After the death of St. John and after the Council of Ephesus in 431, which proclaimed the Virgin Mary the Mother of God, Her cult flourished so luxuriantly that it became almost impious (not canonically, but in fact) even to mention Her human qualities, for everything in Her was considered perfect. In Western Christianity, where the doctrine of original sin as a guilt inherited from Adam had triumphed, the veneration of the Mother of God logically led to the proclamation in 1854 of the dogma of Her immaculate conception. According to this dogma, the Virgin Mary, by the will of God, is free, even at the moment of Her conception, from hereditary guilt and, therefore, is sinless. But in light of the patristic understanding of original sin, there is neither reason nor need for such a dogma. The Mother of God was a woman, an Israelite, no different from other people in anything except the degree of Her perfection. She was the best result, the crown of the entire Old Testament history. With the perfection of Her humanity, She belonged to this entire history, which is why She was honored by the “overshadowing of the Spirit” to become the mother of the One who fulfilled and completed this history.

In light of this, it is understandable why we find Chrysostom treating the Virgin Mary as an ordinary woman. In his commentary on Matthew 12:46-49 (“…who is my mother and who are my brothers?”) he speaks directly of Her simple human weakness and imperfection. In the same spirit, without any exaltation, he speaks of Mary in his sermon on John 2: “…yet they did not know him as they should have, not even his mother, nor his brothers. …You are my mother, and therefore you make the miracle itself suspicious.”