Mary, the mother of God, in dialogue

Mary, the Mother of God, offers a perfect example of “relational personhood” in Eastern Orthodox tradition. She is perceived on dogmatic grounds as the meeting-place between the divine and created realms, since she agreed to conceive and give birth to Christ, who is both God and man. The Byzantine liturgical tradition frequently expresses Mary’s role in the Incarnation by means of poetic and typological imagery. However, she may also be depicted as a human and maternal figure in texts that explore, for example, the meaning of Christ’s Nativity or Passion. Both homilies and hymns employ dramatic devices in order to demonstrate Mary’s joy, grief, and struggle for understanding as she witnesses her son’s Incarnation and death on the cross. We thus see both symbolic and personal aspects of the Mother of God in Byzantine liturgical texts. Both of these qualities reveal her ongoing relationship both with God and with the rest of humanity.