Pints With Aquinas - "Who is My Mother?" What Did Jesus REALLY MEAN! | Mthr. Natalia

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Mother gives a meditation on The Theotokos she had during the Feast of the Dormition. 🤝 💸 Support the Channel: https://mattfradd.locals.com 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥��� Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. A couple days ago, those of us Byzantines who are on the new calendar celebrated the leave-taking of the Dormition of the Theotokos. So I'm a little late in the game

in recording this particular episode, but I wanted to share a couple of thoughts, reflections that I had about the feast. So on August 15th, again in the new calendar, we celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, the falling asleep of the Godbearer. And this is the same feast, the same day as in the West. It celebrated the Assumption of Mary.

So the reason we call it the Dormition, the falling asleep of the Mother of God, is that the belief in the East is that Mary died before being assumed bodily into heaven. So we maintain the same belief, the dogma that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. We just believe that she died before that happened. And I know that, so in the West, you can believe, you can stay true to the dogma of the assumption and believe either that Mary died or that she didn't. So both of these are perfectly acceptable to believe within the Catholic tradition. I do know that at some point the more commonly held belief, even in the West, was that Mary

died. And I don't know historically, someone, y'all can look this up, and someone who actually knows anything about history, church history could explain this to you. I don't know at what point it started developing the thought that she didn't die, but I do know that if you go to the Holy Land, as our community did a few years ago, if you go to the Holy Land,

there is a site that's reverenced, that's venerated by the Orthodox as the site of the tomb of the Mother of God. And then there's a site that's venerated by the Roman Catholics as being the tomb of the Mother of God. Because so much division in the Holy Land, it's really painful.

Anyways, but the point is, if the Roman Catholics have a site of veneration of the tomb of the mother of God, then it's very clear that at some point, it was the commonly held Roman Catholic belief as well that she did die because there's a tomb. So anyways, you can believe either of those and still be within Catholic tradition.

So before sharing my reflection, I wanna share something kind of funny that happened during Vespers, during the pre-feast right before Dormition. And I don't know, I thought this was funny. You might not think it's funny. But we have, so during the pre-feast and the post-festive periods,

we have, you sing three at Vespers, you sing three stikira, three hymns that are about the feast and then three that are about the saint of the day. And so one of the stikira during the pre-feast, it says something about those who wish to bear your body, and it says that, They saw your most holy remains, whole and untouched by corruption, the hair framing your glorious face.

And I just, as we were singing this, I just thought, what a beautiful description of the mother of God laying there after her death, whole and untouched by corruption, the hair framing her glorious face. And I thought, this is so beautiful. And then we sing something in the stacchia that I was like, that doesn't make sense for the Dormition. And then I realized, I had kind of spaced out during Vespers and I realized that we weren't singing one of the Stacira

for the feast. We were singing the Stacira for the Saint of the day, who was a Saint that was incorrupt, which is why they were singing this. And it was about a man. And so all of a sudden the image in my mind went from this beautiful image of the mother of God laying out on her, you know, laying out on her deathbed

and this beautiful in the hair framing her face. And actually it's a man. And that just, I had a really hard time containing the giggles in Vespers once I realized my mistake. But that's not the beautiful edifying reflection that I want to share with you about the Dormition. What I'd like to share is from the Gospel reading

for the day. So at every Marian feast in the Byzantine tradition, I hope that's not an overgeneralization, I really think this is true. At every Marian feast, the gospel for the day is the gospel from Luke about Martha and Mary. And everyone is probably familiar with this gospel, so I'm not gonna go into the details of it.

But then it's the gospel of Martha and Mary in the 10th chapter of Luke. So if you're not familiar with it, go read it. But then we also tack on two verses from chapter 11, verses 27 and 28 from chapter 11 of St. Luke. And these are the verses in which a woman in the crowd calls out to Jesus and says, "'Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.

And Jesus responds, rather blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it. And something struck me about these two verses that I've never noticed before. A couple of things actually. One is that Jesus takes what is depersonalized and disintegrated and personalizes and integrates it. So Jesus is saying, it's not the womb, it's not the breasts, it's the person who's blessed. And of course, those are parts of the person, right? And that's what I mean by the integration.

Jesus is in this one statement, in my prayerful reflection, in this one statement, in my prayerful reflection, Jesus is integrating body and soul. He's saying it's not just the womb, but it's the person within whom the womb exists. I have no confidence that that statement was grammatically correct, but I'm confident in the truth of it. So it's the person, not just the parts of the person. That was the first thing that I realized. But then the other thing was that Jesus has also moved this statement from being one of functionality to one of receptivity.

