Homily: Our Lady of the Sign
By Sister Rebecca
Icons are called windows to heaven precisely because they offer us a glimpse into the spiritual world: God’s Time, Eternal Time. In viewing an icon, we actually commemorate the mystery it reveals. The icon of Our Lady of the Sign offers us a mystical vision of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The name of the Icon comes from the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14: “The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Listen carefully, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.”
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| Icon: Our Lady of the Sign, Holy Wisdom Nave |
One of our very good friends, Jerry Leary,
a few years ago sent me a poem he wrote at the time of the commemoration of
this particular icon:
Our
Lady of the Sign: there is an icon of a woman with a child inside her
Some
say she holds the world, even contains the uncontainable.
I
feel the safety of such inwardness, then realize:
She
is inside me—the very transformation of our being;
I
am this child in her: Alpha and Omega
Christ.
I
myself would like to share with you a very meaningful and awesome experience of
this icon, which is placed in the ceiling of the Nave of our Holy Wisdom
Church. It happened during the recent funeral of the husband of one of our
chapel community. His coffin lay in the nave
of the church, directly under the Icon of the Sign. I was on one side and very close to the
coffin. Directly across from me was his 4-year-old grandson, Vincent. As soon
as the service began, Vincent ran to the coffin and leaned forward on tip-toes
so he could see his granddaddy’s face.
After gazing at him he raised his little arm upward, pointing to the
Icon of Our Lady above us all. Then he
ran back to his father. Well, he kept
doing this throughout the whole funeral.
This must have happened at least ten times, and at the end, Vincent did
not want to bring his arm down, so his father held it up as he continued to
gaze at the Icon.
This was quite moving to me. It is was
though little Vincent was making the connection between his granddaddy lying in
the coffin and the Heavenly reality of God’s presence. His granddaddy is with God. The icon of Mary:
did he see it as a sign that his granddaddy was present in Heaven with us? Who knows? Gestures are more powerful than
words; they can often be more eloquent and more true than speech.
This was not the first time I have seen this:
little children, not even two years old, being held in their mother’s or
father’s arms, with gaze fixated upward and pointing to this particular icon of
Mary. Jesus speaks often about children:
“Let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of
Heaven belong to such as these.” They see angels!
I invite you to focus on this revelation:
this marriage of heaven and earth that begins with the conception of Christ in
the womb of Mary, the Theotokos. God descends and takes flesh in Mary’s womb. Prior
to the actual incarnation, we have two annunciations of this stupendous mystery.
In Matthew’s gospel we hear of an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream. “Do not
fear to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived within her is from the
Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you
are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” We read also from Luke’s gospel another
version of the annunciation to Mary: The
angel appeared and said to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the
power of the Holy Spirit will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born
will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”
Here, I would like to turn to some of the
commentaries by St. Ephrem of Syria on this reality in the gospel. God has become human in a womb of a
woman. St. Ephrem focuses on this verse
from St. Luke’s Gospel: “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of
the Most High shall overshadow you.” The
power of the Most High is identified with the term “overshadow.” In Syriac, it also
denotes the activity of the Holy Spirit residing in Mary, dwelling in her as in
a bridal chamber.
St. Ephrem uses the term “overshadow” when
he refers to Christ’s divine presence in Mary’s womb but also in the
consecrated Bread and Wine of the Eucharist.
During the Divine Liturgy, the epiclesis—which in Greek means the
overshadowing of the Holy Spirit—is the time when the Holy Spirit is invoked
over the gifts. St. Ephrem goes on to
say that the consecrated bread and wine overshadows and takes up residence in
those who receive communion. Each time
we receive the body and blood of Christ, we are personally being overshadowed
by the Holy Spirit. We become the womb
of God, rebirthing Christ in our deepest being.
An Armenian hymn on the Eucharist puts it this way: the heart of the
communicant is nothing less than the actual bridal chamber, where Christ the
Heavenly Bridegroom meets the communicant’s soul as bride.
Now he takes up residence in our minds as
well, in a spiritual fashion. Just as the residing of the Divinity in Mary’s
womb resulted in her giving birth, so too is the result of communion: when the
“hidden power” takes up residence anew in the communicant, it can also be
birthgiving.
May this prayer from St Ephrem be an inspiration
to us: “Our minds, Lord, are barren of any birthgiving of new things. Grant
fruitfulness and birthgiving to my mind, so that we can offer our innermost
dwelling in Christ to God and through him, in our lives as well.”
In these times of turmoil, are we called
forth to pray intensely for the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing, first in our own
lives, and all around us and beyond?
Christ is in our midst!
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