Marian Musings, Part IV

So far I think this series has done a decent job spelling out why Mary deserves to be regarded with heightened prestige by all Christians... and how that is grounded in Scripture... and why she does not deserve the kind of nonchalance and even dismissiveness I often see from Protestants and non-denominationals.

It's inevitable that a series like this will address specific "Catholic teachings" with which some Protestants have problems with. Before I venture deeper into those trenches, however, I want to pause and use this post purely to highlight how far back Christian devotion to Mary goes.

I placed quotation marks around the phrase Catholic teachings because: 1) it is crucially important to realize Marian devotion dates to long before there were any divisions in the church; and 2) most many of my fellow Protestants, at least here in the US of A, need reminding that Christianity includes not just Protestants, Catholics, and non-denoms, but also includes Orthodoxy.

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Regardless of how you want to look at it, history shows the Church dates back either to Christ's ascension or to Pentecost - which means it goes back to some point between the years 30 and 38, most likely in the earlier part of that range. For centuries, there was simply the Church, singular, not a bunch of different ones, and certainly not the endlessly fragmenting mishmash we see today.

The early Church covered a wide scope of geography, encompassing broad swaths of northern Africa and Europe in addition to the Near and Middle East. Within the first generation of apostles Christianity made it as far away from Jerusalem as India, where Thomas was martyred in the year 72, and archaeology shows it already existing in Britain, complete with bishops, as early as the 200's, so yes, geography meant there were lots of what modern American Protestants would call congregations. Nevertheless, it was one deliberately designed organization with a structure for ensuring doctrinal consistency and rooting out heresies.

This is why the New Testament contains all those letters penned by apostles (to the church/believers "in Corinth," "at Colossae," etc.) and why differences and disputes were settled at councils with leaders from the different regions all gathered in one place (Nicaea, Constantinople, etc.) to hash things out. It is impressive to say the least - and evidence of divine blessing, to say the most - that the Church succeeded, flourished, and expanded in this manner back when there was no modern media to communicate and no dependable transportation to travel across distances.

There were two official separations in the Church that occurred long before the Protestant Reformation. The first was in the fifth century, when five particular churches we now call Oriental Orthodox - specifically the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac, and Indian - stopped recognizing subsequent councils while continuing to affirm the first three that came before.

The second, commonly called the Great Schism, became a done deal in the year 1054. It consisted of churches we now call Eastern Orthodox refusing to recognize the full authority of the Vatican, while continuing to affirm the first seven councils that came before then... At the time they were not considered separate churches per se, but four geographical Patriarchates with their respective headquarters in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. As later centuries unfolded, names were changed and additional geographic churches were added to the Eastern Orthodox, so they we now see some having names that sound more familiar to us: Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Orthodox Church in America, etc.

What matters for the purposes of this series, however, is that all of these churches, regardless of whether they fall under the Catholic or Orthodox umbrella, share essentially identical teachings about Mary and always have. Their devotion to Mary pre-dates their separation, survived their separation, and remains as strong as ever. They all pray to her for intercession and all refer to her as the Theotokos, Mother of God.

It was not until much later, after Protestants appeared on the scene, that Mary-minimizing took place, and even then the minimizing was confined only to Protestant circles yet not to all Protestant circles. To this day, the Marian beliefs of many churches in the Protestant Anglican Communion are far more similar to Catholic and Orthodox beliefs than to anything you'll find in your local Southern Baptist, Global Methodist, or Calvary Chapel gathering.

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My prior posts already talked of how the Bible presents Jesus and Mary as a kind of package deal in which he was the savior but she played an indispensable role. Some critics claim this is a suspect interpretation which came about much later and was imposed on the Church by apostates, spiritual weaklings, and pagan-clingers. Those critics are wrong, for it is their claim which lacks evidence and is refuted by what we know from history.

In the interest of illustrating this, here comes a sampling of things from the early Church. This may not be as interesting as my previous posts and it will likely run afoul of my vow to be succinct, but it's striking that...

