Google has the uncanny habit of odd juxtapositions of ideas and highly logical but bizarre search results. I was reading the biography of Dorothy Day; noticed she treasured her copy of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God. Decided to Google Vladimir Icon and came up with an utterly incongruous hit. I then went on to Amazon looking for a book that might have more information on the Vladimir Icon. I found Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, at £30 – £40 used.
But the next hit was this! Now there is an irony in the use of the word icon to describe the Russian President whose power has been shown to be ruthless, spiteful, brutal and pervasive in and beyond Russia. Especially is such a link incongruous when the Vladimir Icon is traditionally believed to have saved Moscow from enemies on numerous occasions, including in the 20th Century. So in Russian Christianity an Icon is a window on to God. But to push this and assert that in this Icon resides a power that shapes providence partially on behalf of the Russian nation, that's different. My own theological take on that development is skeptical, and I mean theologically doubtful to the point of dismissal – I do not believe in a God who mediates divine power through images in the interests of political, material, far less national interests.
Nevertheless. The subtitle of this book seems to suggest that Vladimir the President now has the role of the Vladimir Icon, saviour of Moscow, defender of the national interests and self-proclaimed strong man who will make Russia a world power again. And all this on the day when the Russian Parliament approved the deployment of soldiers into Crimea, and with no veto on their movement into the rest of Ukraine. The political complexities, ancient alliances and enmities, the history of betrayals and pay-offs, and the current uncertainties of geopolitical balance and counter-balance, make the Ukraine crisis an impossibly difficult collision of forces and grievances for Western nations to understand. Certainly I can claim no substantial knowledge of Ukrainian history.
But the danger signs are already glowing red, and what is needed is a Vladimir Icon which is not about the protection of narrow nationalist and ideological ambitions, but which portrays the vulnerable love between mother and child, between the infant Christ and Mary, between the Incarnate Son and the Theotokos, the God Bearer. The profoundly human snuggling of the infant into the neck and face of his mother is a masterpiece of religious communication – here is the incarnation, the Word made Flesh, the kenosis of God in Christ who did not count equality with God a thing to be clung to for dear life, but that which would be sacrificed in death for the saving of the world. The idea that such an icon could ever be aligned with military and geopolitical power games in which there is the real threat of war within, and perhaps beyond Ukraine, is one of the incongruities of a fallen world in which beauty and holiness are co-opted by the power brokers and corrupted into propaganda. Whatever power emanates from the Vladimir Icon, is divine only insofar as it provokes to peacemaking, calls secular power to account, subverts the rhetoric of national security as excuse for invasive expansion. Perhaps the most dangerous forms of idolatry is where men (it usually is men) take what is sacred and consecrate it to the exclusive service of their own dire projects.
May the tenderness of God, so vividly visible in this icon;
May the blatant lovingkindness of Christ and his Mother;
May the Word made Flesh, crucified, risen and present in our world;
Bring victory, not to those who are merely powerful,
But to those who seek justice, peace, and the chance to live.
Leave a Reply