Meditation on the Feast of the Conception
This is a minor feast, but one rich in significance. On the shortest day of the year, when the natural light is at its lowest, Joachim and Anna conceive the Mother of God, who is to give birth to the Eternal and Unwaning Light. "God hearkened to the sighs of Anna; the Lord attended to her supplication and, dispelling the cloud of her childlessness, He most gloriously illumineth her with the light of fertility. Wherefore she conceived her who alone is pure." (Mattins Canon 1, Ode 4, troparion)."He granteth them the Tree of Life, whose holy conception we honour" (Sedalion).
The Roman Catholics, as we know, considered this "holy conception" not holy enough, and introduced the false dogma of the immaculate conception, according to which the conception of the Mother of God was not according to the laws of nature, that is, not through natural sexual intercourse. The Holy Church rejects this teaching.
"Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled" (Hebrews 13.4) - no stigma, no sin attaches to the act of sexual intercourse between lawfully married couples. David's words, "I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me" do not, as St. John Chrysostom explains, "condemn marriage, as some have thoughtlessly supposed" (On Psalm 50, M.P.G. 55:583).
Again, Blessed Theodoretus says that in these words "it is not marriage that the Prophet indicts, as some have suggested, and it is not marital relations that are called iniquitous, as others have foolishly suggested" (Commentary on Psalm 50).
The sin which the Prophet talks about is not the supposed sin of marriage or marital relations, but the original sin of Adam and Eve which is transmitted to subsequent generations through the natural processes of conception and childbearing. This is not, of course, in any way to deny the superiority of virginity to marriage. But this is the superiority of one good over another, not of good over evil. As St. Seraphim says, "Marriage is good, and virginity is very, very good". Unfortunately, the attack on marriage and its "lawful pleasures" (St. Photius the Great, Homily on the Nativity of the Mother of God) has been renewed in our time by some neo-Manichaeans, who want on the one hand to raise created things (the names of God) to the status of God Himself, and on the other to drag that which God has blessed and sanctified (marriage) through the mire of sin. It is feasts like this that remind us of the true scale of values, and of the fact that, as the Apostle Paul says, "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (I Timothy 4.4).
Vladimir Moss
