Commentary on the Second Part of the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God
“The Birth of Christ”
From the seventh to the twelfth stanza
Seventh stanza:
It refers to the shepherds’ worship of the great Newborn, and to the praise of the angels who appeared at his birth, praising and glorifying God and announcing to them the great joy meant for all the people. Here we have before us the story of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, where shepherds were keeping watch at night, and the appearance of a multitude of the heavenly host, as told in the Gospel of Saint Luke.
Eighth stanza:
This stanza clearly refers to the coming of the Magi from the East (perhaps from Persia) to Jerusalem. When they saw a star (a strange-looking star) moving toward this city, they followed it to find out about the king whom its appearance and strange course pointed to.
Ninth stanza:
This stanza of the hymn completes the previous one. It speaks of the young Chaldeans, that is, the Magi, who offered their gifts to the Virgin (in the Gospel text, to the Child, that is, to Christ), and of their acclamations to the Virgin as the Mother of the Star (Christ) that never sets and the dawn of the mystical day. In the Magi’s acclamations the Virgin is given many titles: she who quenches the furnace of error, that is, who abolishes the worship of corrupt religions; she who enlightens the initiates of the Trinity, that is, who proclaims faith in the Holy Trinity; she who drives the inhuman tyrant from power; she who reveals Christ’s love for mankind; she who rescues and delivers the world from the worship of every kind of idol, and above all from fire-worship.
Tenth stanza:
It speaks of the Magi returning to their own country and proclaiming the Saviour born in Bethlehem of Judea. This stanza of the hymn continues the two before it and concludes the Magi’s visit to the great Newborn in Bethlehem. The story of this short stanza is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, which says: “And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.”
Eleventh stanza:
It refers to the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, whose idols fell when the Lord Christ arrived. In this stanza we see new voices raising acclamations to the Virgin. After attributing to her the rising up of humanity, the fall of the demons, the crushing of deceitful error and the unmasking of the idols’ fraud, those who acclaim her draw their symbolism from events of the Old Testament: the drowning of Pharaoh, water from the rock for the thirsty, the pillar of fire, the manna, and the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.
Twelfth stanza:
It refers to the elder Simeon welcoming Christ when Joseph and Mary his mother brought him to the Temple forty days after his birth, as the Law of Moses required.
Theological summary:
The texts of the Akathist prayers are among the most beautiful and richest hymns of the Church in meaning, imagery and theme. In this ninth of the twenty-four stanzas, the hymnographer turns to the Magi’s visit to the Virgin, the mother of the Child. When the Magi (the young Chaldeans) saw God incarnate who had become a servant, and understood the mystery of his birth, they cried out to the Mother of God:
We came guided by an ordinary star, which points to a natural day lasting only a few hours; but you are a star leading us to the dawn of a mystical day that lasts forever.
Our land, in Babylon, once lit the fiery furnace to burn the three young men; and now, by giving birth to the God of truth, you quench it, to light the fire of the beacon of truth for all who believe in the Trinity, openly revealed through you in the incarnation of the Son.
By giving birth to the Lord you have deposed Satan, the hater of mankind, and revealed the Lord, the lover of mankind.
Through you, O Mother of God, we have been saved from the religion of idols and the wickedness of its deeds.
Through you fire-worship has come to an end among the religions, and through your giving birth to the Lord we quench the fire of the passions and live in the peace of grace.
Then the hymnographer concludes with a wonderful summary of what the birth of Christ from the Virgin brought to the world: joy and chastity.
These comparisons, between the star that appeared to the Magi and the Virgin as a star that never sets, between the immoral forms of worship of old and the new worship in spirit and truth, between the corruption of former ways and joy and chastity, all lend a wonderful beauty to the divine plan. The hymnographer puts all these images on the lips of the Magi, who searched for truth by observing the heavens and the stars.
Through all these beautiful praises, the hymnographer touches at a deep level on a very important question in life: the sources and ways of knowing the truth. In the hymns, as in reality, there are two sources of knowledge: on one side we have the Magi, and on the other the Virgin Mother of God! There is the way of research of the learned Magi, and there is the way the Trinity reveals the truths of life.
The Magi were not sorcerers or charlatans! They were the astronomers of their time. But the universe was the source of their knowledge, and nothing else. They represent the researchers and scientists who solve the riddles of the cosmos in search of the truths of life and of the future. For researchers and scientists, the universe is the source of knowledge, its tool and also its goal. The universe exists, moves and lives automatically. The universe was somehow eternal, formless matter that later took shape, perhaps through a cosmic explosion, into orbits, suns and planets…; and we must decode its riddles, laws and systems scientifically in order to master it and use it.
