www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West What is the difference between East/West understanding of...

Dear Joe,

In actual fact, it would be a liturgical impossibility of invoking the Theotokos on the feast of her Conception if she were not already a saint AT her Conception. To have the feast would make no liturgical sense.

Again, the East does not like to dogmatize on these matters. But they amount to the same thing. For example, Rome will formally canonized a Saint with all pomp and circumstance. Ethiopia will simply establish a shrine or build a church in honour of a holy person - and that person is a saint.

They come to the same thing.

At no time has anyone in the first millennium suggested that Mary was party to any kind of sin at all and at any time of her existence.

Alex

Dr. Roman,

Interestingly I came across something that may pertain to our discussion:

"You (Jesus) alone and your Mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these?"
-- St. Ephr�m, Nisibene Hymns 27:8; 361 AD.

Our mutually and universally beloved Ephrem uses the word stain without prejudice. Does he mean what the Latin Church means, or does he means something else entirely?

Dear Michael,

I doubt very much St Ephrem meant the "stain of Original Sin"

Certainly, this great Saint of God praised the Mother of our Lord, God and Saviour for her absolute and total sinlessness and holiness - She was consecrated a Temple of the Holy Spirit to be the Ark of the New Covenant Who is Christ according to the Will of the Father.

Who was it who wrote, "What honour should to that Woman be done, who had God for Father, Spouse and Son?"

Alex

I don't doubt that St. Ephrem's understading of "stain" with respect to the ancestral sin is not all that much different from the other fathers who spoke of the stain or blemish of the ancestral sin.

I don't think we need a super secret decoder ring for those texts...do you?

The loss of original justice and darkening of the will and intellect.

It is not as ancient as the sin itself, but it is an ancient teaching concerning the stain of original sin.

Mary