Cheiropoieten: “made with hands”

Model of the Temple

In commenting on St. Steven’s speech in Acts 7, James Dunn in THE PARTING OF THE WAYS points out how Steven weaves together a story in which he has the beginning of Israel’s decline into apostasy occurring with the development of Hebrew worship and the building of the Temple in Jerusalem.  The time of wandering the wilderness was the time of “a nearly ideal form of worship.”  The move to tangible idolatry was marked by the golden calf in the wilderness to worshipping the “host of heaven” which led to the Babylonian exile.   Basically, according to Dunn, “the whole sweep of Israel’s time within the promised land itself was embraced within these two periods of blatant apostasy.”  David was not the builder of the temple but Solomon was.  Dunn goes on:

“’Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands’ (Acts 7:48).  This last word would be the most shocking feature of the Hellenist exposition.  The adjective chosen, cheiropoieten, ‘made with hands’, would be a horrifying word to use in this context.  Why so?  Because that was the word used by Hellenistic Jews to condemn idolatry, just this word summing up the typically dismissive Jewish polemic that Gentile gods were human artifacts, ‘made with hands.’  The idol by definition cheiropoieton, ‘the thing made by human hands’; an implication which any Greek speaking Jew, and Luke too, could not mistake, since the word had already been used with this disparaging overtone in v.41 (cf. also 17:24).   For just that word to be used of the Temple would certainly have sent shock waves through any Jewish audience or readership – the Temple itself a breach of that most fundamental axiom of Israelite/Jewish religion, that God’s presence cannot be encapsulated or represented in any physical or man-made entity! – the Temple itself an idol!”

Dunn continues that St. Steven then mentions Isaiah 66:1-2 in which God clearly questions any man made house becoming His resting place.  God made the entire universe by His own hands, does He need humans to make a temple for Him?  

The point which Dunn makes, and why the Jews rushed in upon Steven in a rage is that in the speech he is giving St. Steven is saying that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is also an idol, “made with hands,” and thus not of God. 

Of course in the Gospels there are a few references to a similar theme.   In Mark 14:58 we read:   

“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’”

In John 2:20-21 we see the similar theme:

The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he spoke of the temple of his body.

As Dunn points out there was in early Christianity a parting with Judaism which involved how the temple was perceived.  Dunn points out that it wasn’t only the Christians who distanced themselves from the Temple.  There were several other groups which did so as well including the Essenes and the Qumran community.  Even Rabbinic Judaism saw the Torah as more central than the Temple. 

In the Book of Hebrews 9:11, 24 the idea of the Temple not made with hands occurs again:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)

For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Christians obviously saw in the Temple in Jerusalem signs of Jewish apostasy – a falling away from God’s plan (that which is not made by hands) and embracing the Temple which is merely made by God’s hands and thus an idol and not of the true faith.  They saw Christ as restoring to Judaism true faith and the destruction of all idolatry including Jewish idolatry.

All of the above ideas reminded me of a couple of things in Orthodoxy

1)     The Icon not made by hand.   The implication if Dunn is correct is that the Icon is not an idol but represents the true and heavenly ideal because it faithfully portrays Christ who is the true Temple, and we Christians are members of His Body, a true living temple.   Unlike the Jerusalem temple and unlike pagan idols, Christ both represents and embodies God’s truth.   The popularity of this icon “not made by hand” is its clear implication that the truth of Orthodoxy is unlike pagan religion for it is not man made.

2)    In the hymnology of the Church the Virgin Mary is also portrayed as the temple not made by hand – but rather fashioned by God who made the heavens.    Even the statements of her being “undefiled” or “without defilement” have that sense of not being made by human hands or human action but rather being the heavenly and pure temple of God.   She is not the idolatrous temple in Jerusalem, but the real tent in which God dwelt in Israel before its apostasy.   God does not dwell in a temple made by human hands, but He is willing to become incarnate in the temple which He Himself had made!

