The Nativity of Our MostHoly Lady Mother of God and EverVirgin Mary:

Commemorated on September 8 

The Most Holy Virgin Mary was born at a time, when people had reached such limits of decay of moral values, that it seemed altogether impossible to restore them. The best minds of this era were aware and often said openly, that God must needs come down into the world, so as to restore faith and not tolerate the ruination of the race of mankind. The Son of God chose for the salvation of mankind to take on human nature, and the All-Pure Virgin Mary, – alone worthy to contain in Herself and to incarnate the Source of purity and holiness, – He chose as His Mother. The Birth of Our Most Holy Lady Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary is celebrated by the Church as a day of universal joy. Within the context of the Old and the New Testaments, on this radiant day was born the MostBlessed Virgin Mary, – having been forechosen through the ages by Divine Providence to bring about the Mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God, and She is revealed as the Mother of the Saviour of the World, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Veneration of the Theotokos According to the Bible

Archimandrite Cleopa (Ilie)

We Orthodox Christians honor the Theotokos Mary more than all the saints and angels of heaven for she was found worthy to give birth to Christ, the Savior of the world by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The honor we render to the Mother of the Lord is exceptional, most honorable and most revered, for she is not only "a friend of His,” as are the other saints, but she is Most Holy (Panagia) above all the saints and all the angels.

For this the angels as much as people venerate and honor her with prayers, hymns, church services and eulogies. Similarly the Archangel Gabriel greeted her at the annunciation (Luke 1:28-29) as well as Saint Elizabeth, the mother of Saint John the Baptist (Luke 1:40-43).

Sermon on the Nativity of the Mother of God

Kievsky Mitropolity

The birth of any person is a mysterious event. This is not just another event for the registrar; a new being is come into the world, filled with inextricable mystery. In fact: what will this newborn person bring to the world, and what will life give him? This is why parents and relatives greet each new child with awe and trembling. This is why the first cry of a new being resounds forever in his parents’ hearts. How will this person newly come into the world live his life? Will he be talented and capable, will he enrich mankind’s common treasury of gifts, or will his days be grey and mediocre, will he depart unnoticed after tasting sorrows and sadness on this earth, all memory of him lost? The more notable a person is in life, the more solemnly do people celebrate his birthday.

The Pre-Eternal and Uncircumscribed and Almighty Word is Now Born according to the Flesh

St. Gregory Palamas

This is the Festival of the virgin birth!

[...] Today I see equality of honour between heaven and earth, and a way up for all those below to things above, matching the condescension of those on high.

However great the heaven of heavens may be, or the upper waters which form a roof over the celestial regions, or any heavenly place, state or order, they are no more marvellous or honourable than the cave, the manger, the water sprinkled on the infant and His swaddling clothes.

On The Nativity of the Mother of God

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

I should like to say a few words about the greatness of this feast. When a man surveys this world in which we live, which is so vast, seemingly boundless, and looks at himself in it, he feels very small and insignificant. And if he adds to this the hardness and coldness of men, he may sometimes feel extremely vulnerable, helpless and unprotected both before people and before the terrifying vastness of the world.

Encomium to the Most Holy Mother of God-1

Saint Epifanios

Wishing to speak, wretch that I am, about the blinding radiance of the Mother of God, her dread and inconceivable powers, the mystery of the heavens and the world, the wonder, the mercy seat, and attempting to refer to the sublime vision and to the miracle in detail, moved to do so by the leaping of my heart, I was seized with great terror and fear. Because the recollection of the dread vision concerning the person of the Mother of God, having filled my soul with terror and brought fear to my heart, did not merely punish me a little, but tormented me greatly. My memory of the very great vision castigates my mind because it does not have the power to speak, since I am dealing with an inconceivable mystery. Who is able to refer to such a mystery?

