From nativity set to sacred mystery
I never used to think much about Mary.
It wasn’t out of disrespect; I just barely knew her.
As a Protestant, her presence in the story of Christ was acknowledged but rarely dwelt upon. She was a figure in the nativity set that looked reverent, kneeling by Jesus, and then carefully packed away with the rest of the nativity until next Christmas—out of sight, out of mind.
But with Eastern Orthodoxy comes honoring Mary — the Theotokis— daily. In many of the Orthodox books and podcasts I’ve consumed, I’ve heard repeatedly that Mary is the one stumbling block for many Protestant converts.
I get it. It is tough, especially when you were told your whole life that Mary was important, but not that important.
Mary was often an afterthought. So, I never had to wrestle with what it meant that God chose her—not just to bring Christ into the world, but to form Him in her womb.
I never had to wrestle with what it meant that the uncontainable God chose to be contained within her.
And I certainly didn’t wrestle with the idea that He received His DNA from her; that the Incarnate God had an actual mother.
Orthodoxy handed me questions and invited me into the wrestling. If there’s one thing Orthodoxy truly does seem to love, it’s challenging the faithful to grow and have a rich spiritual journey through the process.
For me, the Theotokos has been a challenge, not out of rudeness, but because I’ve never really had to think – really think – about the weight of Mary’s part of the story.
In Orthodox liturgy and hymns, Mary is not an afterthought. She is honored, not worshipped, as the one who bore God physically.
The term Theotokos doesn’t mean “holy woman” or “Jesus’ mom.” It means “God-bearer.”
Not God’s bearer, but the one who bore God. Not just someone carrying something from God, but someone who bore God Himself.
It’s a very purposeful and precise descriptor. The Church didn’t ascribe the word to elevate Mary. It was to protect the truth about Jesus—that He was fully God, even in the womb.
I hadn’t really let that idea sink in until recently. What did it mean that God was in Mary’s womb? What did it mean that she said “yes” to such a purpose - to deliver salvation, including her own?
Without Mary, there is no human contribution to the salvation story.
The Incarnation is an incredible mystery. And when you start to really sit with it, it’s jarring.
Such a mystery should jar us; it should disrupt us. It’s a miracle.
Like looking up at the heavens and seeing an endless sea of stars so big and glorious, it’s too much for the human mind to wrap its limited capabilities around and grasp the expanse.
That vastness is echoed in a line from a prayer I’ve been trying to say daily to grow closer to Mary. It states:
Because of you, who are full of grace, all creation rejoices, the ranks of angels and the human race.
O hallowed temple, spiritual paradise, and pride of virgins, from you God took flesh, and He who is our God before eternity became a little child, for He made your womb His throne and caused it to become wider than the heavens.
When I first encountered the phrase that her womb was “wider than the heavens,” I couldn’t make sense of it. It is poetic, but it stuck with me as having much bigger importance.
I’d always seen Jesus as a baby and Mary as just the vessel.
But then I sat with it. I wrestled with it.
And I realized: it’s not poetry—it’s revelation.
If Christ is God and He became fully human in Mary’s womb, then she held the One who created the universe. She literally contained the uncontainable.
The One who fashioned the heavens submitted Himself to be contained and knit together in her body. She didn’t just carry a divine message—she carried divinity itself.
The more I thought about that, the more I realized how profound - and special - that is.
Her womb became a sanctuary, her body the first temple of the Incarnate God.
The Orthodox refer to Mary in a way I’d never heard before: as the new Ark of the Covenant—the sacred vessel Israel carried that held the stone tablets of the Law, the manna from heaven, and the rod of Aaron.
In the Church’s understanding, Mary fulfills this image in a new and greater way:
Instead of stone tablets, she bore the living Word of God.
Instead of manna, she carried the true Bread from Heaven.
Instead of Aaron’s rod, she held the great High Priest and source of resurrection life.
Perhaps I held an unspoken disregard; not out of malice, but because I simply didn’t know better. She’s more than a name in the Christmas story.
Mary literally carried the Creator not only in her arms, but hosted Him within her body – she is the only human to have ever had such an experience. Of all the miracles and wonders and God encounters recorded in the Bible, none are as consequential as this one.
If I realize that Mary, as an honored woman in the history of the Church, deserves more than to be put in a box after every Christmas, then I need to work through what keeping her out the entire year actually means and how she fits into my journey.
A good friend at church told me that the Theotokos will personally make herself known to me, I just need to give it time.
So for now, I say a prayer each morning and night to the Theotokos, giving her honor and recognizing her role. Then I pray a simple ask as I look at her icon: “Help me get to know you better.”
I barely knew her, but now I want to.
These reflections are part of my personal journey—how I’m seeing and interpreting things in the moment. Like any journey, my understanding may be limited or incomplete and will likely deepen over time. I share these thoughts not as conclusions, but as honest glimpses along the way.