Ignatius of Antioch (50-117) was a disciple of John himself and wrote the following in his Letter to the Ephesians: "The virginity of Mary, her giving birth, and also the death of the Lord, were hidden from the prince of this world - three mysteries loudly proclaimed, but wrought in the silence of God." Note that of the three things he mentioned, the first two were specific to Mary. She was not incidental to, nor separable from, the salvation story, as born out by the fact they were repeatedly mentioned together when early Christians discussed the salvation and redemption of humanity.

Justin Martyr (100-165), in his Dialogue with Trypho, noted that "Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But...(Jesus) became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin."

Melito of Sardis (100-177) is the author of the world's oldest extant Easter sermon, in which he proclaimed that Jesus "is the one who became human in a virgin...who was born of Mary, that beautiful ewe."

Irenaeus of Lyons (125-202), already quoted in Part II of this series, also wrote that "Mary, having the predestined man, and being yet a Virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to the whole human race the cause of salvation." And that "the knot of Eve's disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."

In Instructor, Clement of Alexandria (150-213) wrote: "The Father of all is indeed one, one also is the universal Word, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere; and one is the Virgin Mother. I love to call her the Church."

Tertullian (155-225), also already quoted in Part II, had this to say in On the Flesh of Christ: "God recovered His image and likeness, which the devil had seized, by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death, equally into a virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that, what by that sex had gone into perdition, by that same sex might be brought back to salvation."

At least one fresco of Mary (this one) is in the catacombs beneath Rome and is dated to between 150 and 175.

Hippolytus of Rome (170-236) wrote in Treatise on Christ and Antichrist that "whereas the Word of God was without flesh, He took upon Himself the holy flesh by the Holy Virgin," and in Commentary on Psalm 22: "The Lord was sinless, because, in His humanity, He was fashioned out of incorruptible wood, that is, out of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, lined within and without as with the purest gold of the Word of God."

In Church History, Book VII, Socrates Scholasticus said a then-extant writing of Origen (185-253) "gives an ample exposition of the sense in which the term Theotokos is used."

One of Christianity's oldest known hymns, Sub tuum praesidium (actually a Coptic prayer sung as a hymn), states "Beneath thy protection, We take refuge, O Theotokos; do not despise our petitions in time of trouble; but rescue us from dangers, only pure one, only blessed one." The earliest found papyrus of Sub tuum praesidium has been dated to the 200's, and although that dating is not definitive, Sub tuum praesidium is known to have been in liturgical use by the 400's because it was recorded in the Jerusalem Chantbook - which, in my opinion, makes the 200's dating credible at worst and likely at best.

Early icons of Saint Nicholas (270-343) often depicted Jesus and Mary being with him. This is due to him having been visited by them in two central moments of his life, and contemporaries of his having been visited by them about him.

In his Letter 59 (aka Epistle to Epictetus), Athanasius (297-373) successfully inveighed against novel ideas that threatened to de-emphasize Christology through their downgrading of Mariology. 

In Syriac Works, Third Volume, Ephrem Syrus (306-373) affirmed: "In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed upon all men; today, through Mary we are translated from death unto life."

In Catechetical Lecture 12, Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386) affirmed: "Since through Eve, a virgin, came death, it behooved, that through a Virgin, or rather from a Virgin, should life appear..."

In Panarion, Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403) asserted that "in reality it is from Mary the Life was truly born to the world. So that by giving birth to the Living One, Mary became the mother of all living." It was also in Panarion that he took the Church's lead in opposing a fledgling movement for honoring Mary too much; describing it as "awful and blasphemous" and stressing "it is not right to honor the saints beyond their due," he helped ensure that the movement, known as Collyridianism, was topped in its tracks.

Saint Basil (329-379) encouraged believers to "be not discouraged, but have recourse to Mary in all your necessities," and declared: "As the sun surpasses all the stars in lustre, so the sorrows of Mary surpass all the tortures of the martyrs."

The relics of Moses the Strong (330-405) are housed in the Paromeos Monastery in Egypt, which was established in 335 and is both named after and dedicated to Mary. The monastery's oldest standing church is itself dedicated to Mary. 

