Virgin Mary occupies a prominent place in Christianity, expressing the "offering" of the whole human race to God for the realization of the plan of salvation."

She is the person who, after Christ, occupies the most important place in sacred history, as recorded in the Old and New Testaments and throughout our later ecclesiastical tradition. It is none other than that of the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary or Theotokos. As is well known, the person of the Virgin Mary is presented first of all in the Gospels, in connection with the events of the divine economy.

The special honor to the mother of our Lord was particularly expressed through the theology of the prophecies and prophecies of the Virgin Mary in the Old Testament, such as those about the Virgin conceiving and giving birth to Emmanuel (Isaiah).

The special place and honour of Virgin Mary was expressed very early, in the first Christian communities, already from the time of the persecutions, with her depictions in frescoes and portable icons and the gradual development of a significant number of iconographic types, where she is depicted either alone or carrying the divine infant, as an expression of the doctrine of the divine incarnation.

Over the centuries it was established through synodal decisions - such as the doctrinal establishment of the term "Theotokos" by the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431.

The great love of Christians in the East and West for the person of the Mother of Christ also led to the development of the Mother of God feasts and the production of a large number of texts, both prose and poetic-worship, and the consequent traditions, and "built" a complex edifice for the person of the Virgin Mary, which has its starting point already before her birth and extends to her death and her bodily transposition to heaven.

From the first centuries after its foundation, Constantinople itself took on the character of a Theotokopolis, with the development of large pilgrimages, such as the Church of the Blachernae and the Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring in Balouklis, but also with the ever-increasing presence of churches and chapels dedicated to the Virgin Mary inside and outside its walls.

The same will happen in important monastic centers, since for the monks Virgin Mary was a model of virginity, culminating in the emergence of Mount Athos as the 'Precinct of the Virgin Mary'."

What does the Virgin Mary symbolize for the average person?

Virgin Mary expresses the "offering" of the entire human race to God, for the realization of the plan of salvation. At the same time she symbolizes the affirmation of human freedom, that unique characteristic of human nature, in God's redemptive plan. The word "Mary" is absolutely identical with the concept of freedom in Christ. Thus, the Virgin Mary symbolizes the archetype of man's obedience to God and the recovery of ancient beauty, and is the model of human holiness as participation in the holiness of God."

(Source: article «Τι σημαίνει η Παναγία για τον Χριστιανισμό», Professor Simeon Paschalidis, Department of Pastoral and Social Theology)