In Praise of the Virgin Mary

Some say that the very cause of and reason for government is that humans have not shown themselves capable of enough self-control to govern their own rapaciousness.   St. John Chrysostom once commenting on the sexual passion in teenagers lamented that he could think of nothing that could help control the desire except “the fires of hell,” which I suppose he hoped the teens would feel that heat more than that burning desire within.   Demands in some religious cultures that women dress extremely modestly or totally cover themselves seems to derive from an idea that men cannot control their sexual desires and so it is up to women to conceal themselves so as not to inflame  desire in men.

The Law/Torah as St. Paul argues was given to help God’s people learn self control.  However what the Law could not do was change the hearts of humans. No amount of Law, law enforcement, or repentance can change the reality that there is something in the human heart that makes humans tend toward sin from their youth. Judaism believes if only humans would obey the Torah evil could be defeated. Islam believes that only absolute submission to Allah as detailed in the Q’uran can defeat evil – repentance is a waste of time, just submit now. Christianity wrestles with the “fallen” human – made in God’s image and likeness, made to have dominion over creation, and yet incapable of self control. Christianity struggles with why good human beings made by a good God, placed in a good creation and declared “very good” by God should be so drawn to evil and distorting God’s world. Christianity recognizes that humans can even at times by force and under threat be made to obey the law and yet this does not lead to truly changing or healing the human heart which can force itself to do things under compulsion that it does not want to do nor does it love doing. 

In this sense Islam represents Tolkein’s notion “where there’s a whip, there’s a way.” Judaism may be “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Christianity because of the incarnate God says only where there is divine and human synergy is there a way. Humans must be willing to cooperate with God; humans are interdependent with the Divine to accomplish God’s will. God’s will for us is not just our submission but our freely given love. The incarnation and theosis both speak of the need of divine-human cooperation. This is why the Virgin Mary is so special and significant in salvation for Christians in a way that neither Judaism or Islam can credit her (though Islam does show a lot of respect for her – she is mentioned more often in the Quran than in the Bible).  In Christian thinking Mary not only submited to God’s will but she agreed to co-operate with the divine, and in traditional Christian thinking God took a risk with Mary to make His plan dependent on her.   God had actually taken a similar risk in creating Adam and then Eve, endowing them with free will.  He created them to be the doers of His will but granted them the ability to refuse or rebel.   God took that same chance again with Mary.  This time however the divine and human synergy occurred and salvation was attained because the human will was in accord with the divine will.   Mary’s gracious accceptance of grace – a very simple act and in her world it would have even been conceived of as both the normal and proper way for a young woman to behave, namely accept and obey- becomes the lynchpin in God’s plan being enacted.  God the Word is conceived in the Virgin’s womb, and He will be the prototype for all humanity -  making His human will in accord with the Divine will. 

God’s willingness to risk His plan by placing it in the hands of His human creatures tells us something about the mystery of God and also also possibly why Christ did not really speak about Christian government. He spoke to our hearts and how to heal our hearts not how we should organize nations and economies.   We humans may have that further need to know how to organize ourselves and what kind of leadership/hierarchy will best help us to love one another as Christ loved us.  However, Christ did not much address the issue of human government, for His message and His healing was aimed at the human heart.   He warned against following the Gentile leaders way of lording over their subjects, but provided no detailed method for how His followers were to govern themselves externally.  His one law was that of love – for God first but then also for neighbor. 

As Mary sang:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,  

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. … 

He has shown strength with his arm,

he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,

he has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and exalted those of low degree…”      (Luke 1:46-52 RSV)

The Dormition of the Theotokos (2009)

Festal Greetings to all.

The Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is about realism and hope.  The realism is that the Virgin Mary, chosen by God out of all the women who have or ever will exist to be the Mother of His Incarnate Son dies like every other human being.  Despite the role she is chosen for by God – to be the Mother of Life, Mother of the Messiah, Mother of God, Theotokos - she does not escape mortality.  She is given the accolades of being “more honorable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim” and yet she is a mortal human being.   She belongs to the same world as us, where the final enemy death has not yet been defeated.  And yet in the Feast we celebrate the ultimate triumph of humanity over death – this is the power given to each of us in Baptism.

