Icons Child with adult face Knowing



Christmas Cactus in snowy window

RantWoman has been meditating about this reflection from Johan and Judy Maurer . RantWoman thinks some queries would be on point but queries right now are beyond her Light.

... We sang “Mary did you know” at church last Sunday.

*Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? Mary did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new? This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you*

The night before our son Luke had mentioned that he liked the French word “frisson” - the feeling you get when you hear an exquisite piece of music. “A thrill up your spine,” he said.

I certainly had that “thrill in the spirit” while singing “Mary Did You Know?" My mind went to the moment a friend of mine explained an early icon to me. It was one of those breakthrough moments, when I could never think the same way again. We were at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, standing in front of this  icon - it’s called the Vladimir Mother of God. It traveled around a bit in the early centuries of its existence - from Istanbul to Kiev to Vladimir to Moscow, where it landed in 1395 and has been in Moscow ever since.

I was lucky to be at the Tretyakov with my friend, an art history professor visiting from Philadelphia. I’m not sure if I said my thoughts aloud or not. Perhaps she simply knew I was thinking, “That’s weird. That baby in the icon looks like a mini adult. Why did they paint Jesus not looking like the infant that He was?” The subtext in my mind was “What’s wrong with these painters? Didn’t they know what a baby looks like?”

In any case, she murmured to me, “Eastern painters felt that what was ‘real’ was the emotional reality beneath the surface. So that’s what they painted. Western painters at the time were held captive by the image that they saw.  It’s like they were constrained by what they saw on the surface.”

So I looked more deeply at the icon. I saw how tenderly he is looking up at his mother, loving her. I saw on his face that he knew the pain that was coming to her - just as Simeon said to Mary when he met them in the temple, “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

By gazing at the icon - and it was painted so we can gaze at it in prayer - we can see into their relationship. She is loving and protective, cradling him in her arms. But he looks up at her, knowing. In this knowledge is loving and tender. No ordinary baby would have known all that was coming. Depicting Jesus as an infant somehow misses that deeper reality. I’m grateful that now my eyes can see that.

So yes, in answer to the song, Mary knew.  The final verse is

*Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?This sleeping child you're holding is the great I am*

Yes, Mary knew, and what’s more, Jesus knew. It makes the Christmas season different for me, now. It brings Jesus’ death on the cross into Christmas, because Jesus knew. He knew of the Resurrection as well, of course - John 2:19-21 says, “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body.”

The Resurrection, and the birth that preceded it, is the triumph over the worst that human beings can do. The Resurrection shows that heaven can create again all that that humans may choose to destroy.  The birth we celebrate this month is only the beginning. Let us rejoice.