So the woman is saying blessed is the bearing and the nursing, what the mother of God has done. And Jesus says, rather blessed are they who hear the word and keep it. It's not about what she's done, it's about the fact that she's been receptive. And part of the beauty of this is this opens up the possibility for blessedness to everybody. Not only those who, like that one person, have the opportunity to bear Christ in her womb in a literal way and to her womb in a literal way, and to nurse

him in a literal way, but it opens this possibility of blessedness up to everyone, because all of us can hear the word of God and keep it. And it's obvious if you look at these two verses for more than 10 seconds, it's obvious that Jesus is not saying, no, my mother is not blessed. Because Mary perfectly fits into his statement in verse 28, right? She kept the word of God. She heard it and kept it. Mary pondered these things in her heart.

At Matins, for the feast of the Dormition we have, and I think every Marian feast I think, we have the passage from the Visitation where Mary goes to see Elizabeth. And we hear at the end of Elizabeth's response to Mary at the visitation, her cry of joy when she sees Mary, Elizabeth says, "'And blessed is she who believed that there would be "'a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.' "'In other words, blessed is she who heard the word of God

and kept it, who believed that it would be fulfilled, who didn't give up on it, who had hope, who trusted in the word. Now what I'm not trying to say here is that receptivity is passive, Now what I'm not trying to say here is that receptivity is passive. Because to be receptive is not to be passive. Mary did bear Jesus. She did nurse Jesus. And I'm of course not saying that those things were not the will of God or that she wasn't acting according to the will of God in

bearing Jesus, in nursing him. But the point that I'm making, that I'm trying to make, is that the actions were a response to the Word of God. Mary first heard and received, ascended with her will and acted. There is, if you notice in the icon of the Annunciation, in the icon of the Annunciation, in the icon of the Annunciation, when Gabriel comes to Mary, there's like a ray of light that's coming down from heaven. But this ray is not pointing to Mary's womb. It's directed, it's pointing to her head, to her ear. Like Mary hears the word, she receives the spirit first incarnate in her womb. So, receptivity is not passivity. It calls forth And we have to remember in this then,

that when the word of God is spoken to us, it's different for me than it is for other people. He asks different things of different people because each person's relationship with him is unique. And we have different gifts, we have different desires, we have different needs even. And I think, so as I was, in our monastery it's very common, if there's a feast day or something, that at dinner we might just share graces, share reflections as we've been praying with the feast. And as I was sharing this reflection on verses 27 and 28 with my sisters,

only as I was speaking and sharing this grace, you know, I had briefly mentioned when we have the Gospel about Martha and Mary and then these two verses, this was my reflection on these two verses. And then as I'm saying this and as I'm sharing the grace, I realize, wait, this reflection fits so perfectly with the Gospel of Martha and Mary, right? This reflection about the point is not what we're doing, but about our receiving the Word of God. Because this is what happens in the story of Martha and Mary, is that one is doing, one is receiving. And the one that it says has chosen the better part

is the one that's receiving. And I don't think by any means that Jesus is saying, like I don't think the point of the story is that Martha is wrong because of her action. Right? There's plenty of context clues that say the action in and of itself was not the problem. The passage says things like she was distracted by many cares and she was angry with Mary for not helping her. And I think the fact that Martha is bitter and that she's resentful, that she's distracted, this is the problem. It's not a problem of Martha's being hospitable and Jesus doesn't want us to be hospitable, right? Because I think that the biggest problem here, one of the big problems is that

maybe Martha is actually responding to the word of the Lord in her heart. Maybe she is being called to hospitality. But she's being distracted by looking at and judging what Mary is being called to. She's frustrated that Mary is not being called to the same thing that she thinks she's being called to. You know, we see this in the parable of the workers who go out and are paid the wages and the owner gives the same wages to the person who came at the end as he did to the person who came at the beginning. And the person who came at the beginning would have been perfectly content with his wages if he wasn't comparing them to the wages of the one who came at the end. We see this in the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John

when Peter has this beautiful encounter with the Lord and this intimate conversation with him, and then immediately goes, but Jesus, what about John? And it wasn't enough for him in that moment. And Jesus had to, you know, Jesus was just like, what does that matter to you? Like, you just follow me, that's the point. You just follow me. And so we need to be attentive to the word of God in us.

We need to keep the word of God in us, and we need to respond accordingly as he's asking us to respond. And we do that with prayerful discernment, with the help of a spiritual director, a trusted friend, so on and so forth. We don't just make all those decisions and that discernment on our own. But the point is we need to not be dissatisfied by, yeah, whether, just to not be dissatisfied when He's calling other people to things that are different than what he's asking of you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the gift that it is to be able to sit at your feet. I thank you for giving me this gift in a particular way as a monastic and I ask that you help those who are listening to this to know in what way you're asking them to sit at your feet. Please grant both my listeners and myself a spirit of discernment, a spirit of receptivity and an openness to the action to which you're calling us. Help us to be integrated persons, offering to you body, mind and soul.

Offering to you our entire being. Help us to love well. I ask all of this and thank you for these things through the intercession of Saints Martha and Mary, Saint Nathaniel, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint most holy Theotokos, and all the saints, and through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.