The realism of the Dormition is confronted by the reality of Christ’s resurrection.  For the Feast of the Dormition is also a feast of hope and resurrection – of an eternal life with Christ.   The Virgin Mary is not abandoned to Hades or even the grave, for she is with her Son in God’s Kingdom.   The implication of Christ’s resurrection is made manifest in the feast of the Dormition.  St. Paul wrote:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.  But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.  For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.   (1 Corinthians 15:17-26)

Dormition Icon

 

Fr. John Breck wrote:

 “The icon of the Dormition, the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, provides for the final word about death and hope beyond …  As much as the Paschal icon itself, the sacred image of the Dormition expresses the ultimate truth about death.  On the iconastasis of every Orthodox Church there is an image of the Theotokos, embracing the Christ-child and at the same time offering him to the world as the source of the world’s life and salvation.  Here, in the feast icon of the Dormition, we find the mirror image of that theme.  Christ is seen standing behind the bier of the Virgin, holding in his arms the image of her soul.  She has died, as every human being dies.  She bore within herself the agony of her Son’s death, then she embarked on the pathway that led from her own grief-stricken life through the crisis of death.  That crisis, however, was transfigured into the same victory achieved by Christ through his own death.  The image of her soul that he embraces in the Dormition icon is therefore wrapped in a shroud of white, symbolizing resurrection.  Like her Son, and because of his life-giving death and resurrection, she passes from death to life, from earth to heaven, to dwell with him in eternal glory.”

The Annunciation (2009)

“In the days of creation of the world, when God was uttering his living and mighty “Let there be,” the word of the Creator brought creatures into the world.  But on that day, unprecedented in the history of the world, when Mary uttered her brief and obedient, “So be it,” I hardly dare say what happened then-the word of the creature brought the Creator into the world.”  (Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, Annunciation, 1874)

I love the theological play on ideas that one finds in the theology of the incarnation. 

In Genesis 1, God said, “Let there be…” and His Word brought creation into existence.

In Luke 1, when the Virgin Mary says, “So be it…” that same Word of God is brought into the Creation which He made!

Such is the most profound and wonderful theology of Christianity.  It reveals to us the true and total love God has for His creation, and the most profound and mysterious relationship that He has with it.   God not only creates a world, but in Mary, the Theotokos, He creates someone capable of bearing God within her!  In God we all live and have our being (Acts 17:28), but then in a most amazing act of salvation, God lovingly enters into creation and is contained within it.   With the Psalmist I ponder,

“When I  look at your heavens, the work of your  fingers,
   the moon and the stars,  which you have set in place,
  what is man that you are  mindful of him,
   and  the son of man that you  care for him?

 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
   and crowned him with glory and honor.”  (Psalm 8:3-5)

Annunciation Greetings!

I wish all of you a blessed Feast of the Annunciation. 

Mary accepted the Archangel’s greetings and humbly submitted herself to God’s will.   In so doing she made it possible for God’s Word to take on human nature and to reveal to us both what it truly means to be human and also the Trinitarian nature of God. 

We honor Mary in our Church because she freely chose to cooperate with God.  God did not force her to consent to His will, but in love accepted her willingness to become Theotokos.  

God’s willingness to submit His plan for salvation to the free cooperation of humans is totally consistent with His giving free will to Adam and Eve in paradise and allowing them to chose what path they would follow – His will or their own.  This certainly reveals the remarkable love of God for His creation that He does not try to impose upon us His will but rather offers to us the possibility of synergy and union with Him.  Our life in the Church is not to consist of imposing God’s will on the unwilling, but to freely and joyfully place our own wills at His disposal.   

To read about the Annunciation, see Luke 1:24-38

Mary Conceived Faith and Joy

The Patristic writers and later hymnographers of our Church loved the interplay of ideas which they found in the scriptures.  One such idea is that the Virgin Mary serves as the fulfillment of what God intended humanity to be, thus undoing Eve’s disobedience.  One of the earliest references connecting Mary and Eve comes from St. Martyr Justin the Philosopher (mid-2^nd Century). 

