The Lenten journey is one of following Christ. Throughout the ages, a great many Lenten hymns, prayers, and devotions involving Mary have developed. That’s not surprising at all. For Lent is about standing up and following Jesus, just as His mother did so well.
A common Protestant objection to Catholic teaching about and devotion to Mary is that Christ supposedly rebuked her in Luke 11. A woman from the crowd had shouted out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” The Lord’s response was terse: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27-28).
The Catholic understanding is that the Lord was not saying that Mary was not blessed; instead, He was declaring what was more blessed. Mary is blessed not simply for the biological act of carrying, giving birth, or even nursing the little Lord Jesus. She is truly blessed because she heard the word of God calling her to be the mother of the Lord and responded, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
The more we follow Christ, the more we will be like His mother, who saw herself as God’s servant and accepted His will in all things. It is significant that though she was not involved in every aspect of His ministry, she was with Him till the end. John 19 tells us that she, along with Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, and John the Beloved were standing under the Cross even as the rest of the Disciples had fled. Then and there, Christ gave Mary to be John’s mother, an event understood by the Church as her becoming the mother of the whole Church.
Mothers, after all, show their children how things are done. Christ is our redeemer and ultimate exemplar. But Mary is the greatest exemplar of the redeemed. She did hear the word of the Lord and kept it to the end. That is why we look to her not only for her prayers but for her example.
From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have sought Mary’s intercession and followed her example. And, fulfilling the prophecy she herself made in the Magnificat that “all generations will call me blessed,” they have sung her praises repeatedly. One of the greatest Marian hymns is called the “Akathist to the Mother of God.” Though the authorship is disputed by scholars, it is traditionally attributed to Romanos the Melodist, a prolific sixth-century hymn writer. Some modern scholars think the Akathist is much older—perhaps dating to the fourth century.
The Akathist is so called because it is a hymn that is sung while standing. The “a” means “not” and the “kath” refers to a seat; you can hear that root in the word “cathedral” which designates the church where the bishop’s chair is. The Akathist to the Mother of God, which is the model for all other Akathist hymns, was apparently written for the celebration of the Annunciation, but it attained its status in the Eastern Church only in the seventh century.
On August 7, 626, Persian and Avar troops who had invaded Constantinople were defeated. Patriarch Sergius decided that this hymn was the fitting response to the delivery of the city after requests for Mary’s intercession. After Constantinople was delivered from conquest yet again in 718, Patriarch Saint Germanus also chose this hymn for the people to sing in thanksgiving. This was on the fifth Saturday of Lent.
The tradition since then has been that, in the Eastern Church, one of the four parts of the Akathist is sung on each of the first four Fridays of Lent during the little Compline (night prayer). It is not sung straight through. Instead, it forms part of a little service that includes incensings and kontakia sung between the strophes or stanzas of the hymn. The fifth Saturday of Lent, which is known as Akathist Saturday on many calendars, is when the whole service is sung straight through.
What is significant about the hymn? The four parts are dedicated to four different themes: the Annunciation, Christ’s Nativity, Christ, and the Mother of God herself. The four parts are spread out over twenty-four smaller parts (“oikoi”), each of which begins with a different letter of the Greek alphabet and includes a seven-line stanza followed by six couplets. The longer stanzas conclude with the line, “Rejoice, thou unwedded bride!” The shorter stanzas begin with Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail!” and end with “Alleluia!” (The Eastern tradition does not prohibit the use of “Alleluia” in liturgy during Lent.)
The themes covered are many. Since they dwell on the whole mystery of the Incarnation, many of them are focused on the remarkable humility and love of God who came down to live among us and take away all of our spiritual debts and pride. They do indeed dwell on the blessedness and wonder of a woman becoming the mother of God—what the title “Theotokos” means.
But they also dwell on that greater blessedness of her giving birth to God in her heart and doing what St. Paul says is the Christian task: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).
In the hymn, Mary is the teacher because she is the one who receives the word and keeps it. The hymn addresses her as “sweet-sounding echo of the voice of the prophets.” One verse reads, “Hail, O you who exceed the knowledge of the wise; O Hail, O you who illumine the minds of the faithful!” Another: “Hail, O you who deliver us from pagan doctrine; Hail, O you who rescue us from the flames of passion.”
The Akathist to the Mother of God may be better known in the East, but it belongs to the whole Church. St. John Paul II knew this. He prayed it in public on several occasions. The most notable were in 1981 on the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon, which gave the title Theotokos to Mary, and on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1999 to prepare for the third millennium.
Pope Benedict XVI knew and loved the prayer, too. In Verbum Domini, his 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God, he urged Christians to get to know the Akathist, which “represents one of the highest expressions of the Marian piety of the Byzantine tradition.” He continued, “Praying with these words opens wide the heart and disposes it to the peace that is from above, from God, to that peace which is Christ himself, born of Mary for our salvation.”
(Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Servant.)
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Deavel gives an excellent interpretation of, Rather blessed those who do the will of God. That Mary surpasses all Mankind in that regard.
At the Annunciation she took the risk of the unknown, Joseph’s reaction for example, the Pharisees et Al in general. We can imagine a young 16 years girl being told she’ll be pregnant without a husband as actual father. Love, deep, since spiritual love evident in the sinless Virgin Mary disposed her to great suffering during her lifetime, the mysterious absences, the many seeming moments of cold distancing as when she sought him and he responds as if to reprimand.
These are the conditions that make for heroic virtue. Exemplified when Jesus suffered the agony of the Cross he didn’t call out Mother! He called out Father! Although men deathly wounded in combat cry out Momma! The same mother who always came to his defense, perhaps from an irate father. The mother who gave him her blood and milk and nurtured him. Other’s have mentioned the ultimate hurt when at the end he calls her Woman. Woman, there is your son.
Mary symbolizes the unsurpassable tenderness of the divinity. It is this awesome love of the divinity that he chose to express precisely through his mother, Mary, his finest creation.
https://orthodox-europe.org/english/liturgics/prayers/akathist-theotokos/