🕂 The Placing of the Precious Sash of Our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God.
Polyeleos Feast.
Hebrews 9:1-7; Luke 10:38-42; 11:27-28.
Read Hebrews 9:1-7
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Placing of the Precious Sash of the Most Holy Theotokos. The origin of the feast goes back to the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Leo the Wise (886-911). Leo’s wife, the Empress Zoe, who was afflicted with an unclean spirit, had a vision that she would be healed of her infirmity if the sash of the Mother of God were placed upon her.
The emperor called for the Patriarch, and asked him to open the coffer in which the relic was kept. When the seal was removed and the coffer opened, it was discovered that the belt was completely whole and undamaged by time. The Patriarch placed the sash on the sick empress, and immediately she was freed from her infirmity. They sang hymns of thanksgiving to the Most Holy Theotokos, then they placed the venerable sash back into the coffer and resealed it.
Today’s epistle sets this story within a much older pattern. St. Paul gives us a detailed description of the first tabernacle – the lampstand, the table, the bread of the Presence – and behind the second curtain the gold-covered ark holding the urn of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant (Heb 9:2-4); material things, sealed in gold, through which God dwelt among his people. From this we see that the divine economy has always been worked in a way such that salvation is wrought through material means.
For the Holy Fathers, in the fulfillment of the old covenant, the Theotokos herself is revealed as the true ark, containing not the manna but the Bread of Life. As St. John of Damascus reminds us, “I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake… and who through matter worked my salvation” (On the Divine Images 1.16). The holy sash is honoured for the reason the ark was honoured: it held the one who bore God.
Further, today’s reading shows us the high priest, who alone entered the second tent, once a year, “not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people” (Heb 9:7). That mediation was a type or shadow of the one to come – the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5), who entered once for all. Nevertheless, His one mediation does not leave us standing outside the curtain – it draws us in. Baptized into Christ, we are made “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9), and as a priesthood, we are called to intercede.
This is why we ask the Mother of God to pray for us, and why we dare to pray for one another. We add nothing to Christ’s work; we are joined to it, and called to participate in it, as God continues to heal through material means – through water, oil, bread and wine, and through the hands and prayers of his people.
O Most Holy Theotokos save us!