The scary Mary prayer
May 11th, 2006 ~ Orthodox perspectiveBJohnD’s comment here about the prayer “Most holy Theotokos, save us” (what I’ve heard called the Scary Mary Prayer) seemed to merit its own entry by somebody who really knows what they’re talking about. What I really hope is that somebody like that sees this and writes one, because I wouldn’t mind seeing it myself. Here’s a thought or two, until somebody smarter comes along.
- This and some of the language from the other prayers throws me, because it sounds like you’re saying that the Theotokos is our salvation. In a way, the longer poetry in the Akathist is a help, because it makes clear that the understanding is that she is the entryway to our salvation. The hymns to her are full of metaphors about her being a gate or a ladder — the way for The Way, I suppose. As such, some (but not all) of the type of praise and thanksgiving that you can give to Christ can be given to Mary. I think that’s an accurate statement. (Hello, smart person? Anytime now …)
- All the same, there’s something terribly direct about praying for Mary to save us. Shouldn’t that be something like “Most holy Theotokos, pray to God to save us”? So that’s the bone of contention with me — I think that the theology behind it is sound, and I believe that the Church knew the difference between veneration and worship, but I wish that language were more accurate.
- Perhaps part of the reason for this inaccuracy is that the prayer probably predates the fears and accusations about the “cult of Mary.” If you’re not being accused of being extreme and you assume everyone around you is well-informed, you may be poetic rather than exact in your speech.
- And I’ll go out on a limb — there probably were times in Orthodox history when the people did blur that line. I can’t see blaming the Orthodox Church for that any more than I would blame the Catholic Church because people think they see visions of Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s a bit of peasant theology — grab hold of one little thing that seems neat, comforting and readily understandable and take it to extremes. If God the Father represented the conditional love that you had to earn, and if your unworthiness was overstressed by well-educated clergy that thought you understood more than you did, maybe the Virgin Mary could represent the unconditional love — the mother that you could always approach and who would always be on your side. And so maybe you’d begin to address every prayer to her as your only gateway.
In any case, to bring it from the hypothetical to the anecdotal, the best alleviation of whatever fears I might’ve had has been in seeing that the Church as I’ve known it just hasn’t crossed that line. There are Akathist and molieban services that praise the Theotokos, hymns and prayers are addressed to her, icons of her are everywhere — and yet, she never quite becomes the reason for it all. Just as icons of Mary point to Christ, all the words seem always to be a way of talking about something else. As it she’s not the object of true worship but perhaps humanity’s best practitioner. If Protestants think we have a lot to say about Mary, they must’ve missed the 3-hour Holy Thursday service about Christ’s passion or the dozens (or hundreds, depending on how you edit it) of verses of lamentations on Good Friday. Christ is Christ and the Theotokos is the Theotokos. Earlier Christians may have taken it for granted that the distinction would always be so obvious that they wouldn’t have to spell it out for us.
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May 12th, 2006 at 7:05 am
It’s possible that something gets lost in the overall translation, too. For example, a friend of mine took a verse that said nothing about the Theotokos in English and then told me the Greek version, which included the word ‘zoe’. He then talked about the several layers of meaning of that word to a Greek, including both Eve and the new Eve, and the meaning that a Greek speaker would find in that verse was totally different than anything an English translation would give. I never would have thought that verse (I can’t remember it!) spoke about the Virgin.
Also, as Karl mentioned some time ago the role of a Queen Mother, if you will. Such a person is so far from our general understanding here in the US that the role she would play is nearly inconceivable. But if we take that role at face value, the words ‘Most Holy Theotokos, Save Us!’ are not only appropriate, but necessary.
A friend of mine came back from visiting Elder Ephraim and mentioned that he was told to pray to the Theotokos in the same fashion that he says the Jesus Prayer. I’d never heard of such a thing but I’ve followed his example (not as faithfully as I should, unfortunately). It’s a very powerful thing! She is someone we want to know. The disciples themselves sought her guidance regularly and after her Dormition began leaving two places at the head of the table when they ate together istead of the one they had been leaving for only Christ.
