As we have always been told, the Virgin Mary is a paragon to us, in humility, obedience and love. As an Orthodox believer I willingly believe what the Tradition tells us about the Virgin: that she was born after many years of preyers to an old couple Joachim and Anne: that she - according to their promise- was given to the temple for education : and that, finally, when allowed to direct her own life, she renewed her vow to stay as a virgin in the temple. I believe that she had a strong vocation to a certain field, often also with high talents in this very field. Maybe we could call Mary a faith child prodigy?

She stayed with her vocation and never planned usual marriage and family life, when the angel appeared with the message of the forthcoming child, she agreed to the change of her plans: she would, after all, be another. "Be it unto me...'

When I was a young wife and became active in the parish, Mary's virginity caused problems even to me. Why is it important that she was always a virgin? Why must it always be mentioned? How is it more worthy than the biological function of women? The many additional years as a woman and as a believer have diminished the sharpness of my questions. 1, or we, might know too little to solve them now - maybe someone else, somewhere else or some other time, But it is not quite easy for me either to imagine the Virgin becoming a normal 'housewife' after these extraordinary happenings.

The Virgin acts with her prayers as our intercessory. Constantly I feel embarrassed to find that she makes me conscious of myself as a woman. When I have problems as a woman or as a mother it feels natural to me to turn to the Mother of God: when I light my candle in front of Mary's icon, I am suddenly aware of my gender again. I think that millions of women share in my experience.

Perhaps for this reason I sometimes reflect on how men approach the Virgin. Modern psychologists tell us that the son-mother relationship is less problematic than the daughter-mother relationship! However, let us consider the very masculine activity of warfare. Remarkably often groups of men have chosen the icon of the Mother of God to manifest their prayers in agonies of sieges and battles. After success and miraculous rescues these certain icon types have then been preserved to ensure the concrete memory of the events through generations.

I find that the Virgin Mary contributes an important feminine element to this religion that was born in the patriarchal Jewish society. For centuries it has called the Divinity with the words Father and Son in societies where women have been oppressed and without rights. In modern times we are more capable of thinking of the Divine in more abstract terms and even adding feminine features to it. But, I admit that in the course of a Divine Liturgy a warm breath suddenly touches me when a hymn to the Virgin Mary is sung: I notice the flowers in front of the icons, a child may get an embrace with a wish that it might feel well in church...

I also think of Mary as a - in modern words- a feminine theologian, With her temple education she certainly had no difficulties in adopting the teachings of her son. According to the tradition she had close contacts with apostles after Christ's ascension and was, no doubt, on an equal spiritual level with them. They shared a vision of action, and they must have felt strong unity on the basis of the shattering events they had experienced together.

When the Church sees a Defender of the pure faith in Mary, I link it to this relationship with the apostles. The successors of the apostolic work, the bishops, in fact wear the icon of the Mother of God on their breast. When a bishop enters the church, the choir - after singing a short greeting - starts the solemn troparia to the Virgin Mary : "it is truly meet to bless you, O Theotokos, ever blessed and most pure and the Mother of our God", while the bishop is dressed in his service garment. Mary is a bridge between virginity and motherhood, between the old and new Testament, between the earthly and heavenly.

Within one icon, she is illustrated together with a ladder, the familiar image of the Heavenly descending to the Earth. Mary is one of the Saints, perhaps not without sin but, according to the testimony of the Church, close to God. That was the way the late Archbishop Paul once tried to explain her holiness to a Lutheran audience, As there seems to be a certain understanding of the intercession of the Virgin among the Protestants, maybe Mary could act as a bridge to understanding ... even of other saints as well