The Birth of the Theotokos

 

Today is the prelude of universal joy;

today the winds blow that herald salvation,

and the barrenness of our nature is dispelled;

for the barren woman is revealed as the mother 

of her who remained a virgin

after giving birth to the Creator.

From her the One Who is God by nature 

takes what is foreign to Him and makes it His own;

and works salvation through the flesh for those who have gone astray.//

He is Christ, the Lover of man and the Redeemer of our souls. 

 "Today is the prelude of universal joy", says the Vespers service for this feast. 

The prelude. 

God does not work on our time. At all. Joachim and Anna were truly righteous people, but could not have a child. In those days that was a sign of being cursed by God. Joachim and Anna, despite their virtue, were outcasts for something that was not their fault. It's not like they had gone and jilted the poor and hungry, or had murdered someone, or were serial adulterers, or anything else you can think of! No. They did not have someone to carry on their memory to the next generation. And that was a sure sign of personal sin in their day in age. And before we start shaking our heads at the people back then for being so seemingly superstitious, I think it behooves us to ask if we have standards of a similar nature today.

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at the most defenseless in our society: the dead.

But Joachim and Anna did not despair. Imagine being a pariah, to the point to where the priest won't even let you in the building! Many people who may stumble acrost this post probably can, actually, but understand this: they did not stop trying. For decades they continued to be kind and wholesome people, as the gathering suspicion of their unrighteousness built up against them. After decades and decades these two finally broke. Joachim was prevented from accessing the temple as a supreme act of prejudice.

And finally God acted.

And that is what is called "the prelude of universal joy": not when things are going well, not when you're looking at your life and going "I really could use x" , not when you're looking at the world and realizing it's going to crap but maybe there's a chance, but when all hope is lost. When you've run out of your last bit of juice. It is at that moment, if we allow God to act, that is the prelude to joy. 

I've talked before about the Church's preference for evening as the beginning of the day. That logic carries through here: at the beginning of the year the Church teaches that it's when our hearts completely break and we are out of all options that God acts. And it took Joachim and Anna decades to get there. But then they had Mary. And she had Jesus. The Church honors the gradual but steady pace that God has with us, by making this the first major feast of the year.

Hang in there.