“Eve was a virgin, without corruption.  By conceiving through the word of the serpent, she gave birth to disobedience and death.  The virgin Mary conceived faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced to her the good news.” 

In the Orthodox Church, the Virgin Mary is no mere passive recipient of God’s grace.  She actively, though humbly, cooperates with God for the salvation of the world.  To be Theotokos, Mary actively listens to God’s Word through the Angel Gabriel, and willingly agrees to accept God’s Word.  In this sense, she is very much a proto-model disciple of Christ, God the Word.  Unlike Eve who disobeyed God and listened to the serpent, Mary rejects the concerns of the world not only to hear God, but to allow His Word to dwell in her so that she could bear fruit for Him.

He Remembers We are Dust

In November and December of 1978 while serving as a missionary in Kenya, I contracted dysentery.   Although I don’t remember those days in detail, the journal I kept at that time showed many sleepless nights with a lot of pain.  Because of the pain an inability to sleep, I spent many a night in prayer.

“The psalms have been a great comfort to me these days of my illness.  I understand the psalmists cry to the Lord for help – coming from the depths of his soul.  And I realize for generations humans have been suffering, hoping and crying to God.  Even though each person’s afflictions are their own, yet countless people before have suffered similarly and found help and strength in God.   And we Christians always have hope – both because of the promises of God and because our God has suffered all the pains, sorrows, afflictions and mental anguish of humanity.    Psalm 103 speaks so well to this:   ‘He knows our frame, he remembers we are dust…’      God does not forget the creatures He has made; He remembers the fragility of our nature.  We are dust, tiny particles that easily be blown away.  We are dust, and unto dust we will return, and yet He remembers what we are ….  His Majestic Might is so gentle, so nimble, so humble that He can touch a human – who is but dust – and heal him.   The infinite power of God can in love touch dust and give it life. …  The incarnation is even a greater mystery – Mary is not only touched by the Divine Power, but she contains in her womb this Power.  In Christ, Divinity not only touches dust, but humbles itself and allows itself to be contained by the dust!”

(8 December 1978, Kunjeru, Kenya)

The ABC’s of Why We Need Christmas: E

The ABC’s of Why We Need Christmas
E – Eve and the Ever-Virgin Mary
5th in the Series: See the previous – The ABC’s of Why we need Christmas: D

Over the past Sundays of Advent, I have spoken with you about Why We Need Christmas. We need Christmas because each of us are going to die, we need Christmas in order to live, We need Christmas because it is the only way for us to Know God and have Communion with Him, We need Christmas to create in us a desire to return to God even when we have gone astray and forgotten Him.
Christmas, the birth of the Messiah, is God’s gift to us and to the entire world. It is a beautiful gift, the absolute best present anyone can give or receive. Yet, sometimes, we completely forget the gift and are entharalled with all the glitzy wrapping paper. For much of the way that Christmas is celebrated in our lives – the decorations, the beautifully wrapped gifts, the lights, the parties, the food, the music, the spirit – is really only the decorative wrapping paper. It attracts our attention, and makes something look good and desireable, but its beauty is also a bit seductive because it distracts us from the gift, and even takes over our desires. The gift of Christmas, God sending His Son into the world to give us life, is lost in the midst of decorations and trees and presents and food. The gift wrapping comes to be our object of desire and ends up not only hiding the gift but leading us to love the wrapping and ignoring the gift.

Can we really ignore the gift and desire the wrapping?

