The appearance of the Mother of God signifies the beginning of the resurection of the dead, because She, who is resurrected Herself, can appear only to resurrected humankind together with the resurrected Lord (who, though He appeared on earth after resurrection and in a glorified body, did not then yet appear in glory). The abiding of the Mother of God in heaven evidently does not signify the same thing as the presence of the Lord at the right hand of the Father. He abides in the heavens as "One of the Holy Trinity" (as a troparion says), as God in the interior of the Trinity. But since She is a creature, the Most Holy Mother of God does not ascend into this heaven of heavens. Christ faces Her in His humanity. As the highest of all the creatures, She abides at the boundary of heaven and creation. She is the peak of the world, which touches heaven. She is sanctified by the entire power of the Divine Sophia, of the revelation of the Holy Trinity. But She Herself remains the creaturely Sophia. This presence of the Mother of God in the heavens can be defined as the creaturely heaven directly illuminated by the divine heaven.

In the parousia, one therefore finds cojoined in Christ and the Mother of God the manifestation of Divinity itself, of the Divine Sophia, in Christ, and Her manifestation in creation. This attests to the accomplished Divine-humanity, the Incarnation of Christ and the deification of creation. The power of deification is further extended to all creation, which is penetrated by the divine light of transfiguration.

… The great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, the tabernacle of God with men, is insistendly and repeatedly also called the "wife" or "bride of the Lamb": "The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he [the angel] saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rev.19:7-9). And the angel said, "'Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.' And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God" (Rev.21:9-11). …

This is the most general and complete revelation that we have of the Church as humanity in Divine-humanity. And if this is the case, then is not the Most Pure Mother of God Herself in Her glory this personal head of the Church, the personal humanity of Divine-humanity? Is She not the Heavenly Jerusalem, which returns to earth from its heavenly home in the parousia of the Mother of God, in order to become here the spiritualized tabernacle of God with men? Is She not Sofia herself, creaturely but entirely deified, the peak of all creation, more venerable than the cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim? Is She not the glory and the joy of the saved peoples at the marriage feast of the Lamb? Is She not that perfect union of the divine and the human in which all creation, both the angelic choir and humankind, rejoices? She, the Spirit-Bearer, is Spirit and Bride, manifesting in Her very being the image of the hypostatic Spirit of God. And about Her is said in the final words of the New Testament:
     "And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come.
     And let him that heareth say, Come!
     Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

… The Lord has the glory which He receives from the Father; this is His proper glory, the glory belonging to Him from all ages, radiating in His most pure flesh, the glory of Transfiguration. …

On the contrary, in her glorification the Mother of God receives through the Son from the Father the glory and power which are not inherently hers according to human nature. This is divinization in the precise sense, a canopy of divine graced life unfurling over that being in which it is not inherent and which it transcends. Because of this the whole difference between the Son and the Mother, between His and her power and glory, remains. The first is boundless and unlimited, absolute, as the power of God in creation. The second is derivative, a graced givenness, and in virtue of this derivativeness it is not unlimited, not absolute. In other words, the Lord is God by nature, the Mother of God is not God by nature, but only by grace, no matter how full and complete her divinization is. In her person is fulfilled only what is foreordained for all humans: "I said, you are gods" (Ps 82:6; cf. Jn 10:34-35).

The Mother of God does not need prayers for herself, for in her divinized state she possesses everything. As the glory of God and the glory of the world, as the love of God for the world and the love of the world for God put on view, she glorifies God with her prayer. Her proper prayer is doxology, i.e., love pre-eternally being realized, flaming and triumphing in perfect joy — the love of God for Himself in His creation. But the Mother of God, as head and representative of the world and the whole creation, also has a non-proper prayer which in virtue of the stated correlation is also her own prayer, is the prayer of every creature. She provides the wings for this prayer by lifting it to the throne of God, she gives power to this prayer, she is the intercessor, the one who raises her hands to God in high-priestly fashion over the world (oranta) and overshadows the world with her omophorion.

The Mother of God is the praying Church itself in a personal incarnation, in this sense she is the universal Mother, patroness and representative.