On the Birth of Our Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God

Saint Photios the Great

Today, the Virgin Mother is born from a barren mother and the palace is bedecked for the coming of the Lord Christ. Today, the bonds of sterility are broken and the gates of the Virgin are barred. Because, as the barren womb was dead for the purposes of child-bearing and yet, against all hope, brought forth a wonderful fruit, so, by the same token, incorruptible virginity is pledged and the miracle of birth-giving is heralded with works obvious to all. Because child-bearing without the intervention of a man is a supernatural miracle, as is the preservation of virginity after birth. Another person who overcomes the laws of nature is the barren woman who conceives in her old age and gives birth.

The Reversal of the Barrenness of Saint Anna

by V. Rev. Fr. Cherubim Apostolou, Elder of the Skete of Saint Anna, Mount Athos (Feast of St. Anna, 2005)

"She who was barren bore the Theotokos, nurturer of our life."(Kontakion on the Birth of the Theotokos)

Saint Anna, the ancestor of God, is the precious vessel chosen by the Holy Spirit. The good and blessed tree that is the standard of natural development, which our Lord Himself confirmed, saying: “Are grapes harvested from thorns, or figs from thistles?" (Matt. 7.16) Every good tree brings forth good fruit, but the bad tree brings forth bad fruit. “A sound tree cannot bear unsound fruit, nor can an unsound tree bear sound fruit” (Matt. 7.18). Saint Anna is the good tree and her lovely and most sweet fruit is our Panagia. The most beautiful fruit of human production. What the Evangelist Luke says of the parents of St. John the Forerunner pertains also to Saint Anna and her husband Joachim: “They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless” (Luke 1.6). Saint Anna was virtuous in the eyes of God, and, of course, her life was pure. She walked always in accordance with the will of the Almighty, in accordance with His soul-nurturing commandments. Saint Anna, who bore the all-holy Theotokos, she who was barren and without creative power, whose womb was opened in advanced age by the Lord, to transform the disgrace of barrenness to the joy of a unique fertility, was a descendant of the tribe of David. Her parents, the priest Mathan and Anna, were pious and god-fearing and lived in Bethlehem. Mathan was a priest at the time of Cleopatra and the Persian King Soporus, before Herod Antipater, and had three daughters, Maria, Sovi, and Anna. Of these, Maria married in Bethlehem and bore the midwife Salome, Sovi also married in Bethlehem and bore Elisabeth. Anna was married in Galilee and bore the Lady Theotokos. This honor was bestowed upon her by the gift-granting Lord as a reward for her piety and her charitable works toward orphans and the poor.

The Conception by St. Anna of the Most Holy Theotokos

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

The righteous Joachim and Anna were childless for fifty years of their married life. In their old age the Archangel Gabriel appeared to each one of them separately, telling them that God had heard their prayers and that they would give birth to a daughter, Mary. Then St. Anna conceived by her husband and after nine months bore a daughter blessed by God and by all generations of men: the Most-holy Virgin Mary, the Theotokos.