Don't ask me why the works of John Chrysostom (347-407) are numbered the way they are, but a shocking abundance of them are preserved and his Homily on Matthew 5, 5 affirms Mary's perpetual virginity with this passage: "The Virgin was untouched by man before the birth. He (Matthew) leaves for you to perceive the obvious and necessary conclusion; namely, that not even after her having become a mother, and having been counted worthy of a new sort of travail, and a childbearing so extraordinary, could that righteous man (Joesph) ever have endured to know her." ("know" is universally acknowledged as having been biblical slang for "have sex with").

Every cantankerous Protestant's favorite Church Father is Jerome of Stridon, who lived from 347-420. Even he declared "death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary" as well as this: "The closed gate, by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary."

In On Holy Virginity, Saint Augustine (354-430) said: "His (Christ's) mother is the whole Church, because she herself assuredly gives birth to His members, that is, His faithful ones."... And in Sermon 186, 1 he declared: "A virgin conceives, yet remains a virgin; a virgin is heavy with child; a virgin brings forth her child, yet she is always a virgin. Why are you amazed at this, O man? It was fitting for God to be born thus when He deigned to become a man."

Peter Chyrsologus (400-450) in Sermon 140 stressed: "Heaven feels awe of God, Angels tremble at Him, the creature sustains Him not, nature sufficeth not; and yet one maiden so takes, receives, entertains Him, as a guest within her breast, that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb, she asks, she obtains peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union of God Himself with human flesh."

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Everything above happened before the first church separation. That occurred after the Council of Chalcedon, which was held in the autumn of 451.

The Protestant Reformation is considered to have begun when Martin Luther completed his Ninety-five Theses in 1517. Five years later, in a sermon delivered on September 1, 1522, he said "the veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart." In his personal prayer book that year he wrote: "She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin - something exceedingly great. For God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil."

In a sermon on March 11, 1523 he said: "Whoever possesses a good faith, says the Hail Mary without danger!"

In his Christmas sermon in 1529, Luther rhapsodized that "Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees."

In his Christmas sermon in 1531 he described her as the "highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ," and stressed "we can never honor her enough."

And in On the Councils and the Church, his treatise against church authority that he wrote in 1539, he said "she is the true mother of God and bearer of God...Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus, not two Christs...just as your son is not two sons...even though he has two natures, body and soul, the body from you, the soul from God alone."

210 years after that, John Wesley, founder of Methodism and one of the most influential theologians of the entire Protestant Era, affirmed Mary's perpetual virginity. In his famous Letter to a Roman Catholic (written July 18, 1749), Wesley stated flatly that "the blessed Virgin Mary...both after as well as before she gave birth to Him continued as a pure and unspotted virgin."

I think it's safe to say that if we take Christianity seriously and aim to have the fullest possibility experience Christ offers us while on earth, we would be wise to ponder his mother much more than most of us do. He did not create her simply for us the Nativity scenes we set up and Hallmark cards we send out when December rolls around.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant                 

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Raphael Catholic Church in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Marian Musings, Part III-b

Succinctness is a quality I wish came naturally to me, but, burdened by a desire to cover every base and to address every objection before it even gets raised, I have a tendency to be long-winded.

I'm always wrestling with it, and that's a big part of the reason I'm approaching the subject of Mary with a series: Were I to sit down and write a single post called, say, "A Protestant Looks At Mary," I'd  publish something longer than a novella and nobody would ever read it. I don't know how successful I have been, but I do count it as a victory that this post is "III-b" rater than "IV." 

Part III delved into the Book of Revelation's depiction of the "woman clothed with the sun" (commonly interpreted as Mary) and noted that it transitions to said woman immediately after saying "God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple." Although I had read the passage before, it was not until excerpting it for my blog that I read those words "ark of his covenant" - and the reason they leapt off the page is I knew many Catholics and Orthodox liken Mary to the Ark the Covenant.

