Before her icon, the heart is enveloped by a powerful fragrance of lily and the grace-filled feeling of the Ever-Virgin, the Theotokos. I wish so intensely to honor her more, more deeply, to truly glorify her most holy presence! To praise her as she is, more honored than the Cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim... not just as far as my narrow mind can conceive.
When I think of her, similarly a steadfast, luminous, grace-filled city is prefigured in my heart! Within the City dwell happy and confident pious families, mothers and infants, children of all ages running in meadows, men and women returned from the path of sin, youths and maidens from all ages, entire monasteries with hands outstretched to Heaven, churches together with their servants, the serene sky, very serene, and all shining everywhere in the white light of the Panagia!
How many souls she has saved and covered! All are encompassed within her as in an unshakeable City on the vast hills of Paradise!
And she, she Herself... cannot be uttered in words... Her smile endures from the serene air, her Holy Protecting Veil endures, but she... just Grace, fragrance, a breath of the Holy Spirit, prayer, spiritual prostration, humility, boundless meekness, unspeakable love, luminous depth, and again love, unquenchable love, tearful longing, gentleness, the Taboric cloud, hesychia... Hesychia... O, most sweet hesychia, Panagia...
No matter how much I may love the Mother of God and our Mother, I cannot speak about her. I believe that, due to the immense humility that characterizes her, for she herself preferred to envelop herself in silence, only the blessings to the Lord have been preserved for us, and the word – Do all that He tells you! – which is, after all, the essential.
Therefore, I strongly associate the Mother of God with prayer itself. That prayer unfastened from the edges of words, the core of Grace and the moment of oneness with God in the Holy Spirit. Similar to the presence of the Mother of God – without frills, but only such a delicate feeling, such fine dust of grace and holiness, that you cannot possibly "grasp" her with any human wavelength, although she was human. Our humanness, however, is regimented, almost pagan, compared to her closeness. And yet, these souls, entirely human, with all the weaknesses of nature, are loved and delivered by her. They are called to the Supper of her Son, adopted, from earth, as children of Heaven.
The Most Pure, Most Beautiful, and Most Luminous Theotokos and Panagia!
Maria Tudor
(fragment from a text first published on doxologia.ro)