Oration on the All-Honorable and Divine Birth of Our All-Innocent Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary

By Neophytos the Recluse (1134-1214)

Introduction

Neophytos the Recluse was a Cypriot monk. Born to farmers in 1134, at the time of his arranged marriage, he fled to the Monastery of St. John Chrysostom in Koutsovendis. He succeeded in having the marriage contract broken, and he lived in the monastery for many years. Neophytos wished to be a hermit, but his abbot refused due to his youth, and numerous schemes-- seeking aid in the Holy Land, escaping to Mt. Latmos in Turkey--failed. Eventually, he found an old hermitage on a hill above the town of Paphos, in Cyprus, and there he became a hermit and eventually, due to this popularity and the insistence of the bishop, founded a monastery. He died in 1214, and he is considered a saint by the Orthodox. Though he is most well-known for his historical writings about the Crusades, he also wrote many Biblical commentaries, hymns, and sermons. Below is his sermon on the Nativity of Mary.

Oration on the Nativity of Mary

1. The beginning of every fruit [is] the flower, and this [is] most evident; and the beginning of our salvation [is] the God-given and God-chosen birth of the innocent and all-immaculate Mary the ever-virgin; and this [is] most clear. And, celebrating it, today we worthily feast. So that all the circle of the year would be blessed through her, she was born in the present month, the first of the year; she fell asleep in the final sleep of immortality, so that, the ten months between them receiving the image of a circle, she would bless [them] through her birth and the life-giving dormition; about which [dormition] it is not the time to speak suitably, but when the time of her holy dormition will come [we will speak]. But now we have come forth to philosophize briefly about her holy birth, and we have so much to speak about it, as her grace, extended, breathes the word into us.
2. For the parents of this divine child [were] Joachim and Anna, from the family of King David, from the tribe of Juda, guardians of the law and exact keepers of the divine commandments, greatly rich in goods, and richer in divine virtue, but poor in childlessness through the bonds of sterility of the blessed Anna. Whence she also received much reproach from the sons of Israel, from the priests twice receiving the offered gifts to God [from her]; but [they] also fearlessly reproached [her] through not having seed in Israel. And thence the just Joachim, having grieved exceedingly, and having separated from all human company, retired to the desert, in which, fasting forty days, in weeping and fasting he entreated the Lord, and said, “Remove from me, Lord, remove from me the reproach and contempt of childlessness; and be pleased, Lord, to give orderly seed, and I, again, will return it, Master, to Your goodness.”
   Therefore, the just one, thusly begging the divine favor, received the thing desired: for the just cried out, it says, and the Lord heard them (Ps 107:6). And thence the all-merciful Lord quickly heard him, that, through his seed, He would fulfill the fore-seen mystery hidden before the ages. Therefore also the angel of God, standing before Joachim, says to him that “the Lord heard your request, and Anna, your wife, will conceive, and in all the universe your seed will be spoken of.”
3. But the just Anna in her garden struck up a double lamentation about her husband’s retirement and her fruitlessness; that “I have not been likened to the birds of heaven,” she said, “for these [are] not fruitless before God; I have not been likened either to the beasts, or to the fish, so as to bring forth the fruit of the womb to God. But if even to me, Lord, You order fruit of the womb to be given, this I will return again to You, Lord, my God.”
   But, her saying these things to God in weeping, she also similarly received from the divine angel the gospels of childbearing, and the arrival of [her] husband from the desert; she sacrificed a multitude of animals, not a few, and made a great feast for all the people. And Anna, being loosed from the bonds of sterility by the creator of nature, conceived with her husband Mary the divine child, to whom also she gave birth today, the first-fruits of our salvation, and the pure mother of the Word God, and the first-fruits of the renewal of our nature, grown old through the transgression of the divine commandment and obscured. And, according to the divine saying, as the whole lump of three measures of wheat is leavened through a little leaven, thusly also here, through this God-formed and hyper-pure leaven, the Former, reforming, renewed our grown-old lump. And this is the paradoxical wonder, the one overfull of stupor, that the hyper-pure bread-maker ineffably mixed Himself with this most pure leaven, and, taking something from her part, wondrously worked all our lump and all the form. Therefore, He also said after these things: I am the living bread, and I am the bread of life; who eats Me will not hunger (cf. Jn 6:51, 54, 35), and the rest.
