From statistical data on people who have reached extreme old age, we learn that there are especially many of them among those living in the high mountains of the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, and other high-elevation regions. Even in our time, there is an extraordinary elder somewhere in Azerbaijan who has reached the age of 150, and centenarians there are quite common.
What explains this remarkable influence of high mountains on human longevity?
Undoubtedly, it is largely due to the fact that mountain dwellers spend their lives breathing the purest air and subsist mainly on dairy products and the meat of healthy sheep.
In contrast, in vast cities with populations reaching millions, people breathe air that is far from healthy, laden with miasma from various infectious diseases. Many also live in apartments and houses contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria, which are extremely difficult to eradicate. Towering multi-story buildings block the life-giving rays of the sun. Moreover, the diet of city dwellers is, of course, much poorer in quality than the food consumed by those living in high mountain regions.
It is therefore entirely understandable that the lifespan of city residents is much shorter than that of mountain people and even of peasants living in healthy and sunlit villages.
But it is not only the life of the body that matters to us; the conditions in which the spiritual life of children, adolescents, and youth develops are of utmost importance. The influence of the social environment in which they grow up is crucial. The spiritual growth of children and young people of both genders sometimes depends entirely on the example set by parents and other close individuals.
Children of drunkards, thieves, and bandits—whose way of life is even more destructive than tuberculosis bacilli or the microbes of any other infectious disease—are often morally and spiritually ruined. Children are deeply impressionable, and everything they see and hear around them leaves a lasting mark on their minds and hearts.
What I have just described was well understood—not in words, but in the purity of their hearts—by the parents of the Most Holy Theotokos, the righteous Joachim and Anna. In their wisdom, they ensured that their little daughter Mary was placed in the most favorable circumstances for her upbringing in holiness, purity, and the fear of God.
Though it must have been incredibly difficult for them to part with the little daughter granted to them by God after decades of childlessness, they brought her to the House of the Lord. There, she was received by the priest Zacharias, the future father of John the Forerunner, who, by divine inspiration, dared to perform an unprecedented act: He brought her not only into the sanctuary of the temple, where only priests entered, but even into its holiest part, separated by a heavy veil and called the Holy of Holies, into which only the high priest could enter once a year, with sacrificial blood at that.
Here once stood the greatest of sacred treasures—the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the tablets given by God on Mount Sinai to the great prophet Moses, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the vessel of manna. Its ultimate fate remains unknown, but most likely, it was lost during the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar of the First Jerusalem Temple.
The young Most Holy Virgin Mary was granted permission by the priest Zacharias to enter the Holy of Holies daily and to pray there in the unseen presence of God’s angels. She lived in one of the small rooms built against the temple’s outer walls. These modest rooms housed those who had dedicated themselves to God, as well as unfortunate and destitute souls who needed care. It was among these needy ones that the Most Holy Theotokos lived, serving them daily with her labor and her love.
For her deeds of mercy, she was always surrounded by the love of those she cared for, and she lived for twelve years in this atmosphere of love. Every day, she prayed at length in the temple, breathing the pleasing fragrance of the prayers of the faithful and the incense rising from the altar.
The holy and pure atmosphere of the temple was as beneficial for her spiritual growth as the pure air of high mountains is for the bodily health and longevity of mountain people. She was surrounded not by people with impure and wicked hearts, but by the good and God-fearing, who formed her blessed community, sanctified by God.
In this environment, the Holy Virgin Mary grew and blossomed, like a resplendent flower exuding a fragrance pleasing to God and mankind. In her, the foundation was laid for her to become, in time, More Honorable than the Cherubim and Beyond Compare More Glorious than the Seraphim.
O you, my beloved Christians, always remember the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna, who so wisely raised their God-given Daughter. Strive to create favorable conditions for your own children to grow in holiness, righteousness, and goodness.
May our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, help you in this work pleasing to Him.
Amen.
1958
