Tenderly care for Jesus

Never have I heard it said this way, and now that I have, I know something about the ikon of Vladimir that I could feel sometimes but not understand. In Orthodox ikons, Mary the mother of Jesus, is almost never portrayed alone but, as we commonly see, is always shown with her divine Son. Why? Because it is He who makes her what she is.

In a blog that I sometimes read, Mystagogy, there is a wonderful post about Kievan Russia quoted from a Protestant author, and I want to quote a passage that gave me this new insight about ikons of Mary with the child Jesus.

God dwelling among men—here, I believe, we see the fundamental faith and reality of Christian blessedness motivating Kievan Russia. The emphasis in communal worship lay on making God's person and Real presence visible and touchable. "The same desire to see spiritual truth in tangible form" is embodied in Kievan Russia's icons or paintings of Christ, His blessed mother, and the saints. Protestant Christians rightly fear and proscribe the idolatry incipient in man-made images of holy things and human "saints." Yet among a people converted but recently from serving pagan "nature gods," as were eleventh-century Kievans, their Christian art including icons probably did an indispensable service of Christian nurture. We must remember that "there were no complete versions of the Bible, let alone independent theological syntheses, produced in early Russia." Some early Kievan art nurtures and even converts human hearts and minds in our own time.

What Christian, what student of the Bible can look at the early twelfth-century icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and not be touched by Mary's tenderness toward her Holy Child Jesus? Is not the lesson at hand — that we, too, should thus tenderly care for Jesus conceived and growing in our hearts after we have been visited by the Holy Ghost and overshadowed by the power of the Highest (Luke 1:35)?

As I was reading the post, and appreciating it in detail, my mind kept leading me back to the Word of God for another illumination, to Psalm 131, which also somehow relates to the ikons of Mary holding her infant Son. This time, it is the image of the tenderness with which our good and loving God cradles us, cradles me.

Yahweh, my heart has no lofty ambitions,
my eyes do not look too high.
I am not concerned with great affairs
or marvels beyond my scope.
Enough for me to keep my soul tranquil and quiet
like a child in its mother's arms,
as content as a child that has been weaned.
Israel, rely on Yahweh,
now and for always!
Psalm 131