“”The Eastern Church believes exactly that she was cleaned of all sin, but at the moment of the Annunciation””
I know,but how would Mary be superior to eve who was created sinless? Mary would have been flawed and therefore Eve was created more perfectly if Mary had any sin in her prior.
I like what the late father Hardon had to say on this,it just seems to glorify Christ to me.
From Father Hardon....
“Mary was impeccable, preserved by an extraordinary grace from God from ever being capable of offending God by deliberate sin. Yet though impeccable Mary was able to choose. This bears emphasis. We are so accustomed to identifying freedom as choosing between good and evil that we forget the highest use of our liberty is not to choose “not to sin”, but rather to choose to do more than we have to do or that we are obliged to do – in a word, to choose to be generous. Like Mary, then, we can choose to give God more than He demands under pain of sin. We can choose to love God with our whole heart and not just to avoid His punishment.”-Fr John Hardon
Some of the Church fathers seem pretty clear on this to me and I think some of the writing became even more clearer after Christianity became legal(which seems to explain why this took time to develop further),so,I personally believe that sinless Mary is part of Apostolic tradition especially when we see the earliest fathers call her the New Eve.
I found a few writings that seem to allude to complete sinlessness...
Today humanity, in all the radiance of her immaculate nobility, receives its ancient beauty. The shame of sin had darkened the splendour and attraction of human nature; but when the Mother of the Fair One par excellence is born, this nature regains in her person its ancient privileges and is fashioned according to a perfect model truly worthy of God. . . . The reform of our nature begins today and the aged world, subjected to a wholly divine transformation, receives the first fruits of the second creation. (Homily 1 on Mary’s Nativity; O’Carroll, 180)St. Andrew of Crete
Others before you have flourished with outstanding holiness. But to none as to you has the fullness of grace been given. None has been endowed with happiness as you, none adorned with holiness like yours, none brought to such great magnificence as yours; no one was ever possessed beforehand by purifying grace as were you . . . And this deservedly, for no one came as close to God as you did; no one was enriched with God’s gifts as you were; no one shared God’s grace as you did. (In SS Deip. Annunt. 22; O’Carroll, 329)St. Sophronius
The Orthodox do not consider them ontologically the same. In the Eastern tradition, going back to the early Church, the East celebrates the Dormition of the Theotokos, a feast unknown in the west, that deal with Mary's death and assumption.
From very early on, the Orthodox East always believed that Mary died and on the third day was assumed to heaven, body and soul. If she were ontological equal to Eve, how could she die unless she sinned?
I understand that the Catholic 20th century dogma of the Assumption of Mary leaves the possibility of her death open, neither denying it nor confirming it, which is in itself—as a possibility—an ontological curiosity if not an outright paradox.
The Orthodox consider Mary superior to Eve because, for one, Eve had everything going for her and blew it! Mary had to overcome much greater hurtles precisely because she was not ontologically created like Eve, who through complete and willing obedience and devotion to God, unlike any other human, overcame her fallen nature even if she couldn't lose it.
Se is therefore the saint of saints, as human as we are, the object of our veneration and respect, the best among among us, a real example of what is humanly possible.
She is not some creation that is simply "sin-proofed," else what makes her human like the rest of us? For if she really were made immaculate at the moment of her own conception, and remained so throughout her whole life, she would not need a Savior, as neither did Adam or Eve.