I’m rambling… :)
May 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Hey, I love rambling. :-D
I hadn’t thought of the translation issue. I’m being somewhat amazed, as I continue to go through Fr. Hopko’s tapes on the Lord’s Prayer, how much gets lost sometimes in translation.
I also have had to realize that being a little nervous about “the Mary thing” puts me in opposition with many, many saints — including my patron saint, Mary of Egypt. And I finally am starting to find my way with it, though I usually still begin any prayer to her with a sort of apology. Probably not necessary, but it makes me feel like I’m being honest.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Wow, Grace. Thanks for this. I hit “submit” on my previous post and dove back into a pile of work, only coming to the surface a few minutes ago. And what do I find on my return? Your excellent mini-essay. It sounds like you’ve had similar experiences to my own.
When I hear this prayer I always think, “OK, OK, relax, you know they don’t really mean *save*! The wording’s a little awkward, that’s all.” Actually, I use this prayer myself, but I always add, “O Mother of God, pray for us” right afterwards to make myself feel better.
As I typed the above, I remembered something my priest said in a recent sermon: “It isn’t the Church that needs to conform itself to us, but us who need to conform ourselves to the Church.” Maybe we Proddy converts just need to relax a little and let the Holy Spirit-led Church speak. ;-)
May 12th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
If protestants used the word “save” in the same way the Bible does, they would think of themselves as heretics. A wife saves her husband (I Cor. 7), a woman is saved by childbearing (I Tim)., an elder’s prayer saves (James 5), we save people by “snatching them from the fire” (Jude), Timothy saves those he preaches to… and on and on…. The Church uses biblical language better than the folks who claim to use the Bible only to talk about salvation. Of course we do, we’ve been doing it 4 times longer than they have. :)
May 12th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
S-P,
Bwah! Hilarious…
May 13th, 2006 at 8:04 am
s-p,
Boy, that’s just an excellent point. I remind myself sometimes that the Church isn’t what changed, the world changed. So now some words and expressions are “loaded words” that didn’t use to be.
May 13th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Thanks, S-P. A friend made much the same point to me in an email. He likened the use of “save” in the prayer to a drowning man crying out, “Help! Somebody save me!”
May 13th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Grace - I find your Orthodox blogs so very helpful - always relevant! I too have a strong Protestant background, so these types of blogs (as well as the recent Lord, have mercy blog) affirm my journey into the ancient faith. Thanks so much!
May 13th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
I’m very glad to be of any assistance, especially since I still need so much myself. :-/
The funny thing (but not “funny ha ha”) about my background is that I wasn’t all that strong of a Protestant. We moved around so much that we never belonged to any church for long, and since my mother really didn’t like religion, we sort of shopped around for the least religious Prot church. (Even did a little time with the Unitarians — oboy.) As a college student, I answered an altar call (early 80’s — being “born again” was mandatory if you were young and directionless) and briefly went to an Evangelical Free church, but it didn’t last. Thank God for the Orthodox Church — in my case, certainly.
The only reason I give this background is to say that I had all these very strong cautionary feelings about giving the Theotokos too much credit (oy vey!) without even having a grounded Protestant theology. It was just this knee jerk sort of thing. I get the impression that it’s sort of like that even for more educated converts.
May 13th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
I just came from Vespers and it struck me how different the “Scary Mary” prayer sounds in context rather than all by itself. It’s the introductory acclamation into the great Theotokos prayer at the end of Vespers. It goes like this:
“O Most Holy Theotokos, save us.
“More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, thou who without stain barest God the Word, and art truly Theotokos, we magnify thee.”
Thus, the acclamation is not simply a prayer in its own right with no context, but an introduction to what is possibly the most sublime statement of Mary’s proper honor as Theotokos.
Jim N (not me) above, mentioned the Mary/Eve connection. It could be that we have it here. Just as Eve (and Adam), in a sense lost us, by leading the race into sin, so Mary, saves us, by living the sort of life that makes it possible for God to be incarnate in the fullness of time. Salvation is God’s work, but also requires willing, humble servants. Thus the cry to Mary to save us is not something that she will do in the future, but that she did in the past. After all, when we get into prayer and the saints and heaven and all that stuff, our conceptions of time get all messed up. Linear time is too restrictive. This is a cry to Mary that she live the faithful and humble life required to be the Bearer of God the Word.
