St.Gregory Armenian on Mary, mother of Jesus

“The feast of the Assumption of our Lady into Heaven is one of the five major feast days in the Armenian Church, they are called DAGHAVARS: Nativity of our Lord, Easter, Transfiguration, Assumption of our Mary into Heaven and Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Historically, St. Mary lived in Jerusalem for about fifteen years after the Resurrection, and when she died an elaborate funeral took place. All the Apostles, except St. Bartholomew, buried her with reverence in the garden of Getsemane. For three days and nights singing and prayers were heard over her tomb. When St. Bartholomew arrived, he asked to have a last look at Mary, but to the amazement of all, the tomb was empty. The Apostles were convinced the Lord Jesus Christ had taken her body and soul to heaven, a belief that was sanctioned later, sometime during the 9th and 12th centuries by the Church.”

“The corruption of the grave is a punishment for sin (Gen. 3:19). Our flesh is a “flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3). Through the desires of this flesh the majority of our sins are committed. In Mary, however, there is not the slightest stain of sin. By her Immaculate Conception and fullness of grace she was entitled to immunity from corruption in her body. The principle of corruption which we bear within us did not exist in her. “Flesh and blood,” says the Bible, “cannot possess the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 15:15). Even the bodies of the saints do not deserve to enter the kingdom of God. They must first be renewed by the hand of God. But Mary’s body — Immaculate, pure, sinless — is consequently incorruptible. From the first moment of her conception the state of the Blessed Virgin Mary was analogous, but superior, to the state of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Had they not sinned they would not have heard the divine malediction: “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” (Gen. 3,19). Doesn’t justice therefore demand that Mary be preserved from a malediction never merited by her? Mary’s Immaculate Body was, in a sense, the origin of sanctification of all mankind. Her flesh was used to form the flesh of her Son; the flesh which he used on the Cross to destroy death and sin, and which he gave to us that we might rise from the dead. Was this flesh, Mary’s flesh, Christ’s flesh, the instrument of our redemption and resurrection, to be subject to the corruption of the grave? The womb that bore Jesus Christ, the hands that caressed him, the arms that embraced him, the breasts that nourished him, the heart that so loved him — it is impossible to think that these crumbled into dust” (Father Canice, OFM Cap.). Christ’s perfect victory over Satan included victory over sin and death. But Mary, the Mother of God, was most intimately associated with Jesus in his victory over Satan. She not only furnished the flesh which Christ sacrificed for our Redemption, but she also had a definite role of cooperation in this Redemption. She was associated with him in the different parts of his triumph. Hence she was associated with him in his victory over death by her anticipated resurrection and Assumption. This argument is used by Pope Pius IX in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus. In the virginal conception and birth of his Son, God performed an absolutely unique miracle. This miracle was an act of divine respect for the flesh of the Mother of God. Against all the laws of nature he preserved the corporal integrity of his Mother. Would he later allow that Immaculate flesh to suffer the immeasurably greater lesion of the corruption of the grave? It is a basic principle of Catholic teaching that all the prerogatives and glories of Mary are be-cause of Jesus Christ. His divine dignity presupposes and demands such perfection in his Mother. The flesh of Mary was the Flesh of Christ; and Christ owed it to himself to preserve from dissolution the body that had served to form his own Body. Mary’s body, like her soul, had to be sin-less and undefiled. The humiliation of the Mother would have been the humiliation of the Son.”

“According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 491-492), the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ our Savior, “was redeemed from the moment of her conception.” This teaching, which has a long history in the West but was unknown in Armenian circles, was not accepted as a Roman Catholic dogma until 1854, when Pope Pius IX issued an encyclical (Ineffabilis Deus) declaring that Mary “from the first moment of her conception…was by God’s grace and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ…immune from all stain of original sin.” In the Armenian tradition there is no mention of the Holy Virgin’s conception until the 14th century. It was during the late Cilician period that he Armenian Church fathers became aware of some of the questions about the Holy Virgin’s conception under discussion among the theologians of the Roman Catholic Church. The Feast of the Virgin’s Conception, which is now celebrated on December 9, was not introduced into the Armenian tradition until the 17th Century, and it was done so under Western influence.”

“The earliest Armenian discussion about the Conception of the Virgin is to be found in St. Gregory of Datev’s Book of Questions, where he upholds the view that is traditional in the East. Ac-cording to this, the Holy Virgin was free of the seven cardinal sins and all the forgivable sins, but show as now immune from original sin, with which all humans are born. According to St.Gregory of Datev, the Holy Virgin was cleansed of original sin by the Holy Spirit at the time of Annunciation. Christ, taking body from the Holy Virgin, took the original sin of mankind on himself and took it with him onto the cross: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). The Armenian Church’s view of the Holy Virgin in this matter is best summarized by the 12th Century Catholicos St. Nerses the Graceful, who states: The Virgin Mary, from whom he took flesh, was of the peccable nature of Adam [the nature being] united with the divine nature of God, the peccable became impeccable… The Eastern Orthodox and the Armenian veneration of the Assumption of the Holy Virgindoes not differ from that of the Roman Catholic dogma, which implies that Mary did not die because of her immunity from original sin. The Assumption has been declared a dogma ever since 1950 by Pope Pius XII.”

“The Armenian Church, like the other ancient churches, believes that the virgin birth of Christ did not dissolve the virginity of Mary, since Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and not by human seed. She continued to live a sinless, stainless and a pure existence after giving birth to the Savior of the world, since she had been cleansed by the Holy Spirit in order to serve as the receptacle of the Word of God.”