I think that in both East and West, the uniquely-pivotal vocation of the Theotokos in Salvation History makes her uniquely mystifying. Fr. George Florovsky noted that her transitional role, between the time of the “old” covenant and the time of the “new,” makes the *timing* of her own salvation-process difficult to establish. For example, notes Florovsky, she experienced Pentecost already at the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit came upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. And we don’t know if she was baptised in the usual sense, or needed to be? I think the above-described Roman Catholic teaching on the Immaculate Conception seems to place her baptismal moment at her very conception.

And yet she is one of us, – and not any illustrious one of us, in all the externals. She is poor, an orphan, betrothed fictitiously to a widowed carpenter named Joseph, because she had nowhere to go after she had to leave the Temple. And she did not have foreknowledge about her Child’s cross and her own, apparently, because together with Joseph she “marveled at those things which were spoken of Him.” She is being led on the difficult journey of her vocation, like most humans, not knowing what will come next. This is why Simeon warns her, “yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also,” because she evidently did not know this, either, and he was given this prophetic word to pass on to her, to prepare her.

In Orthodox tradition, we don’t share the Roman Catholic teaching on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, (and I don’t say this in the interests of Catholic-bashing, but just FYI), because we believe that this teaching diminishes the humanity of the Theotokos, and hence it diminishes the humanity of the One born from her womb. In Orthodox Christian teaching, her own birth from Sts. Joachim and Anna was as human as all our births. Nonetheless, as I reflected above, I think the *timing* of her salvation-journey, which bridged the Old and the New Covenants, remains a mystery that results in some head-scratching about it in both East and West. Thank you, in any event, Most Holy Theotokos, for blessing all of us, Catholics and Orthodox and the rest of us, by your full-of-grace presence in our human-divine midst.