Like the apostles

We are in front of an example of an icon made only a few years ago, which in its solemn and meticulously cared for “simplicity” reveals all the value of the icon as a tool of prayer, which takes care of the detail. Not to exalt the skill of the author but to make the image a “place” where the eye can rest, because it does not find disharmonies, contrasts, nor complicated and contorted details, exhibitionism… but an elegant essentiality and cleanliness of the stroke, of the lines, a warmth of the colors, which creates a “golden” environment.
The background is in fact golden, because it represents the eternal light, the light of life in God.

This icon represents Mary Magdalene, defined in Russian as “equal to the apostles”, the one who in the Gospels is said to have been freed by the Lord Jesus from seven demons, who had become his disciple and listened to him, followed him and served him, together with other women. She followed him to the foot of the cross and even further, to the tomb and then again the morning after the Sabbath, the morning of the resurrection, she still seeks her master, to honor his body, she brings myrrh to take care of his body and his wounds and she is the first to find him, she sees him risen.
It is she who first announces the resurrection of Jesus to the apostles, a role that earned her, from the subsequent church, the title of "apostle of the apostles".

Mary Magdalene, in the modesty of her role in the Gospels, teaches us a great love, a courageous and boundless love towards her master that takes her to where the apostles themselves had not managed to arrive, but had escaped. Not her, she, together with the Mother of Jesus and John, accompanies him and cries for him until his death, witnesses the torture and passion of Jesus. Who knows with what pain she searches for him and cries for him at the tomb when she does not find him, and who knows with what incredible joy she discovers him alive, in the flesh, near her, with his sweet voice, of a teacher who loves. Through the heart of Mary Magdalene we can sense the delicacy of Jesus, his sweetness with everyone, his invincible meekness, his exaggerated, boundless love.

And so looking at this icon we are called to stop on this woman, recognizable by the vase of myrrh that she holds in her hand and by the classic colors that always distinguish her in iconography, who tells us in her simple elegance, how holiness is letting ourselves be loved by the Lord, letting him enter inside us, to allow him to free us from everything that can prevent us from knowing him, loving him, trusting him totally and following him. And it will be his love itself that passes through us, that reaches others, that communicates it to everyone.
 

Here is a magnificent example of a contemporary Orthodox icon, which follows the Eastern iconographic tradition in all its aspects. The icon belongs to the iconographic department of the Orthodox Theological Academy of St. Petersburg and was created by the Russian master Alexander Stalnov, who also works at the Iconographic Laboratory "St. John the Evangelist" founded in 1999 in St. Petersburg and which also includes other iconographers (including Christina Prokhorova). As he himself states, the “San Giovanni Evangelista” laboratory «intends its activity as a service to the Church.
The icon is a sacred object, not an art object: its form and meaning are not limited by the aesthetic idea. A canonical icon represents a narrow door. The icon exists for the divine liturgy and for prayer, which connects man to God».

Chiara Dal Corso
NP November 2025