SYNAXIS OF THE MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS

According to ancient church tradition, the day after Christmas is the celebration of “Stephen’s Christmas,” that is, the martyrdom of the first of the seven deacons, whose story is described in detail in the Acts of the Apostles. However, in the Orthodox liturgical calendar, this tradition is interrupted to make way for the “Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God.” The reason for this is not only the desire to honor the Mother of Jesus as the main cause of the Lord’s Nativity, but also the ancient practice of the Church of Constantinople, which allows for both historical and theological interpretation.

1 On the second day of Christmas, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God. The word “cathedral,” literally meaning “assembly” in the original Greek, signifies that the church, as an assembly of believers, gathers on this day for common worship and the Eucharist in honor of the One whom Scripture calls Mary, the Mother of Jesus. “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers”, says the Book of Acts about what happened in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost immediately before the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). Just as after Christ’s Resurrection the Apostles remained together in anticipation of the Gift of the Spirit, Orthodox believers celebrate together with the Mother of God after Christmas to partake of the Christmas gifts from above. This is the theological interpretation of the Synaxis of the Theotokos.

2 Like many liturgical traditions in the Orthodox liturgy, the celebration of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God is historically associated with the Church of Constantinople. The day after Christmas, the Patriarch served the Liturgy in the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Blachernae. If we try to draw an analogy, the Church of Saint Sophia was for Constantinople something like the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The temple complex of the Theotokos in Blachernae, a place of numerous apparitions and miracles, is the prototype of our Trinity-Sergius Lavra. This historical explanation of the origin of the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin does not contradict but complements the theological one.

3 In addition to theology and history, the liturgical science can also be added here. According to ancient chronicles, on this day the Church also used to commemorate the Flight of the Lord Jesus into Egypt. According to the Gospel of Matthew, immediately after the birth of the Divine Infant, Joseph and Mary were forced to flee to Egypt from the wrath of Herod, who ordered the destruction of the infants in Bethlehem. “Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the Child and His Mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him,’” says the Gospel text (Matthew 2:13). We do not know the exact meaning of the Patriarch of Constantinople’s transition from temple to temple for worship. Historians and theologians, including Olivier Clément (1921–2009), a great Orthodox patrologist of the last century, tell us that during a certain historical period, the Patriarch of Constantinople celebrated the liturgy in his cathedral only a few times a year. For over the centuries, he effectively and practically subjugated all the Eastern Greek patriarchates and became the embodiment of liturgical sacredness. Therefore, a special service in honor of the Theotokos in a place other than the usual church could mean a commemoration of the passage of the righteous Joseph and Mary with the infant Jesus to Egypt, or perhaps or perhaps it was intended for the veneration of the corresponding holy relics, of which there were many in Constantinople. With the birth of Islam in the first half of the seventh century, the borders of the Byzantine Empire began to shrink dramatically. Like a giant being squeezed from all sides, or perhaps a small child trying to hide “in its little house,” the Church and the State together gathered relics from all over their territory and took them to Constantinople, turning their capital into the City of God, which had no equal in history and never will. The celebration of the Synaxis of the Theotokos is an echo of the former glory of the Great City. “Your City,” addresses her the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete and many other liturgical prayers and hymns.

4 In his novel Istanbul: Memories of a City, our contemporary, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, makes an amazing attempt to create a kind of psychological autobiography of the city, expressed through the words of one of its inhabitants. In his view, the great city on the Bosphorus is a kingdom of shadows from the past, which lives on but no longer exists. The City of Cities, Constantinople, is an echo of a great past. In this sense, the celebration of the “Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God” is an “echo of an echo” of the historical and liturgical homeland of most of the local autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the modern world.