For science, as a way of knowing, the universe is the starting point and the goal of research; there is no outside hand at work, no person who intervenes, no force that guides. For these researchers, religious theories like this are “illusions and myths” born of human ignorance in explaining the mysteries of the cosmic order. The universe has no beginning and no end; it is mechanical in its existence and motion, and it is its own purpose.
By contrast, we are surprised to find that Holy Scripture sheds a different light on the truth. The universe is the creation of the Lord the Creator. The universe is a gift. The universe was given in order to build a relationship. The universe is not to be understood as a mechanical existence but as a divine call. When you give your son a gift and he takes it and stares at it without looking at you or saying thank you, he has missed the truth of that gift, however precious it may be, and he has lost what is more precious still: his father, love, and the purpose, meaning and message of the gift.
Christianity does not look negatively at creation, applied science, research, creativity and invention, and these cannot stir up “jealousy”, “fear” or “hostility” among Christians; quite the opposite. Christianity sanctifies these energies and ways of knowing. But it makes clear that research and the universe, sacred as they are, do not cancel out, and must not make us forget, the truth of the Creator who gives them.
The universe is a creation with a cause and a purpose, and scientific research does not explain this cause and this purpose. In Christianity, a scientist must be more than a “researcher”. In the cosmic view, the scientist is the one who gathers the greatest quantity and variety of information, so that a scientist is great in proportion to the size of his store of information. This is not the scientist according to Christianity. Knowing information is not the same as wisdom for living. In a genius or a scientist, knowledge is not enough; we must look beyond it to his wisdom. The picture of a genius who does not know how to behave wisely in life, of a scientist who cannot build a decent family, or of a researcher who spends his life at the microscope and cannot build a friendship: none of these is for us the true model of a human being.
These are beautiful things that add to a person’s adornment, but they are not his essence. Research teaches us the “how” of creation, while divine revelation tells us the “why”. Knowing how the earth goes around the sun is very important and even sacred from a religious point of view, but not knowing “why” is “real ignorance”! For then we lose the most important truths of knowledge. The universe can never become humanity’s goal, only its means. That is why the question of “how” can never become more important than “why”. True knowledge of anything requires that we first know its cause and purpose, and then investigate how it works.
These questions of cause, of beginning and end (why did the universe come to be? where is the universe heading?), are no less important than the question: how does the universe work? At the same time, Christianity is not a philosophical religion that pushes people to settle for ignorance and laziness and give up research, throwing them philosophical questions to soothe their ignorance. On the contrary, Christianity puts truths in their proper order, so that in life we hold both questions together with the right priority and ranking.
In Jesus’ famous answer during the temptation on the mountain, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” two truths appear. The first, when he says “alone”, shows that bread too is necessary; the second, when he says “but”, shows that the divine word takes first place in the order of things. Is it better to choose to feed people while depriving them of their human rights, or to choose (if forced to) going without food while preserving everything that is human?
The Lord Jesus calls us to balance: to keep the bread we need, “Give us this day our daily bread”, and to keep the primacy and sovereignty of the spirit: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.”
This is exactly the “chastity” with which the hymnographer ends: to make use of everything in the world, but on three conditions. First, to give thanks to the Giver and remember him; second, to use it in the best possible way, by developing scientific research, creativity and reason; and third, to know why we use it, that is, to bring the universe to its purpose and lift it up to God as a kingdom. We received it from him as a gift, and we give it back to him as an offering and a hymn of thanksgiving.
So there are two ways of knowing the truths of life. The first is the truncated, narrow way: cosmic and scientific research without a wider view of the first causes of the universe. The second is divine revelation, which explains beginnings and endings, causes and purpose.
The first way starts from the universe and ends in it. The second starts from God and leads back to him. The first shuts God out. The second embraces the world and makes God present in it. The first is a human creation; the second is a divine revelation. Between the Magi and the Virgin the contrast is clear: they were researchers without wisdom, and she was an ordinary young woman, but with divine wisdom. And the star led them to her. The history of the cosmos, through divine intervention, moved toward its goal, to bow down before divine Wisdom. God guided the star, the instrument of research, so that it would lead the researchers to the goal of all research. Science may contain the most dangerous seed of ignorance: not knowing the beginning and the end, which divine revelation came to bring us. That is why the hymnographer cries out:
“Rejoice, illumination of those initiated into the Trinity!”
