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"My strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaves
to my jaws." - Psalm 22:15
The Icon
That Turned Back Armies
Among
all the icons of the Eastern Church, the Vladimir Mother of God may be the most
beloved and most storied. Painted in Constantinople in the early twelfth
century, it is of the type called Eleusa, the Tenderness, in which the Christ
Child presses His cheek against His Mother's face in an embrace of infinite
intimacy. It is not a theological diagram; it is love made visible.
The icon came to Russia around 1131 and was eventually enshrined in the
Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Three times, according to the
tradition of Russia, it was carried around the walls of Moscow as enemy armies
approached: the Tatars under Tamerlane in 1395, under Edigu in 1408, and under
Mahmet-Girei in 1521. Three times the armies turned back without engaging.
The Vladimir Mother of God has witnessed the entire arc of Russian history,
Mongol invasions, revolution, Soviet atheism, and beyond. She is still the most
venerated image in all of Russia, now housed in the Tretyakov Gallery. Whatever
the politics, whatever the regime, whatever the century throws at her people,
she remains. Cheek to cheek with her Son, holding the world in her gaze.
Also honored today is Our Lady of Sweat in Salerno, an image that reportedly
perspired miraculously in 1611, understood by the faithful as a participation
in the labor of intercession, a mother who strains and works on our behalf
without ceasing.
Today's Gospel - John 17:20-26
Jesus
prayed for the unity of all believers: "That they may all be one, as you,
Father, are in me and I in you." It is the unity of the Trinitarian love
brought into the human family.
The Vladimir Mother of God is an image of that unity, the Child and the Mother
in a tenderness so complete that no boundary seems to exist between them. And
in that embrace is the whole Gospel: God coming so close to humanity that He
presses His cheek to ours.
That is what the icon communicates across nine centuries and every political
border. The message never changes. The love never pulls away. The arms are
still open.
A Prayer
Our
Lady of Vladimir, whose tenderness has consoled a nation across centuries of
suffering, hold us with the same closeness.
Press your cheek to ours in the moments when we feel most alone. Let the Christ
Child in your arms be the one who meets us there. Whatever army is pressing
against the walls of our lives, stand between us and it, as you have stood
between armies and Moscow for a thousand years.
And Our Lady of Sweat, who labors in intercession without ceasing, we are
grateful for every prayer you have offered on our behalf without our knowing.
Do not stop. We need you still.
Pray for us. Amen.
Reflection
The
Vladimir icon has survived every attempt to suppress or destroy it, because
what cannot be killed is the love it depicts.
Is there a friendship in your life like that? One with our Lord at the center,
with someone you care about, respect, and admire, and yet it has grown distant?
What would it mean to have it back again, to choose closeness over careful
distance?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
