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Mother of the Incarnate Word
In 1996 I was asked to do five icons for the Jesuits at Boston College and it was in Boston I met Fr Jim Martin, SJ who was a theology student at the time. His community wanted an icon that would be a Contemplation on theology. We were at dinner somewhere in Cambridge when he asked me. Immediately what came to mind was the beautiful Kaluga Icon of the Mother of God. I had seen a black and white picture of the icon in the Orthodox biography of the life and mystical revelations of a Russian Eldress: Schemanun Macaria (+1993) called "Beloved Sufferer " by Gennady Durasov.
In the icon Mary was pictured about fourteen years old and absorbed in a book of holy scripture. I decided to have Mary pregnant too , in order to say that Christ is in the holy scriptures as the word, but also inside Mary as the word incarnate. This symbolizes the study of theology for me; that we read the word, and the word is also inside all of us too. I will end with a well known Orthodox prayer praising Mary as Mother of God:
"More honorable than the Cherubim, more glorious beyond
compare than the Seraphim.
No mind comprehends how to praise thee fittingly."
I offer this icon for your contemplation on the feast of the Birth of the Mother of God.
8 September 2016
Fr Bill McNichols
