The story from Constantinople in the tenth century tells of
a vision in which Mary covers the Christian faithful with a veil of spiritual
force, which deflects harm, and deepens trust and hope in her Son. The vision
captures the hearts of the Church planted and growing in the lands of the Rus’,
the Slavs of the east and north-east of Europe. Thus, when the Turks attack the
monastery of Pochaiv and the ottomans threatened all Christian Europe to
subject it to Islam in the seventeenth century, it is to the Mother of God’s
protecting veil of intercession that the Rus’ turn. For Orthodox and Catholics
alike, the intervention of deliverance from the Saviour at the insistent
prayers of the faithful led by the Mother of God is a defining moment in
culture, society, history and identity for Ukraine, Belarus and later Russia
too.
The image of the Mother holding her veil out to protect
the people is deeply loved in Ukraine. Today’s is therefore a major feast; and
the icon is really an image of the Mother holding her Son our God, in an
attitude of prayer and in that same absolute trust with which she said to the
servants at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, “Do whatever he tells you,” so that
mere water was changed into the new wine of the Kingdom. Her prayer, then, is
the communion of intercession with which our Lord “ever lives to make
intercession for us.” (Hebrews 7.25)
In our Gospel today (Luke 6.31-36, of the Sunday), St Luke
related our Lord’s plea that we “be merciful as the Father is merciful”. Our Epistle
(Hebrews 9.1-7, of the feast) recalls the service of the Temple in which the
high priest is drawn into the holy of Holies, approaches the mercy seat and at
the end emerges with forgiveness and reconciliation. This is much like the
pattern of our Divine Liturgy, and we see how the world is thus changed and
saved, because we are being transformed in this worship by the power of Christ -
to save us from all that is amiss and
to save us for the truer reality in
our midst of the existence of heaven, in which we like Him “live and move and
have our being.” (Acts 17.28) The veil of prayer, which we call the protecting
veil, is the image of this unseen dimension which we actually live in as well
as in our world, for God is among us (Revelation 21.3 & John 1.14, Matthew
1.23), and our life is hid with Christ in God (Collossians 3.3).
The entire direction of our liturgy this afternoon, then,
is a trajectory from the world, through the world, toward heaven and into God,
at the same time as Christ God’s trajectory is from heaven toward us, through
heaven into the world for us, and back again with us. Our altar is not confined
in a separate chamber, but in a space that dynamically and repeatedly opens up
the gate of heaven and pushes back the barriers we have erected in the world,
so that we constantly see in with hope, can go in for mercy and go out from
with forgiveness and a new life. The tabernacle described in the epistle to the
Hebrews is the symbol par excellence
of not just God’s static dwelling place and judgement seat, but His vehicle
that moves, and as it moves projects and conveys the coming of God. It was a
tent in the wilderness, and a vibrant fiery edifice in the temple in Jerusalem.
But to the Church’s understanding from very early times this tabernacle containing
and bringing out our God is formed of flesh - a person, the Mother who extends
the cover of the house of God - for “roof cover” is what protect means – she who
extends the cover of the house of God’s own dwelling, in order to house the
people of God, the community of the redeemed like her in Christ.
As we envisage with the eye of our heart the Virgin
Mother covering us with a veil of imperturbable intercession, pleading
insistently with her Son for our safety from sin and danger, and our salvation
for living in heaven even here, let us know with assurance, that she brings us
close to Him as He comes out of his temple with healing and strength, and the
judgment of mercy for living faithfully and with hope for the kingdom.
Seeing we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses
(Hebrews 12.1), covered in such powerful intercession by the Mother of God, let
us go forth to meet the Saviour (Hebrews 13.13, Mark 14.42 & Matthew 25.6),
saying, “Lord, Lord, open the door for us, and come in Your Kingdom!” (Matthew
25.11 & Luke 23.42).