Part of me cried out to start pontificating on that immediately because, you know, there it is! Fortunately, a wiser part knew that would mean walking into a rabbit hole and making the post way longer than intended. I decided to let it be, circle back later, and slip this stand-alone Part III-b into the series before moving on to whatever Part IV will be.

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So to repeat: Yes, prior to three days ago I was already aware of Catholics and Orthodox comparing Mary to the Ark of the Covenant. Sometimes they switch up the appellation by referring to her as "the Ark of the New Covenant," kinda like they often refer to her as the New Eve. Prior to three days ago I even found the ark symbolism valid and the concept interesting; I just didn't find it fascinating.

Regarding the symbolism: As everyone who's watched Raiders of the Lost Ark knows, the Ark of the Covenant contained within it the Ten Commandments, those words of God that were transmitted to mankind via stone tablets. Non-fledgling Christians should know the ark also contained an urn of manna, that bread-like substance God fed the Israelites in the desert, along with the staff of Aaron, Israel's first high priest... Well, eons later, Mary's womb contained God himself in the person of Jesus - aka the Word of God, the Bread of Life, and the High Priest all wrapped up in one supernatural gift of salvation brought to all who choose to truly accept it. Neat and tidy.

Maybe too neat and tidy for my brain to think of as "fascinating," or too symbolic for me to spend much time thinking at all. Until, that is, I noticed the Bible talking about the ark being seen in God's temple right before it talks about the devil commencing an epic war against the woman: That grabbed my attention and got me digging to see if there's anything more to this Mary-as-ark narrative. Turns out there is.

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The Gospel of Luke says that when Elizabeth was visited by pregnant Mary, she "was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you...'" Here we come to one of those brain-tingling translation impasses where English is brimming with tons of words that function as synonyms, yet is hamstrung by the fact that words in one language often do not have an exact match in another. That can raise a dilemma.

In this instance, the Greek word we see rendered as "exclaimed" in our English Bible translations is anaphoneo. Starting around the twelve-minute mark of this video, Curtis Mitch points out that: 1] the visitation scene from Luke is the only place in the New Testament that the word anaphoneo gets used, while 2] in every place it gets used in the Old Testament, anaphoneo is in conjunction with the Ark of the Covenant. I place that in the category of things that make you go hmm.

More than a few commentators correctly point out that Elizabeth lived in the hill country of Judah, and Mary remained with her for "about three months" before returning home (Luke 1:56)... which fits snugly with the Old Testament telling us that, also in the hill country of Judah, David had the ark remain with Obed-edom the Gittite for "three months" before bringing it to its proper home in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:11).

They also point out that before leaving the ark with Obed-edom, David asked, "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?" (2 Samuel 6:9)... which fits snugly with Elizabeth asking Mary, upon her arrival, "why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43)

Plus, there's this: The virginal conception of incarnate Jesus is explained, in Luke 1:35, as happening by virtue of God "overshadowing" Mary... which fits at least somewhat snugly with Hebrews 9:5 telling us that the the ark's mercy seat, dwelling place of the pre-incarnate God, was "overshadowed" by the gold cherubim.

And this: According to 1 Samuel 5, after the ark was brought into the temple of the Phillistine god Dagon, Dagon's statue fell "face downward" with its hands "cut off"... while Genesis 3 and Revelation 11-12 show the devil opposing the woman and being doomed to fail. This too makes for a snug fit.

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I'm not certain how many coincidences need to be strung together before you have a pattern that cannot be denied, but I am certain that patterns are never random and thus are almost always deliberate.

Do I now find the concept of Mary being the Ark of the New Covenant to be fascinating? Yes.

Do I find it to be more compelling now than a few days ago? Yes.

Do I know exactly what the concept means? Nope. However, I'm positive it does not mean Christians should be Mary-minimizers in our thinking.

Is the concept ancient, or did it come around late in the game? It is ancient - as evidenced by Gregory of Neocaesarea (213-270) having noted in homily that "the holy Virgin is in truth an ark, wrought with gold both within and without, that has received the whole treasury of the sanctuary."

