Day 12: The Chariot That Would Have Been Envious
Shoonoyo/Dormition Fast | The Second Eve series: August 2026
In the name of God the Father, Christ Jesus His Son and the one Holy Spirit, One True God. Amen.
And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. – Ezekiel 1:26
Before we try to understand Ezekiel’s vision, it is worth noticing where he is standing when the heavens open.
He is not in the Temple. He is not even in the country. Ezekiel is an exile, living among other exiles beside the river Chebar in Babylon, in the fifth year of the exile, several hundred miles from the only place on earth where his people believed God could properly be met. For a displaced people, it must have seemed as though everything holy had been left behind.
And it is there, in exile, that the heavens open.
What Ezekiel sees is among the strangest and most overwhelming visions in Scripture. A storm approaches from the north. Within it are four living creatures, each with four faces. Beside them are wheels, and wheels within wheels, their rims filled with eyes. Above the creatures is something like a crystal firmament, and above the firmament something resembling a throne. Upon the throne is the appearance of a man surrounded by brightness and fire.
Read the chapter again and count how carefully he speaks.
The likeness of. The appearance of. As it were. As the appearance of. He piles the hedges up one after another, and at the very end of it he will still not say that he saw God. He says: this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. (Ezekiel 1:28)
Language has reached its limit. Ezekiel has seen something so far beyond him that he can only describe the likeness of an appearance of glory.
And then he falls on his face.
The Likeness, and the Reality
Our Syriac Fathers used Ezekiel’s vision for the Mother of God more than any other figure in the whole collection. She is called the chariot again and again. But the verse that matters today does something more daring than that, and I want to set it out carefully.
Had there existed envy in heaven
Ezekiel’s chariot would have envied the daughter of Man:
the chariot conveyed the likeness of His glory,
whereas she carried the reality of His majesty!
– Bride of Light, no. 29 (Hymns on Mary, no. 16), verse 6.
The opening words matter: “Had there existed envy in heaven.” The poet knows there is no jealousy among the heavenly hosts. He is not trying to set Mary against the cherubim or to create a competition between heaven and Nazareth. He is comparing two different kinds of nearness to God.
Ezekiel was permitted to see the likeness of divine glory, and even that was enough to bring him to the ground. Mary was given something altogether different. She did not see a vision of the Incarnation or behold Christ through layers of heavenly imagery. She carried Christ Himself.
The chariot carried the likeness of His glory.
She carried the reality of His majesty.
Ezekiel got the likeness. He got the appearance of the likeness of the glory, and it flattened him.
She got the reality.
The astonishing thing is the form in which that reality came. Not a vision of God. Not a glimpse through several layers of hedged language, by a canal, in a foreign country. The One whom Ezekiel could barely describe became an infant who needed to be carried, fed and put to sleep.
“Let Ezekiel Come and See You”
Another Syriac poet makes the comparison even more intimate by placing the words on Mary’s own lips. She speaks to her Son and calls the prophet himself to come and see:
Your home, my Son, is higher than all,
yet it was Your wish to make me Your home.
Heaven is too small to contain Your splendour,
yet I, poorest of creatures, am carrying You.
Let Ezekiel come and see You on my knees:
let him kneel down and worship You, and acknowledge
that it was You he saw there lifted up by the cherubim
above the chariot, and let him call me blessed
who carry You now.
– Bride of Light, no. 12 (Hymns on Mary, no. 7), verse 4.
Come and see, Ezekiel. The One you fell on your face for. He is on my knees.
The image is almost startling in its simplicity. Ezekiel once fell upon his face before the appearance of divine glory. Now the poet imagines him being invited into an ordinary home and being told to look at a Child sitting upon His mother’s knees.
The next verse presses the contrast further:
The very chariot stops, amazed
that I carry its Master;
the cherubim cry out with trembling,
“Blessed is Your splendour in Your place”;
– that place is with me, my bosom is Your home!
Your radiance rests on my knees,
the throne of Your majesty is held in my arms.
Instead of the chariot wheels,
my fingers clasp You. I too will cry out
“Blessed are You in Your place!”
– Bride of Light, no. 12, (Hymns on Mary, no. 7), verse 5.
“Instead of the chariot wheels, my fingers clasp You.”
Few lines capture the mystery of the Incarnation so beautifully.
Think of everything in Ezekiel’s vision: the living creatures, the fire, the wheels within wheels, the countless eyes, the crystal firmament and the overwhelming sound of their movement. Against all of that heavenly splendour, the poet places something almost absurdly small: the fingers of a mother wrapped around her Child.
The Lord has not become less glorious. The One whom the cherubim carry with trembling is still the Lord of glory. What has changed is the way He has chosen to approach us.
The glory that made Ezekiel fall upon his face has allowed itself to be held.
Another Syriac poet sees precisely the same mystery:
The Chariot of fire carries Him in awe,
yet feeble knees carried Him without getting burnt.
The Wheels of flame escort Him in awe,
yet in the tiny lap of David’s daughter He is lovingly clasped
The Cherubim carry Him and tremble,
the Seraphim cry “Holy” and shrink back,
yet Mary embraces Him at her breasts.
– Bride of Light, no. 20 (Hymns on Mary, no. 15), verse 1.
The words “feeble knees” are important. The poet is not praising human strength. Quite the opposite. He deliberately places the weakness of a human body beside the overwhelming power of the heavenly chariot.
The cherubim tremble while carrying Him, yet a young mother holds Him safely. The seraphim worship from the mystery of heaven, yet she draws Him close to herself.
