To become like her
…The second Adam, Christ, is theanthropos (God-Man). He is a divine person and, alongside His divine nature, He took on ours, the human nature, and deified it. The first human person, however, who became what God really intended man to be in his true nature is the Queen of the Heavens, before whom angels and men kneel, our real mother who bore us unto eternity. She is the outstretched hand of all creation, the hand that God took hold of and deified by grace, the hand through which our whole nature was deified since it is the common nature of all human persons. And from our human nature the gift of God is extended to all creatures: to noetic and to fleshy beings, to light and aerial angelic orders, as well as to heavy, stony and fiery stellar bodies, to each according to its nature and receptivity, because all creatures are connected by an indisolluble bond.
That is why the glory of the All-holy Mother of God is so great. She is the point of contact between the created and the uncreated, the point where Life, incorruptibility and immortality, enters into all of creation. For this reason the Church sings, in the words of a theotokion by St. Andrew of Crete:
Hail thou God after God, who hast honors second after the Trinity, and, receiving the fullness of the gifts of God, thou transporteth them to all, to angels and to men; thou bride of the Father, spotless mother of the Son, and holy and all-illumined temple of the Spirit; all-pure one, the most purposeful and ultimate perfection of all creation, for whom the world was made. And in thy birthgiving, the eternal will of the Creator was fulfilled.
All angelic natures and the entire vastness of the universe are nourished by the life of the Mother of God who, for us creatures, is God after God, since it is through her that we receive the fullness of God’s gifts. She is the only creature who receives the energy of the Holy Trinity directly, and it is she who conducts that energy to all, to angels and men. She and the Word of God are the two persons who embrace and fulfill the mystery of the eternal will of the Creator, the two persons, one created and one uncreated, who gave to all of creation the endless sea of divine gifts. The Word gave on behalf of Divinity, and she received on behalf of creation. She gave all that she had, the human nature, to her Son, and He gave all that He had, divine life, to His mother. O the depth of divine love!
The unconfused union of the divine and human natures that took place in the womb of Mary, the humble virgin, is the source of our true nature. Because the image of God, after which we humans are made, is not some abstract idea, but a living thing: our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the living image of the invisible God.
It is not possible for creatures to see God, to converse with Him, to taste of His Divine Life. But this is precisely what the purpose of the eternal will of God was. God’s desire was for all creatures to participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity. God gave us by His grace that which He has by His nature. He invited us to become gods, to become just like Him, not to acquire His nature, of course, but to become like Him in all that His nature has. He invited us to become gods, not in nature but by grace. He made us co-inheritors with His Only-begotten Son. It means He gave us everything that belongs to the Son of God. And the Son of God has everything His Father has.
How could this be so if it is not possible for creatures to see the divine nature? It is not possible for creatures to see God and to live; nevertheless, the love of God found a way. He came to us, not with His own nature but with ours. He shared in our life and invited us to share in His. We saw the face of the Word of God in human appearance, we conversed together in human language, we sat at the same table, we fell into His arms, we heard the beating of His heart, we shared His food. The eyes of God Who became a man gazed deep into our eyes, and we into His. That is how we became acquainted with God person to person. We came face to face with God without being burned by the fire of Divinity.
The Son of God became a man in order to come into personal contact with His creatures, to establish a bond of friendship with them, and to transmit the Divine Life to what He had made. Thus He opened the path for each of us to enter into and live the Divine Life of the persons of the Holy Trinity as an equal among equals by granting to our nature His incorruptibility and His immortality. Man sits next to God now, at His right hand. Our true nature is there and so is our true fatherland. The Queen of the Heavens, the Mother of God and of us all in eternity, is there.
This is the true glory of man: he became God after God and has honors second after the Holy Trinity. And this is what we are called to: through her to become like her, to sit on the throne of God, by grace to commune as equals with the persons of the Holy Trinity. Because this is what the infinite love of God has desired.
—Dr. Alexander Kalomiros