Would I, who am neither Catholic nor Orthodox, deny or oppose the teachings of those churches where this concept is concerned? No.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Marian Musings, Part III

The first post in this series ended by commenting about a passage from Genesis that refers forward to Mary, and the second one began by elaborating on that passage. Today, let's turn all the way to the back of the Bible to consider one that refers backwards to her.

When most people hear "Book of Revelation," they immediately think of a prophetic work about the end times, but that's not necessarily what it is. Much of it seems to be referring to contemporaneous events, and parts of it are about things that had already happened. The most famous of the latter is Revelation 12's depiction of an epic showdown between a woman often interpreted as Mary and a dragon explicitly identified as Satan.

As is often the case when perusing the Bible, we would do well to remember that its books were not divided into chapters and verses when they were written. That came much later, and while it has been a great help for quickly locating specific things, an unfortunate side effect is that it often leads people to isolate those things and fail to read them in their proper context. In the case of Revelation, many folks open right to Chapter 12 because they've heard of "the woman in Revelation 12" and are eager to see what that's all about; in their haste, they never see what's happening in Chapter 11 and don't quite grasp that the one is a seamless continuation of the other.

Chapter 11 closes by declaring "God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumbling, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail." That flows directly into the first sentence of Chapter 12, which opens with the capitalized word "And" - which is of course a conjunction, signifying it is mid-thought and connected to what came before, yet too many people look right at it without glancing back to see what came before.

In any event, Revelation 12 states: And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems... And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God... And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, and his angels were thrown down with him... And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child... The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and swallowed the river... Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verses 1-6, 9, 13, 15-17)

As with Genesis 3:15, which I discussed in the previous posts, it requires very adventurous reading to fail to perceive the figures of Jesus and Mary in Revelation 12. And Satan is right there too, in each excerpt.

One needn't be a million dollar exegete to see two and two coming together and equaling four. On the one hand, the Bible's first book says enmity will pit the woman and her offspring against the serpent and his offspring. On the other, its final book says a dragon hated the woman, hunted her and her offspring, and plotted to devour a particular one of those offspring at birth. It's not going out on a limb to conclude that the woman is Mary; that her offspring consist of Jesus and his followers; that the dragon and serpent are one and the same, aka Satan; and that Satan's offspring consist of his human followers in addition to the demons who joined him in rebelling against God.

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There are other ways of looking at Revelation 12, of course. Many see the woman symbolizing Israel, not Mary, with the twelve stars representing the tribes rather than the apostles... Almost everyone agrees the male child is Jesus - but those who don't want the woman to be Mary are quick to digress that Jesus "came from Israel" in the sense that his genealogy traces back to Abraham... Some scholars intriguingly point out, as Michael Heiser does here, that when you consider constellations known to ancient Hebrews (who, don't forget, were very much into astrology) the imagery in Revelation 12:1-4 accurately describes what was visible in the sky for about 80 minutes on one particular night in 3 B.C. - which, so the thinking goes, must have been the window of time in which Jesus was born.

Personally, I think all these are correct. It's not like they're mutually exclusive, and it strikes me as silly to look at them as a collectively self-competing either/or proposition, rather than a both/and/all premise. Doesn't the latter seem more like what we should expect from the word of God?

Some Christians accuse other Christians of subtracting from their honor of God by the mere fact that they honor Mary. I think that's rubbish, if you don't mind me borrowing a word from our British friends, for it depends on the same kind of either/or fallacy that would drive one to insist the woman in Revelation 12 can't represent Mary if she also nods to the fact that Virgo appeared in a certain alignment with other constellations that one night 2,028 years ago.

As noted in this post and my prior one, Genesis and Revelation present major, beginning-and-end referents to Mary that are beyond obvious. They weren't put there for the audience to ignore or de-emphasize.

Mary-minimizers tend to speak of her as what John Henry Newman called "merely...the physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh." While they may concede she was somehow blessed or honored by being that instrument, they quickly retreat to their comfort zones by refusing neglecting to reflect on how much that implies.

