Vladimirskaya

Vladimirskaya
Originally uploaded by jimforest

I ran across this enchanting icon related to the Magnificat sermon work underway. In reading through the photographer's story of the icon, I discovered that he was a resident of Tantur, the Jerusalem study center that I stayed in in 2004! His story....

An extract from Praying with Icons

.... A small hope that Nancy and I brought with us was that we might find a hand-painted icon in Jerusalem, and we did. On our very first day in the Old City, in the window of a dingy shop near the Jaffa Gate, a small icon of Mary and the Christ Child caught our eye. It was a hundred dollars, the Palestinian owner told us -- not much for an icon, but at the time it seemed more than we could afford. We hesitated, and not only because of our meager financial resources. Other shops in Jerusalem were full of icons, though even our untrained eyes could see that most of them were hastily painted mass-production jobs that had been "aged" in ovens. We decided not to hurry, yet week after week we looked with gratitude at that one haunting icon whenever we passed the shop -- until one day it was gone, and then we grieved.

A week later I went into the shop and asked the owner if he might have anything similar. "Similar! I have the very icon. No one wanted it so I took it out of the window." He quickly found it. Asking him to keep it for me, I gave him a ten dollar bill and the next day returned with the rest. I wrapped the icon in a freshly washed diaper (Anne was still a baby) and took it back to Tantur.

Graced by that small icon, our apartment became a different place. I remember carefully unwrapping it and Nancy lighting a candle. What better way to receive an icon than to pray? That was clear. But what prayers? We recited the Te Deum from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. We read Mary's Magnificat. Just a few days before we had bought a Jewish prayer book and easily found several suitable prayers addressed to the Creator of the Universe. We recited the text of the Litany of Peace [endnote: The text in including at the end of the Daily Prayer section at the end of this book.] used in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. We sang a Protestant hymn Nancy knew from her childhood, growing up in the Dutch Reformed Church. Never was there a more hodge-podge service, such an awkward, Marx Brothers beginning; but whatever the moment lacked in elegance was more than made up for in gratitude.

Later we showed the icon to a Roman Catholic priest who admired the Orthodox Church and was well-versed in icons. It was Russian, he told us, and had the name "the Vladimir Mother of God" because the prototype had for many years been in the Russian city of Vladimir. He guessed ours was 300 years old, possibly more. "Tens of thousands of Russian pilgrims came to Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, many of them walking most of the way," he said. "Probably one of them brought this along and it never found its way back to Russia." He told us it was worth far more than we had paid for it and could only have come to us as a gift of the Mother of God.

Whether he was right about the age of the icon, its provenance or its material worth to collectors, I have no idea. It doesn't matter. What he was certainly right about was that it was Mary's gift to us.

Praying with Icons web page:
incommunion.org/forest-flier/books/praying-with-icons/

Uploaded by jimforest on 12 Aug 05, 7.13AM PST.