Lenten Icons: Mary of Egypt

"Now He had made her one who was loving,

not just the lover pulled and drawn;

and having been shaken by vicious storms

she had come into her own."*

Mary of Egypt, patron of penitents. Her story is well-enough know, a prostitute in Alexandria, who rarely charged for her services (some say because of overwhelming passion, others because she simply loved people, and decided loving them was the best was to bring happiness into their lives..I prefer the latter).  Mary bought a trip to the Holy Land this way, and when she arrived, discovered that she couldn't enter the Churches until she repented. 

What I love about Mary of Egypt most especially, is that we see so obviously that she doesn't change in her conversion, she comes into her own. She is still the passionate one, the whole-hearted giver of herself, she is still promiscuous - unable to limit herself, to be proper or restrained. Only now she is made whole, and her whole self can be loving to the whole selves of others. 

In the desert, her home for years after her conversion, Mary is taught scripture by Christ Himself. She fasts, she blesses St. Zosimas who is in awe of her holiness, walks on water to receive Communion from him, and is later buried by both Zosimas and a Lion - the lion himself stands in for her beloved Christ. She in penitential, reminding us, with Oscar Wilde, that the trouble is less in what we do than in what we become.

 "I only need seven days, I guess,

which no one has claimed or covered before, 

seven pages o loneliness."**

* Rilke. The Risen One

**Rilke. The Book of Hours 

Lenten Icons

"I'm still a novice concerning pain-

that's how small I feel in this great dark;

but if you are there, be heavy and and break through;

have your whole hand do it's work on me"*

The Three Handed Virgin is the Icon in honor of the Theotokos, healer of St. John of Damascus. St. John of Damascus' hand was cut off by the Iconoclast Emperor, Leo III, but when he took his pain to the Virgin, She restored St. John's hand, and he wrote the Icon in gratitude. Originally, the third hand hung around Her neck, but later versions have it as it is in the Icon above, a natural part of Her.

The Three-Handed Virgin, the miracle working Mother of God, reminds us always that God is the restorer of hope, and the healer of all wounds. She is magical, this Mother, offering 'a river of grace' to the children of God who come in faith to rest beneath her mantle. Restoring hands and hearts, bodies and souls, to wholeness.

"And though I am like leaves and loam, 

as often as I pray or paint

it's Sunday and deep down I am 

joyful Jerusalem."* 

Lenten Icons: Blessed Silence

"Deep I go down into myself. 

My God is dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots

that drink in silence."*

Generally considered a Christmas Icon, I can't help but run to the Blessed Silence in Lent as well - when all is quiet and waiting. At Adoration the other day, Yarrow whispered to Seth "Jesus is very, very, very, very good. And he is very fun." He is Silent, beautiful, and like my daughter, I want to surround Him with adjectives. Enthusiastic, repetitive adjectives, but He prefers the quiet of an eager soul that rises up, past the adjectives and participles, beyond all language limitations; two between whom even He cannot find a difference.

"Let your beauty manifest itself

without talking and calculation.

You are silent. It says for you: I am.

And come in meaning thousandfold, 

comes at long last over everyone."*

*Rainer Maria Rilke

Lenten Icons: St. Moses the Prophet

"None of the angels, but the dark and fallen one

was willing; took up arms and with deadly intent

approached the one to whom he had been sent.

 But again he rattled away, backwards, and up 

to the heavens he scream: I can't."** 

Moses. The man who talks intimately with God. In a season of intensified prayer, he is our guide. Radiant-faced, argumentative Moses. The friend of God. God has a interesting way of picking friends. He does it as I can only wish to - see and know and love. They are so tender together, these jealous ones - the Lord and His beloved.

In the icon, Moses has such soulful eyes. Holding onto the law he gazes into the bush, as though they are once again caught up in that eternal conversation:

"I walk forever toward you

with a single mind and strong;

for who would I be and who would you

if we didn't get along?"*

I am always almost sad for Moses, who wandered for 40 years in the desert and never touched the promised land, but what would he have done there, settled in the land of milk and honey? His role was to guide the people home; to draw from the wilderness holy wisdom. And I can never quite morn him, whom Death feared to touch. Taken up like Enoch and Elijah to watch and wait for Easter.

"And from this well-ordered house,

he called the soul forth to rise, up! to recount

the many common things of a friendship deeply laid."**

* Rainer Maria Rilke: The Book of Hours

** Rainer Maria Rilke: Moses' Death 

 

Lenten Icons

The Lamenting Virgin is an ideal companion for the season of Lent. She mourns as we do - but deeper, fuller. Her empty arms wrapped around the Son she longs so much to hold. The Mother mourns what cannot be - it is a loss of something she never really had - for who can hold all of God? Strange to think that once she did. Once she had a child, a tiny son who nestled in that lonely space, but the dreams and hopes that mothers share, of the sweet potentiality in each child, that she never really had. He was something else entirely: "I had only streams of milk or tears to offer, and you were ever so much more than me." Something un-holdable, something set apart. And I think she knew, even then, that her arms would always be both empty and full.

My pain has been perfected and fills me up...

You became great,

and then you burst the rims of my heart

as a smarting too stark. .

no longer can I give to you

birth.

(Rainer Maria Rilke. From The Life of the Virgin Mary)