Source of life

Publish date 03-10-2022

by Chiara Dal Corso

The Mother of God, with the Child Jesus on her lap in a large baptismal font

Maria "Source of Life" is an icon much loved even by contemporaries, it seems a bit curious, but in reality it has a really deep meaning. The title corresponds to an Orthodox liturgical feast that occurs on the first Friday after Easter. This iconographic model was born around the sixteenth century from a very ancient Marian invocation and whose history is linked to a Marian sanctuary built (and then rebuilt) in the fifth-sixth century. in Constantinople and still exists today.

Tradition tells of the origin of the sanctuary as a small church built in honor of the Mother of God by Emperor Leo I following his discovery of a miraculous water source right near the capital of the empire. He gives it the Greek name of Zoodochos Pege or "Source of Life". The emperor who succeeded him, Justinian, then transformed it into a large basilica, with an adjoining monastery.

Since then it has been a pilgrimage destination for many faithful, including the emperors themselves and the site of many healing miracles. With the conquest of the capital by the Muslim Turks in 1453, numerous churches, monasteries and convents were sacked along with houses and palaces, and the only remaining Marian sanctuary was just that, despite difficulties and reconstructions.

Even today there are many pilgrims, even sick ones, who go there, so much so that it is called the "Lourdes of the Byzantines".

The iconographic model that arises from this sanctuary - first in the form of a fresco on the walls and later as an icon to take home for pilgrims - is from the 16th century and depicts the Mother of God with the Child Jesus on her lap, with her arms open according to the model of the person praying or in the version of odighitria (the one who shows the way). Both are inside a large basin of a fountain of the baptismal type (which often has the shape of a Eucharistic chalice), from which two or more jets of water flow and fall into the basin below. Different people who represent all of humanity draw water from this fountain to quench their thirst and to be healed: emperors and princesses, nobles, poor people, mothers with children, cripples, paralytics and often even a priest with a demoniac who is freed.

But this icon is not only descriptive of the place where it is born: it has a great theological meaning enclosed within her name. And it finds numerous references in sacred writing. We will give just a few examples. Certainly the first and only source of life, as the psalms recite: "the source of life is in you, in your light we see the light" (Ps 35.10), is God, in Christ, as he himself says to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4, 4-42). But not only that, in fact in the same dialogue he adds: "the water that I will give him will become in him a source of water that gushes for eternal life".

And who more than the Mother drew from the water of the Son, listened to her word, was nourished and lived by the will of the Father like the Son? She who defined herself as "the handmaid of the Lord", Mary, the most obedient, the immaculate, who made her whole life a complete gift to God, who for love of her became his mother, inseparable in her heart . She who even before being the mother of God is recognized by the angel as "full of grace" that is, full of her gifts and who at the end of her life is assumed into heaven, as the first creature to ever reach the fullness of creation from the beginning of the times. She, the Mother of God, she who generates Christ, who makes herself a womb to welcome him and to give him to the world, she is for us the source of Him who is the true life of men. Because through her her Life, Christ, is given to men. Not only in her birth, but since the Son on the cross entrusted all his children to her, she has accepted and continues today her task as a mother: through her we can meet Christ, drink our thirst for him, because in this way he wanted. The mother of God has become the mother of all humanity, and always together with her Son she welcomes, nourishes, guides, strengthens all those who turn to her, with the sole intention of bringing them all to Jesus, and making him grow in They.

Chiara Dal Corso

NP Maggio 2022

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