Christ. In the words of the Orthodox hymn at Christmas Vespers:

What shall we offer Thee, O Christ,

Who for our sakes hast appeared on earth as man?

Every creature made by Thee offers Thee thanks:

the angels offer Thee a hymn;

the heavens, a star;

the magi, gifts;

the shepherds, their wonder;

the earth, its cave;

the wilderness, a manger;

and we offer Thee—a Virgin Mother.

As members of the Body of Christ, it is our vocation to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and to share in the glory which the Father has given to Christ (John 17:22). To use the language of the Greek Fathers, we are to become “deified” or “divinized:” not that we become God by nature—for only the persons of the Blessed Trinity are that—but we become god by grace and by status.

The fullest example of this “deification” (theosis) by grace is the Mother of God, and in this sense she is justly termed by St. Gregory Palamas “the boundary between the created and the uncreated.”

At this point two notes of warning are advisable. First, in speaking thus of Mary, we Orthodox do not intend to set her upon a remote pedestal, butting her off from any involvement in the ordinary cases and anxieties of life. On the contrary, we fully recognize that as Mother of the Incarnate God she was at the same time mother within an earthly family. In providing a home for her Son and for His foster father St. Joseph, Mary was confronted by the same difficulties and problems as other mothers. It is in virtue of this very closeness that she is so precious to us, because she experienced all our tensions and sorrows, and yet succeeded in transfiguring them with divine grace and glory. The path of “deification” need not imply a way of life that is outwardly remarkable; often the indwelling splendor of God is only evident to those who have eyes to see, and this was doubtless the case with the holy family in Nazareth.

In the second place, when we say with St. Gregory Palamas that she is “the boundary between the created and the uncreated” and the like, we do not for one moment intend to ascribe to Mary the honour that is due to God alone. In Greek the distinction between God and man is very clearly marked by the use of two different words. Latreia indicates the adoration ascribed only to the Deity; douleia indicates the qualified veneration that may be rendered to the Mother of God and the saints.

Unfortunately in Latin—as St. Augustine pointed out--and in other western languages there is no convenient way of reproducing this distinction. The English terms “worship” and “adoration” are ambiguous in a way that the Greek terms latreia and douleia are not.

V. Why Ask Mary to Pray for Us?

What has been said about the ecclesiological aspect of the life of the Holy Virgin, about Mary as the most perfect member of Christ’s Mystical Body, will help to explain why she is so often invoked by Orthodox in prayer. The Theotokos is a true mirror and a living icon of that it means to belong to the Church. And how is the Church to be understood? The Church is a single family, including both the living and the dead. It is an all-embracing unity in Christ, a unity expressed and realized above all through prayer. Here on earth it is our custom to pray for each other and to ask for one another’s prayer: and this mutual intercession is an essential characteristic of our Church membership. To the Christian believer death is no final barrier, and so the bond of mutual intercession extends beyond the grave. We pray, therefore, for the faithful departed as well as for the living, and we ask the faithful departed in their turn to pray for us—not knowing exactly how such prayer prove effective, yet confident that in the sight of God’s mercy no prayer offered in faith can ever be wasted. And among all the faithful departed for whose prayers we ask, to whom should we turn more frequently and more fervently than the Holy Virgin? If she is a model of what it means to belong to the Church, then she must be, among other things, a model for intercessory prayer.

That we should so turn to her in prayer seems to an Orthodox Christian something altogether natural and inevitable. For him or her there is nothing exotic or polemical about such prayer, but it forms an integral and unquestioned part of his life in Christ. He or she does not think of such prayer in legalistic categories, attempting to measure divine grace of employing the concept of “merit;” nor doe he or she think of it in a sentimental fashion, as if Mary were more the sense of “belonging together,” from the feeling that we and she are members of the same fellowship, that she is Mother within the great Christian family of which we are also part. We and she belong to one Church, and the unity of the Church is a unity in prayer—that, in a word, is why we ask her to pray for us.

It is misleading to speak, in this context, of praying “to” Mary. We pray only to God, whereas we “invoke” or “call upon” His Mother: we do not pray to her, but we ask for her prayers—an important distinction. And we are firmly convinced that these requests for her intercession, so far from diminishing our devotion to Christ, serve rather to enrich it. While asking her to pray for us, we do not pray on her behalf because we believe that she has already entered fully into glory.

The meaning, to an Orthodox Christian, of the Virgin’s intercession for the needs of humankind is most beautifully expressed by the title “joy of all who sorrow,” applied to her in eastern devotion:

Thou art the joy of all who sorrow,

the champion of all who suffer wrong:

food to the hungry,

comfort to strangers,

a staff for the blind,

visitor to the sick,

protection and aid to all in trouble,

and the helper of orphans.

In the words of the Orthodox hymn, the Mother of God is “ever watchful in her prayers and in her intercession lies unfailing hope.”