Yes, it can happen. It happens in life, especially the spiritual life when we allow our hearts and minds to become double or triple minded. At just about every Liturgy we sing the Beatitudes. One of the verses says (Matthew 5:8):
“Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.” It has been pointed out that the purity of heart means an undivided love for God. It means single-minded devotion to the Lord. Purity of heart means we do not allow into our hearts any other object of desire to compete with our relationship with God. Purity of heart is one goal of the spiritual life along our sojourn to the Kingdom of Heaven. It means we remove from our heart all other competing desires and come to see and love God first and foremost. To put it in other words, (Matthew 6:33) as the Lord Jesus taught us, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Only when we learn to love God with a singleness of heart, with purity of heart, will we learn how to love others or appreciate other objects we desire.
Singleness of heart, purity of heart is what Eve, the fore-mother of us all, lost. This loss of singleness of heart allowed love for objects other then God to enter into her heart, and the rest is history. Listen to what led Eve to sin in Genesis 3:6:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

 Eve was tempted by the externally looks, she forgot what was contained in the wrapping. Eve lost her purity of heart, her single-hearted devotion for God, and got so tempted by the good looking wrapping she forgot about the gift of God and took a desireable looking fruit and ate it. How similar her actions to ours when we desire all the external wrappings (or perhaps properly called the trappings). Eve of course knew nothing about Christmas. In every sense she did Christmas in reverse of us. She ignored the gift of God, fell for the external wrapping of something else and lost the gift of God. Our temptation is to see the gift of God wrapped in the way our society keeps Christmas and to totally fall in love with the wrapping and to forget the gift. The end result is the same.
Our counter balance to this tendency is the Ever-Virgin Mary. For in Mary we find the gift of God. In her womb is the Messiah. And when we look upon Mary, we are not led to love the gift wrap rather then the gift. For when we look upon the icon of Mary, or celebrate one of her feasts, or read of her in the scriptures, we are not distracted away from the Messiah, but led to Him. Mary is a gift wrap which not only allows us to see the gift, but even helps reveal God’s gift to us. Mary is at the center of the Christmas icon because she reveals to us what is important for us about Christmas. She shows us why we need Christmas – because we need Jesus Christ to reveal God to us and give us a pure relationship with our God. Mary’s single-hearted devotion to God is not distracted by any other desire, nor deceived by any external trappings or wrappings.

Let it not be so, but rather with Mary may each of us say this Christmas, “I am the servant of the Lord, let it be done according to His Will.”

Luke 1:38
Then Mary said, “Behold I am the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
Mary was blessed by her purity of heart which allowed her to serve God. May we all do the same.

Develop in yourselves this purity of heart, this single-heartedness that enables us to see God. This Christmas do not be seduced by the external trappings which can hide the gift. Let us not be like Eve, but rather let us be inspired by the Ever-Virgin Mary. As St. Paul warns in 2 Corinthians 11:3:

“But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, so your minds may be corrupted and you may lose the single-hearted devotion to Christ. “

Next: The ABC’s of Why We Need Christmas:  F   Forgiveness

Entrance of the Theotokos (2004)

Sermon notes (2004)   The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple

In the Torah, the first five books of the bible, we learn what great care God took in planning the temple in Jerusalem. For God describes in intricate detail what the Temple was to be like, and God carefully chose the craftsmen He wanted to do the work. God did not let the building of His temple be left to chance but He made clear His choices, and He personally guided the decisions to be made regarding the Temple, because the Temple was to be the sign of His presence on earth amidst His chosen people. The Temple was the place where God was to dwell on earth.

Are we to imagine that when our God chose the woman to be the mother of His Son, that he took any less care? That He just picked any childbearing female without regard to who she was? It seems reasonable based on the detailed description which God revealed to His people about the Temple in Jerusalem and about its consecration, that God took equal care and love in choosing Mary to be the Mother of His Son.

In the Church we have the Feast of the Entrance of the Virgin Mary into that Temple. We have the woman carefully chosen by God because of who she is – even before she conceives God’s Son – now entering the Temple which God so carefully designs and decorates.