This isn’t an answer to the great Protestant Mary dilemma, but maybe it can point some of us poor struggling ex-Protestants in a helpful direction. Whether these thoughts are helpful or not, it is certainly helpful to put these various prayers and difficult sayings into their proper liturgical context.
May 15th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Thus the cry to Mary to save us is not something that she will do in the future, but that she did in the past.
I’d agree with that, but I wouldn’t leave it there ‘in the past’. After all, it was the Virgin who converted St. Catherine: ‘my Son wants nothing to do with you and your beauty’ was essentially the message. It was her veil that covered a church in Constantinople. I also don’t think we should under-estimate the Queen Mother role. fwiw. :)
May 15th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
You make a good correction, Jim, concerning Mary’s work past and present. It’s hard to get all of these time issues straight. :)
I’m not sure about the Queen Mother idea. I haven’t studied that one thoroughly enough yet, although it’s an interesting possibility.
When I reread my post I sounded a bit more sure of myself than I am. I’m not sure how many different contexts the “O Holy Theotokos save us” is prayed. I’m also have no idea as to the liturgical history of the prayer. (Is it only a thousand years old, for instance, or is it ancient?) How it got into the the liturgy and why interest me, but I don’t know how to find those sorts of things out.
May 15th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
“Is it only a thousand years old, for instance, or is it ancient?”
Reason # 684 why it’s great to be Orthodox. ;-)
May 16th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Hi Jim N x2 if you haven’t already checked out www.ourlifeinchrist.com audio archives we have 3 programs on Mary, and we touch on the Queen Mother.
And Jim is correct, all of the prayers of the Church need to be understood in the greater context not only of the immediate service, but the entire liturgical year and ALL of the prayers, not just the Divine Liturgy that most people only attend.
These “one liners” stand out when taken out of that context, but when placed beside thousands of other prayers they are such a small part of a much bigger picture. I told a protestant once that about 10% of Matins is about Mary, which is the percentage of the Gospel of Luke that is about Mary. :)
May 16th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Re: the question of Queen mother (and the mystery of the Church), I have always understood Psalm 45 to be the prophetic utterance of these things (see esp. vv. 16-17).
Probably s-p’s programs delve into this in great detail - they always have a wealth of info!
May 16th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Thanks fhr the plug, S-P. Have you guys got podcasting set up yet?
(Other) Jim N.,
I know that the Archangel Gabriel gave a certain prayer to the Theotokos to a monk around the turn of the first millenium, but I’m not sure if that was the ’save us’ or the ‘more honorable’ prayer. I think the latter. At any rate, I definitely agree with BjohnD! :)
May 17th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Dittos and all that, s-p! I was thinking that the Orthodox convert list — http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodox-convert — had at least one discussion about Queen Mother (and probably quite a few about “facing up to Mary”) but I couldn’t find them.
I knew there’s so much that’s been written about this that it’s almost hard to know where to start … if you wanted to start, which is what all the other conversation helps with. When the Church has anything like this that I struggle with, I can usually see traces of her venerable age and wisdom in them. It’s being young and foolish myself that’s the problem.
But it’s VERY helpful to see what others are thinking about the same thing. Makes the whole blogosphere worthwhile, y’know? :-)
May 18th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Hi Jim N… yes, podcasting is up and running! Check out our homepage for details! We podcast the new shows but have yet to start setting up the past archives on podcast, but… in our spare time…..
May 27th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Thanks for posting this. It was helpful to read, along with the comments. I’ve been looking into Orthodoxy for over a year now, and this issue is one that is hard for me to swallow. And I’ve wondered- can you be Orthodox and still have a hard time with some of this stuff? So thanks for being honest and writing this.
Blessings,
Rebeca
May 27th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
As you can see, you’re not alone! I was very glad to get the input of others myself. And by the way, if you haven’t visited it, that Yahoo group that I mentioned a couple comments ago is a great resource for converts and those with questions. Heck, I’ve been Orthodox 20 years and they still cover stuff I didn’t know.
Worth mentioning that there’s really no substitute for one-on-one time with your friendly neighborhood priest, but that probably goes without saying.