HOMILY

By His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America

At the First Salutations to the Theotokos

Holy Trinity Archdiocesan Cathedral

New York, New York

March 22, 2024

 

Beloved faithful,

         Tonight, we come together in prayer and praise at the conclusion of the first week of Great Lent. We gather to sing the glories of our Panagia, as we approach the Feast of the Annunciation in a few days. After the dismissal, we will continue our fellowship with a Lenten dinner in the Chiotes Family Cathedral Hall. But before we depart the sanctuary, I wish to call your attention to these particular praises from the First Stanza of the Akathist Hymn, which we chanted here this evening:

Χαῖρε, ὕψος δυσανάβατον ἀθρωπίνοις λογισμοῖς,

χαῖρε, βάθος δυσθεώρητον καὶ ἀγγέλων ὀφθαλμοῖς.

Rejoice, height that is too difficult for human thought to ascend;
Rejoice, depth that is too strenuous for Angels’ eyes to perceive.

The height and depth of the Theotokos are images of greatness, and they manifest her place in the story of our salvation. Such word-icons occur all throughout the twenty-four stanzas of the Akathist, composed by Saint Romanos the Melodist nearly fifteen hundred years ago in Constantinople.

As Saint Romanos sings, the Theotokos is a height beyond human comprehension, just like the ladder that the Patriarch Jacob beheld in the Book of Genesis:

And Jacob dreamed, and he saw a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.[1]

Here, we see in a dream-image the salvific reach of the Panagia. For with her humility, her purity, and her willing obedience, she became the physical Ladder by which God Himself crossed into our earthly reality. Such a distance is well beyond any human being’s power to think or reason! How could a human being bring God in His Very Person down into the world? But she did! And by her answer to the Angel, she conceived the Lord in her womb — through the action of the Holy Spirit. And nine months later, she gave birth to the Savior of the world.

But as the hymn says, she is also a depth that is too strenuous for Angels’ eyes to perceive. How could this be? For the Angels themselves ascend and descend upon this same Ladder. Yet, as the hymns says:

Τὸ ἀπ' αἰῶνος ἀπόκρυφον, καὶ Ἀγγέλοις ἄγνωστον μυστήριον, διὰ σού Θεοτόκε τοῖς ἐπὶ γῆς πεφανέρωται·

The mystery hidden from eternity and unknown to the Angels is revealed to those on earth by you, O Theotokos. [2]

The amazement of the Angels at the Incarnation of the Son of God in the Theotokos is analogous to their amazement at His Crucifixion. As we chant on Holy Friday Night:

… καὶ Ἀγγέλων στρατιαὶ ἐξεπλήττοντο, συγκατάβασιν δοξάζουσαι τὴν σήν.

… and the ranks of the Angels were astonished, as they glorified Your condescension. [3]

The Heavenly Host could not probe the depths of God’s love. Neither that which made of Him a Man. Nor that which made the supreme sacrifice on the Cross. How relieved they must have been to announce the Resurrection!

The abyss of God’s love that took flesh in the womb of the Theotokos is a mystery still, and it defies our intellectual comprehension. She, as the “One Wider and More Spacious than Heaven Itself,” contained within her own body the uncontainable God. With God within her, her womb became the “sphere whose circumference is everywhere, and whose center is nowhere.” She became the unfathomable and immeasurable fountain of life – ἡ Ζωοδόχος Πηγή – from which inexhaustible blessings flow.

This is the mystery that we celebrate in all the services of the Salutations, and on the Fifth Friday with the fullness of the Akathist Hymn. Let us stand, then, with the Angels in awe of this mystery. And let our minds travel up and down the Ladder of Heaven with them as we chant and sing.

The ineffable mystery of God’s love can only be truly perceived by the human heart. Therefore, let us open our hearts this Lent – and especially on these wondrous Fridays – so that we may prepare ourselves to scale the heights of Heaven, by plumbing the depths of God’s love for us, made flesh through the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.

By her holy intercessions, may we all attain to the completion of the Fast and the joy of the Resurrection. Amen.

The ineffable mystery of God’s love can only be truly perceived by the human heart. Therefore, let us open our hearts this Lent – and especially on these wondrous Fridays – so that we may prepare ourselves to scale the heights of Heaven, by plumbing the depths of God’s love for us, made flesh through the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.