The Icon of Mary Mother of God (I)

According to tradition, in the 11^th or 12^th centuries, an icon of the Mother of God—or the Madonna and Child—floated straight to the shore of Mount Athos near the monastery of Iviron (Greece). It depicted the Virgin Mary holding up the Child Jesus in majesty on one arm and, with the other hand, designating Him as "the Way, the Truth and the Life."

The monks took the icon to the catholicon, the church located in the middle of the monastic buildings. But the next day it was gone, only to be found just outside the main gate. This happened twice, so the monks understood that they had to build her a shrine on the spot she had chosen. They called her Portaitissa, meaning Gatekeeper.

Let’s fast forward a few centuries. On the same Mount Athos, around 1980, in a hermitage dedicated to the Nativity, an icon workshop opened its doors. The first icon produced there was a replica of the Portaitissa.

That day, a Chilean convert to Orthodoxy named José Munos, who was a professor of art history in Montreal, went to Mount Athos to meet iconographers. Once there, he discovered the hermitage of the Nativity. As he was shown the workshop, he was left speechless in front of the image of Portaitissa. It was love at first sight, a kind of revelation or vision. Monastic chastity also predisposes to these kinds of spiritual "lightning bolts."

(To be continued tomorrow…)

Olivier Clément

French writer, poet and theologian

France Catholique, May 30, 1986 issue