|
![]()
|
Reprinted from The Open Door: Entering the Sanctuary of Icons and Prayer with permission of Paraclete Press.
![]() This icon of the Theotokos on the iconostasis is eloquently expressive of tribulation and sorrow of soul. Contemporary images of Bible figures don’t usually look this serious; in a Christian bookstore, the plaques and framed pictures show Christ and other Bible figures looking happy and self-assured. That’s the modern-day face, the face you put on when someone takes your picture.
But this sorrowful Theotokos has a true face, too, and there must be many a person over the centuries who prayed before this icon with a sad or fearful mind. If this icon were a mirror, and we could see in it all the faces that have prayed before it, we would see so many in deep sorrow: a weeping woman whose baby had died; a man wracked with anxiety over drought-stricken fields; a family whose home lay in the path of an approaching army. Each stood here with a face that mirrored the Theotokos’ own deep sorrow, then turned to bear whatever challenges lay ahead.
Swift time laid their bodies in the dust, and all their sorrows, once so monumental, have been forgotten by every living soul. But I think the Theotokos remembers. Somehow, I think this Theotokos remembers all the faces she has seen.
This icon is the finest example of a type called the Virgin of Tenderness, which shows the Christ Child pressing His face to His mother’s cheek. Sometimes instead the Child is sitting upright in her arms, and Mary gestures toward Him as if presenting her child to us; this kind is called “Directress.” The large icon we see in the apse, where Christ appears as a child in her womb, is called the Virgin of the Sign, as in Isaiah’s prophecy, “The Lord shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Isa. 7:14 RSV alternative).
If you look more closely at the Virgin of Vladimir you can see that it has been repainted many times. Even in this reproduction you can see changing patterns in the Child’s garment, and in the original they create a broken, multilayered surface texture. Yet the deeply expressive faces, and the Child’s little hand around His mother’s neck, are original. They shine through the centuries: the steady, receptive gaze of the Virgin, and the bright cup of the Child’s face turned up toward hers.
This icon tells a two-part story. Our initial impression is of the Virgin’s dark eyes, which draw us in. Her figure makes a large dark triangle, like a stormy wave, against the red-golden background. On this darkness the only light is her golden hand banded with red. Perhaps it is gesturing toward her son; perhaps it is falling downwards, opening in submission, calling us into the ocean of her great sorrow.
It makes me think of the Scripture: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which was brought upon me” (Lam. 1:12). Look and see. There is sorrow like hers around us all the time, perhaps even in the life of the hand that holds this book. Inevitably, most other people pass by a grieving person as if it is nothing to them, perhaps because they are huddled over their own secret sorrows. The Virgin’s dark, direct gaze pierces the isolation that walls us up, separate and alone. Whatever we are, we are not alone. Whatever will happen, we will not go through it alone. Her eyes do not promise that what is going to happen will be easy. She looks into a future where her beloved son will die. But nothing in her regal bearing rejects this coming pain. In her steady resolve we, too, find strength to bear whatever will come.
What became of all the people who prayed fervently before this icon? Some asked for healing, deliverance, peace, and some received what they asked for. Others did not. All eventually lost everything. That is God’s expectation: One day we will lose everything, body, life, health, possessions, position, parents, spouse, and child. All that we fret over losing by increments now, we will lose absolutely and completely one day. All flesh must come to dust. Everyone must lose everything.
But some who lose all “will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:29). “For all things are yours, whether . . . the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21–23).
Christ looks up at His mother, and His bright round face is lit with joy. It is not that He is ignorant of what lies ahead; the reverse is true. He sees farther ahead than His mother does, to a victory no human could imagine. He sees complete victory, when all creation is restored, when justice is fully done and all tears are wiped away. No sorrow, great or secret, is forgotten by God. All will be made right some day. The generations who in centuries past prayed in fear or longing before this icon lost everything in death, then gained everything in eternal life, because they are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. They have passed through to the other side of this window.
We stand on this side preoccupied, confused, and sorrowful. We come each night in the first two weeks of August, preparing for the loss of this dear mother Christ has given us. We pray before her icon, leave flowers, light candles, and sing hymns, turning now to the Lord in prayers for deliverance, and now to the Theotokos, asking her to pray for us. She is listening closely.
From The Dormition Paraklesis
To God’s birthgiver let us run now most earnestly,
we sinners all and wretched ones,
and fall prostrate in repentance
calling from the depth of our souls:
Lady, come unto our aid,
have compassion upon us;
hasten, for we are lost in a throng of transgressions.
|