I've seen them disparage the views of fellow Christians by reflexively referring to Mary as "no better than any other woman," or as "just a woman," or "a dead woman," or "an earthly woman." I've witnessed this not only in the sewers of Internet comments sections, but also in a few face-to-face conversations. It bothers me not only because it's unbecoming, but because it at best prances on the line of insulting Christ's chosen mother, and sometimes charges across that line and does insult her. And to insult her is to insult him who created and chose her, is it not?

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One of the Mary-minimizers' favorite comfort zones is a belief that she vanished from the record after the crucifixion. That belief is unbiblical. Scripture shows her not only post-crucifixion, and not only post-resurrection, but even post-ascension, for she was present at Pentecost.

According to Acts 1:14, Mary was in the upper room when the decision was made for Matthias to become the twelfth apostle (seeing as how Judas had, you know, lost that position some time before), and the very next scene is the coming down "from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind" which "filled the entire house where they were sitting...And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:2,4).

No other woman is confirmed by name as having been there. In fact, no other person is confirmed by name as having been there except for the eleven apostles that needed to know who'd be joining them. I daresay this makes Mary apostolic.

I also daresay that her co-work with God far exceeds anyone else's in history: The implication of Luke 1:38 is that she assented to be Jesus' mother, which means she freely agreed to the assignment rather than being forced to accept it... Then she nurtured Jesus when he was dependent and provided him paternal guidance to which he "was submissive" - and all the while she paid studied attention as Jesus "increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God," and she "treasured up all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:51-52)... Then, at the cross, as Father John Waiss notes, "She stands. She watches. She fulfills Jesus' command: watch and pray (Matt. 24:42, 26:41, etc.). She listens to Jesus, and she receives his beloved disciple, given to her as a son."... Then, like I observed above, she stood firmly ensconced at the center of the church when the apostolic age sprang forth.

It is because of things like these that Jon Sweeney said of Mary: "She believed, and in so believing, became the first true disciple of her as yet unborn son...Mary is the chief disciple because she shows us how to wait on God, expect God, have awe for God, and hope for God, but not with an easy credulity. Hers was not an unquestioning belief; these qualities are, instead, the qualities of a mature disciple."

And with that, I'll sign off for now. Until next time, take care.

Note: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

D-Day

 

81 years ago this morning, human beings from the forces of eight Allied nations laid their lives on the line in ways most of us can hardly fathom. Two-thirds of them were from the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

Traveling in ships and amphibious vessels, they set sail from England in the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, bound for the Normandy beaches of Nazi-controlled France. It was the first time since the 1600’s that any invading military had crossed the perilous waters of the English Channel, and as day broke tens of thousands of troops disembarked from their landing crafts and plunged into Hell on Earth.

Slogging first through waves and then through sand, they were sitting ducks for the gunners positioned on shore. Bullets rained on them amidst a cacophony of explosive reverberations. The men at the fronts of the landing crafts were the first ones to step on the beach, and they stepped onto it knowing they were likely to get shot. Each of them was acutely aware he might be entering the final seconds of his life.

Approximately 10,000 Allied men were killed or wounded that day. However, in bearing that brunt of brutality, those who were first on the scene helped clear the way for 100,000 of their fellow soldiers to reach shore and advance against the enemy, freeing occupied towns as they went. By the end of the month more than 800,000 men had done so, and the war’s momentum had swung in the Allies’ favor. Within a year the Nazis surrendered unconditionally.

In military parlance, the phrase “D-Day” refers to the first day of any operation. But in the public’s mind, it will always refer to the events on the beaches of Normandy. Few of the men who braved the bullets on that distant shore are still with us, and they are dying away at a rapid rate. Let us give them our thanks while they're still alive to hear it.

After all, we might never have tasted freedom if not for the valor of the soldiers of '44. Because of that, we must resolve to pass their story on to our children, so that they may pass it on to theirs, to preserve what Abraham Lincoln referred to as "the mystic chords" of our nation's memory.