The Relics of Saint Anna, Grandmother of our Lord

On Bearing a Child Through the Aid of Saint Anna

St. John the Damascene: On the Chaste Couple Joachim and Anna

Homily: The Reversal of the Barrenness of Saint Anna

The Veneration of Sts. Joachim and Anna According to Elder Paisios

The Error of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin

The Nativity of the Theotokos

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

The Holy Virgin Mary was born of aged parents, Joachim and Anna. Her father was of the lineage of David, and her mother of the lineage of Aaron. Thus, she was of royal birth by her father, and of priestly birth by her mother. In this, she foreshadowed Him Who would be born of her as King and High Priest. Her parents were quite old and had no children. Because of this they were ashamed before men and humble before God. In their humility they prayed to God with tears, to bring them joy in their old age by giving them a child, as He had once given joy to the aged Abraham and his wife Sarah by giving them Isaac. The Almighty and All-seeing God rewarded them with a joy that surpassed all their expectations and all their most beautiful dreams. For He gave them not just a daughter, but the Mother of God. He illumined them not only with temporal joy, but with eternal joy as well. God gave them just one daughter, and she would later give them just one grandson-but what a daughter and what a Grandson! Mary, Full of grace, Blessed among women, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Altar of the Living God, the Table of the Heavenly Bread, the Ark of God's Holiness, the Tree of the Sweetest Fruit, the Glory of the race of man, the Praise of womanhood, the Fount of virginity and purity-this was the daughter given by God to Joachim and Anna. She was born in Nazareth, and at the age of three, was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem. In her young womanhood she returned again to Nazareth, and shortly thereafter heard the Annunciation of the Holy Archangel Gabriel concerning the birth of the Son of God, the Savior of the world, from her most-pure virgin body.

Homily On The Nativity Of The Most Pure Theotokos

By St. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

The Lord, Who lives in the heavens, wishing to appear on earth and abide with men, first prepared a dwelling place of His glory: His Most Pure Mother. For it is the custom of kings that in whatsoever city they desire to live, a place of residence be prepared for them beforehand. And as the palaces of earthly kings are constructed by the most skilled craftsmen, of the most costly materials, and on the most elevated sights, which are more beautiful and spacious than all the other dwellings of men, in the same manner the palace of the King of Glory must be erected [3 Kings 6]. In the Old Testament, when God desired to dwell in Jerusalem, Solomon built a temple for Him, employing Hiram, a most wise master, who possessed full knowledge of every art and science, and was skilled in every enterprise. He constructed the temple with materials of great value: with costly stone, with aromatic woods of cedar and cypress brought from Lebanon, with pure gold, and upon a high place: that is, upon Mount Moriah [2 Chr. 3]. The temple was of great beauty. On its walls were portrayed the likeness of cherubims, and of various trees and flowers. The temple was so spacious that the whole Israelite people could be accommodated without crowding, and the glory of the Lord would descend in fire and a cloud [2 Chr. 7]. Nevertheless, that temple did not suffice to contain within itself the Uncontainable God, for even though Solomon built Him a temple, "The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. 'What house will ye build me', saith the Lord: 'or what is the place of my rest?'" [Acts 7]

On the Nativity of the Theotokos - Various Church Fathers

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone

Your birth, O Theotokos, brought joy to the whole world, for from you dawned the sun of righteousness, Christ our God. Freeing us from the curse, He gave us His blessings. Abolishing death, He granted us eternal life.

St. Romanos the Melodist

* O mystery brought about on earth! After the birth, Anna prayed to our God and Maker Who knows all things in advance: "You have heard me, O Lord, as you have heard Hannah who was accused before Eli of being drunk" [1 Sam. 1:14]. She promised Samuel, after his birth, to the Lord to become priest. Just as formerly you have given me too a gift, the barren woman gives birth to the Mother of God and the nurse of our life.

DISCOURSE ON THE NATIVITY OF THE MOST HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

St. Andrew of Crete

The Nativity of the Mother of God. Fresco in Studenica Monastery.The present feastday is for us the beginning of feastdays. Serving as boundary limit to the law and to foretypes, it at the same time serves as a doorway to grace and truth. "For Christ is the end of the law" (Rom 10:4), Who, having freed us from the writing, doth raise us to spirit. Here is the end (to the law): in that the Lawgiver, having made everything, hath changed the writing in spirit and doth head everything within Himself (Eph 1:10), hath taken the law under its dominion, and the law is become subjected to grace, such that the properties of the law not suffer reciprocal commingling, but only suchlike, that the servile and subservient (in the law) by Divine power be transmuted into the light and free (in grace), "so that we—sayeth the Apostle—be not enslaved to the elements of the world" (Gal 4:3) and be not in a condition under the slavish yoke of the writing of the law. Here is the summit of Christ's beneficence towards us! Here are the mysteries of revelation! Here is the theosis [divinisation] assumed upon humankind—the fruition worked out by the God-man.