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| Source: legacyicons.com |
As a follow-up to our zoom class on Monday evening, "The Orthodox Veneration of the Theotokos;" I asked two our parishioner who have been Orthodox long enough to absorb the Church's veneration of the Virgin Mary for at least a few years now, to respond with a reflection of their own about how they now perceive, acknowledge and venerate her. Here is the first one, written by Kevin Rains:Learning to Love the Mother of God
I did not come to love Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer) all at once.
As a Protestant, I was taught—sometimes subtly, sometimes directly—to keep my distance from Mary. She was honored as faithful and obedient, but always at arm’s length. The concern was understandable: guard the uniqueness of Christ, avoid anything that smelled like excess, keep devotion tethered tightly to Scripture. When I first encountered Orthodox Christianity, I brought that posture with me. I listened carefully. I watched for imbalance. I told myself I would follow the logic of the faith, but I would do so cautiously.
Mary was the slowest piece to fall into place.
At first, I encountered her primarily through liturgy and hymnography. She was everywhere—named, invoked, praised. That made me uneasy. Yet what surprised me was not what the Church said about her, but what it did not say. Christ was never displaced. The Gospel was never softened. Instead, Mary seemed to stand consistently in one place: pointing beyond herself, receiving rather than grasping, magnifying rather than competing.
The first real turning point for me came through a passage I thought I already understood.
In the Gospels, Jesus is told that His mother and brothers are standing outside, seeking Him. His response is startling:
“Who is My mother, or My brothers?”
And looking about at those who sat around Him, He said,
“Here are My mother and My brothers!
For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.”
(Mark 3:33–35; see also Matthew 12:46–50; Luke 8:19–21)
For most of my Protestant life, I heard this as a corrective - almost a rebuke. Jesus, I assumed, was relativizing Mary’s importance, moving the focus away from biology and toward spiritual obedience. And that is partly true. But what I had never considered is that this saying does not diminish Mary - it defines her.
Jesus is not saying, “Mary does not matter.”
He is saying, “This is why she matters.”
Of course, we honor Mary as the Theotokos because she bore the Word of God in her womb. Yet, she is equally honored
because she embodies the very thing Jesus describes: the one who hears the word of God and does it. In Luke’s Gospel, this connection is made even more explicit. After the same episode, Jesus says:
“My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
That verse became impossible for me to read in isolation from the Annunciation.
When the angel Gabriel announces God’s invitation to Mary, her response is neither passive nor coerced:
“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord;
let it be to me according to your word.”
Here is the fulfillment of Christ’s later teaching—spoken decades before He ever preached it. Mary hears the word of God, and she submits to it freely. She does not fully understand the cost. She does not control the outcome. But she consents. Voluntarily. Faithfully.
In that moment, Mary becomes both the Theotokos ("God-bearer") and the first disciple.
This realization changed everything for me. The question was no longer whether honoring Mary distracted from Christ. The question became whether my resistance to Mary was actually blinding me to something essential about discipleship itself. Mary is not an exception to Jesus’ teaching; she is its first and fullest example.
And this is where affection began to grow.
Orthodox devotion to the Theotokos is not about elevating Mary beyond humanity, but about showing what humanity looks like when it fully receives God’s grace. She does not seize authority. She receives a calling. She does not speak often in the Gospels, but when she does, her words are saturated with Scripture and trust (Luke 1:46–55). She stands at the foot of the Cross (John 19:25), not as a theological concept, but as a mother who remains faithful when everything appears lost.
As a Protestant, I was formed to think clearly, argue carefully, and guard doctrine faithfully. Orthodoxy did not take those things away. But devotion to the Theotokos revealed something I had not been trained to see as clearly: that obedience, humility, and love are not secondary virtues—they are the soil in which Christ is received.
I did not lose Christ by learning to love His mother.
I encountered Him more fully—incarnate, vulnerable, and real.
I came to the Theotokos cautiously.
I stay because Scripture, read patiently and lived deeply, led me there.
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