Now both the Virgin and the Temple are signs of God’s loving care for the world, both are where and how God dwells on earth, and both are signs of God’s presence. But the Temple in Jerusalem that massive structure of huge stones which so impressed the disciples of Christ, and whose detail and beauty was revealed by God, has long been destroyed and is no longer a sign from God. That old temple was a sign of God’s presence, and yet God dwelt there only occasionally and eventually He abandoned that temple and allowed it to be destroyed. Whereas the Virgin, who is the temple in which God became incarnate, remains a sign to God’s people until this day. A temple not built by hands and which cannot be destroyed by human means. She indeed and in purpose has become the eternal sign and temple of God’s dwelling with us. Even though God also dwelt in her only for a short time, her role was to make the eternal God to be incarnate, something the old temple in Jerusalem could never do. Her role has become eternal. Her role was to make the eternal incarnate. She is the permanent sign of God’s eternal presence on earth – a sign that cannot be destroyed, like the old and massive Jerusalem Temple could be and was.

In the original temple which Solomon built was placed the Ark of the Covenant, that sarcophagus like box over which the cherubim spread their wings. And in the Ark was kept the stone tablets on which the 10 Commandments were written. The written Word of God symbolically contained in the Ark within the Temple. But all of that, as important and holy as it was, given as gifts from God to His people, were lost in history. They did not permanently survive despite being made of stone, nor could they make permanent God’s relationship with humanity. But the Virgin Mary, humble as she was, became what the Ark and Temple could not be. For in Mary, the Word of God was inscribed, not on tablets of stone, but rather becoming incarnate in her womb – the Word became flesh, not stone. And this incarnation of the Word of God is the one which has become the eternal sign of God’s presence. The Ark and Temple described in the Torah were temporary, and were but a preparation for the reality which came in Mary’s womb – the incarnation of the Son of God. And Mary and Her Son are the permanent sign of God’s Word in our midst – something that even those tablets of stone could not become.

The 10 Commandments, given to us by God, are not the permanent sign of God’s presence with us, but rather it is the incarnation of the Word of God – Jesus Christ who is our Savior and redeemer. Jesus is for us what the tablets of stone could never be – our salvation, our way of union with our God.

God’s Word is a living Word – it is Jesus Christ, not a tablet of stone, not a book in print, but a human who is God incarnate. And God’s true temple turns out not to be a massive and beautiful building of permanent stone and marble and granite, but a beautiful woman who God chose because of what He saw in her. God’s plan was not that His Word become stone, but rather that His Word become flesh. God’s salvation occurs not by God becoming etched into a rock, but by His becoming human so that we humans can be united to Him. God in the flesh, God united to humanity, not law written on stone which is our salvation. We Christians give thanks for the incarnation which is our salvation. That is why we so honor the Virgin.

And perhaps that is why some who think salvation comes from God’s Word written on stone tablets find it difficult to honor the Virgin Mother of God.

And in the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple we celebrate in thanksgiving this Virgin who is God’s temple, the Theotokos, who becomes for us the mother of our salvation. A permanent sign of God’s abiding love – a sign now eternal in heaven, eclipsing all the temple could ever be. And we honor her for what she has become to the entire world.

More honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, she gave birth to God the Word. True Theotokos, we magnify you.

The Theotokos as the Path to Salvation

NATIVITY OF THE THEOTOKOS  

The role of the Theotokos in salvation is unique “…because Mary was, according to the reasoning summarized earlier, ‘of the house and lineage of David,’ she represented the unbreakable link between Jewish and Christian history, between the First Covenant within which she was born and the Second Covenant to which she gave birth…” (Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries).  She gives birth to the New Covenant, to Christ, to the salvation of the world.

Too often we think of salvation as an event, but it is better understood as a history.  The history of salvation flows through particular people, times, places, individuals.  Mary is one person who is part of the history of salvation.  She still belongs within the context of that history, and yet she is a unique part of that history, an irreplaceable part.  Our salvation – our reconciliation and union with God -  would not have happened without her.  She is in the plan of salvation, humanly speaking, a reason that salvation happened.

Thus it is fitting and right for all Christians to honor the Theotokos.  She is the path to salvation for us all because first she is the path that the Son of God followed to become incarnate.  He came into the world through her, and we likewise enter heaven through her.