Interviewer:
The Catholic
Church this year celebrates the hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception. How does the Eastern
Christian and Byzantine Tradition celebrate the
Conception of Mary and her full and immaculate
holiness?
Bartholomew I:
The Catholic Church found that it needed to
institute a new dogma for Christendom about one
thousand and eight hundred years after the
appearance of the Christianity, because it had
accepted a perception of original sin - a mistaken
one for us Orthodox - according to which original
sin passes on a moral stain or a legal
responsibility to the descendants of Adam, instead
of that recognized as correct by the Orthodox faith
- according to which the sin transmitted through
inheritance the corruption, caused by the separation
of mankind from the uncreated grace of God, which
makes him live spiritually and in the flesh. Mankind
shaped in the image of God, with the possibility and
destiny of being like to God, by freely choosing
love towards Him and obedience to
His commandments, can even after the fall of
Adam and Eve become friend of God according to
intention; then God sanctifies them, as
He sanctified many of the
progenitors before Christ, even if the
accomplishment of their ransom from corruption, that
is their salvation, was achieved after the
incarnation of Christ and through Him.
In consequence,
according to the Orthodox faith, Mary the All-holy
Mother of God was not conceived exempt from the
corruption of original sin, but loved God above of
all things and obeyed his commandments, and thus was
sanctified by God through Jesus Christ who
incarnated Himself of her.
She obeyed Him like one of the faithful, and
addressed herself to Him with a Mother's trust. Her
holiness and purity were not blemished by the
corruption, handed on to her by original sin as to
every man, precisely because she was reborn in
Christ like all the saints, sanctified above every
saint.
Her reinstatement in
the condition prior to the Fall did not necessarily
take place at the moment of her conception. We
believe that it happened afterwards, as consequence
of the progress in her of the action of the
uncreated divine grace through the visit of the Holy
Spirit, which brought about the conception of the
Lord within her, purifying her from every stain.
As already said,
original sin weighs on the descendants of Adam and
of Eve as corruption, and not as legal
responsibility or moral stain. The sin brought
hereditary corruption and not a hereditary legal
responsibility or a hereditary moral stain. In
consequence the All-holy participated in the
hereditary corruption, like all mankind, but with
her love for God and her purity - understood as an
imperturbable and unhesitating dedication of her
love to God alone - she succeeded, through the grace
of God, in sanctifying herself in Christ and making
herself worthy of becoming the house of God, as God
wants all us human beings to become. Therefore we in
the Orthodox Church honor the All-holy Mother of God
above all the saints, albeit we don't accept the new
dogma of her Immaculate Conception. The non-acceptance
of this dogma in no way diminishes our love and
veneration of the All-holy Mother of God.
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