4. The God-wise parents of the all-innocent divine child, fulfilling the promise, brought her forth, after three years, to God, into the holies of holies with the virginal choir and the shining lamps, and [then] was fulfilled the [verse] "virgins will be carried up after her to the King God, and they will be led into the temple of the king" (cf. Ps 45:14-15), which is Solomon’s; and the "hear, daughter, and see, and forget your people and the house of your father; and the king of glory," Christ, "will desire your beauty" (cf. Ps 45:10-11), which also occurred. And she forgot the people and the house of her father, spending her time in the house of the Lord and in the holies of holies. For in those [places], [into] which the high priest entered once a year, a maiden virgin spent each day, that the Scripture would be fulfilled.
   But we do not have need to speak suitably about the entrance of the virgin into the holies of holies before the appointed time; but when the time of that feast comes, then will we speak again, if God and the divine child Mariam allow. But now there is something brief to relate about her God-given birth, and, as the new and pure queen is hailed with suitable things, and the word is ceased, so we prefer not to philosophize much about these, but rather [to speak words] easily seen and easily grasped and in prose, that the whole argument be easily related, and the hearers be sober, not weighted with rash sleep, but that they have sober and sleepless hearing.
5. Therefore, rejoice, God-crowned queen of the world, virgin maiden all-immaculate, chosen by God before all generations to be the dwelling of the Word, God-graced, and, in the last times, born today from unfruitful sides, you showed the fruit-bearing of immortal life, and the cosmic reconciliation of God through your birth. Rejoice, lady, and the power of queens below, since, about to be revealed as mother of the God of the angels, you have, from the divine angel, the ministering of all that which is under you; therefore, both your begetting father and the mother conceiving you received the gospels about you from the holy angel. And, having [your] dwelling in the holies of holies, you received food from the divine angel, as truly befitting [you]. Rejoice, pure virgin, the bar of virginity, the fame of virgins, the wall of the Church of God, the beginning and the end of our salvation, and the divine heirloom altogether more precious than all gold. Rejoice, Theotokos virgin, the bride of the Father, the mother of the Son, and the ornamented house of the Holy Spirit. Rejoice, all-innocent, pure, virgin Theotokos, the ensouled house of the uncontainable Trinity, the holy dove, the most pure turtle-dove, the swallow pre-indicating the saving spring, the handsome, the sweet-speaking nightingale, the one singing for us the salvific prayers and, generally, the universal cause of goods.
   Rejoice, Theotokos virgin, the ensouled city, the divine palace of the king of glory, His mighty and uplifted throne, the couch and the table of the king of the heavens. Rejoice, virgin pure, the undefeated wall, the averter of enemies, the refuge of the faithful and the joy of those confiding in you, all-hymned one. Rejoice, Theotokos virgin, the container of the uncontained, the joy of the earthborn, the delight of the angels, the hope of men, the heavenly door of the faithful, the ensouled, ornamented heaven of the dwelling of God. Rejoice, pure virgin-mother, the inner room of the kingdom above, the divine treasure-house of those above and those below. Rejoice, Theotokos virgin, the cause of our delight, the once receiving the “rejoice” through the angel and conceiving and giving birth to One of the Trinity, and, as the cause of unceasing joy, the one wholly destroying the sorrow of the foremother.
   But, now having received this, the final “rejoice,” all-immaculate maiden, hasten to prayer for us all, those celebrating your honorable birth, God-graced one, that we find the fruition of eternal goods, through the grace and love for mankind of the thrice-holy God, to Whom [be] the glory and the power, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Source: Homélies Mariales Byzantines, ed. M. Jugie, in Patrologia Orientalis, ed. R. Graffin and F. Nau, Tomus Decimus Sextus (Paris: Libraire de Paris, 1922), 528-532.

Back