This is not because Mary possesses some natural strength greater than the angels. It is because God has chosen to make Himself approachable. The same Lord who hid His fire so that the Virgin was not consumed, as we saw on the sixth day, now hides His majesty beneath the weakness of infancy.
Again and again during this fast, the Syriac Fathers have brought us back to this mystery. God does not save us by remaining at a safe distance. He comes close enough to be carried.
The Ones Who Carry and Do Not Know
There is another verse in the same tradition that takes the reflection in a more searching direction:
The cherubim are not aware of the likeness
of the Exalted One who rests on their backs:
they carry Him, yet He is distanced from them.
Blessed is that Power which carries those who carry Him!
– Bride of Light, no. 29 (Hymns on Mary, no. 16), verse 8.
They carry Him, and they do not know what they are carrying.
Here the poet touches upon something that concerns us as much as it concerns the chariot. It is possible to be very close to holy things and still fail to understand what we are carrying.
The cherubim bear the throne, yet the One whom they bear remains beyond their comprehension. Their nearness does not mean that they have exhausted the mystery.
There is a gentle warning here for those of us who have spent our whole lives around the Church. We can know the prayers, attend the services, keep the fasts and become familiar with every movement of the Holy Qurbana. Familiarity can make us imagine that nearness and knowledge are the same thing.
They are not.
We can stand very close to holy things and still need our eyes opened to what is before us.
Perhaps that is one reason the image of Mary is so powerful. She did not merely carry Christ physically. St Ephrem has already told us that He dwelt in her heart and mind. She carried Him, listened to Him, pondered His words, followed Him and remained near Him even when following Him led to the Cross.
The mystery was in her arms, but it also entered her life.
The Chariot Is Not The Point
For all the extraordinary detail Ezekiel gives us, the chariot itself is not what causes him to fall upon his face. The wheels, eyes, fire and living creatures matter because of the One whose throne they bear.
Remove the throne from the vision and all the splendour loses its meaning.
That is also why the Syriac poets can speak so boldly about Mary. They are not claiming that she surpasses the cherubim because she is somehow a more impressive creature. Their attention remains fixed upon the One whom she carries.
The chariot conveyed the likeness of His glory; she carried the reality of His majesty.
Everything follows from Christ.
That has been the pattern throughout these twelve days. The earth matters because God breathed into it. The garden matters because the Tree of Life grew there. The Ark matters because of what it contained. The ship matters because of its cargo. The bush matters because of the Fire. The rock matters because of the water. The tent matters because the glory entered it. The staff matters because it bore fruit. The tree on Moriah matters because it held the lamb. The palace matters because the King came to reside there.
And the chariot matters because of the One seated upon it.
Our Fathers never allow the symbol to become more important than Christ. Every image leads us back to Him.
The Throne Has Wheels
There is one final part of Ezekiel’s vision that speaks particularly powerfully to those of us living far from the places where our faith first took root.
Ezekiel sees the chariot in Babylon. That matters.
The exiles could easily have believed that the presence of God belonged to Jerusalem and that they had been carried beyond its reach. The Temple was far away, their homeland was behind them, and they were living among people whose language, customs and gods were not their own.
Then Ezekiel sees something extraordinary. The throne of God has wheels.
The vision declares that God has not remained behind in Jerusalem while His people went into exile. His glory is not imprisoned inside a building or confined by geography. He comes to His people beside a canal in Babylon.
For many of us, this is more than an interesting detail in Ezekiel.
We keep this fast far from the parish where we grew up. The prayers may be the same, but the streets outside are different. Our children may speak another language more naturally than the one in which our grandparents prayed. Some may be keeping the fast without a church nearby, or within families where not everyone is fasting.
Ezekiel’s vision has something deeply consoling to say to people living between places.
God travels. The throne has wheels. The God of Jerusalem is also beside the river Chebar.
And when the fullness of time came, the movement became more astonishing still. The One enthroned above the cherubim did not merely travel from Jerusalem to Babylon. He came down into His own creation, entered a womb in Nazareth, and allowed Himself to be carried upon the knees of His mother.
What today asks of us
With only three days remaining in the fast, perhaps today invites us to ask a different question. Instead of asking whether we have managed to come sufficiently close to God, we might ask whether we have noticed how far God has already come toward us.
Ezekiel could not return to Jerusalem, so the heavens opened in Babylon. Humanity could not climb into heaven, so the Son of God came down to us. The cherubim carried Him with trembling, yet He allowed Himself to rest upon human knees. The One whom heaven cannot contain made a human bosom His home.
That is the direction of the Gospel. Grace moves toward us before we know how to move toward it.
Our fasting, then, is not an attempt to persuade a distant God to come nearer. It is a way of becoming attentive to the God who has already come near. Perhaps these final days can be less about measuring how well we have fasted and more about recognising the One who has accompanied us through it.
The throne still has wheels. God still comes to His people in places they did not expect to find Him. He comes into exile, into ordinary homes, into bread and wine, and into lives that feel very far from where they thought they ought to be.
Blessed is that Power which carries those who carry Him, who was borne by the chariot of fire and rested upon the knees of the Virgin, and who still comes to meet His people wherever they are.
I end with the Manitho sung during the intercession to the Blessed Theotokos.
Peace, O bridge to the highest,
The ladder seen by Jacob.
Your brother in Christ
Jobin
Tomorrow – Day 13: The same prophet, in the same book, is taken to a gate on the east side of the sanctuary and told that it will never be opened. And he is told why.
