Rejoice Living Table That Held the Bread of Life

In this historically and theologically rich icon, the Theotokos no longer holds her son; like all mothers she has had to let him go, and now her open arms are raised in prayer (oranta means “one who prays”). Far from leaving his mother, however, the Christ, Logos Emmanuel, hangs in a colored disc at the center of the icon, upheld by a many-winged angel. 

The impossible task of the iconographer is to portray with only material what is immaterial. The iconographer’s tool kit is therefore limited, yet there is one “material” that symbolically unites with the immaterial: color. Since color is refracted light, whose energies or wavelength varies, material pigments allow the iconographer to symbolically join the pure “light” of the spiritual world to the color of life on the material plane. Looking closely at this Oranta icon, starting with the frame and ending with the Logos, we see the whole color spectrum from red to violet and the whole meaning of the icon becomes clear. 

The outer red, orange, and yellow colors of the frame and the orb behind the Theotokos mark her as the “Woman clothed in the Sun” from the book of Revelation. Green, the center color of the rainbow, represents New Testament man, the person exemplified most exquisitely by Mary, the God Bearer. In this icon, she becomes the altar table upon which we are able to glimpse, at last, the whole of the Kingdom of Heaven in that small disc of green-blue, indigo, and violet in which the seed-Word holds the bread and wine. 

With the rainbow we understand the harmony of the created, represented by the Theotokos, and the uncreated, represented by the Christ. These two states, mother and child, or created and uncreated, now happily coexist, a synergy of independent yet united action. With outstretched arms the Theotokos simultaneously engulfs, upholds, and proffers her son. Still and always, Mary represents purity, but in the Oranta icon, purification has become divinization. The rainbow represents the deification of all visible creation, including mankind, since Mary leads the way for all humanity. 

And now we see that for the first time, mother and child are not alone: three ranks of angels attend the unceasing worship of the Logos-Eucharist and the glorification of the Holy Theotokos. On her left, a fiery red seraph represents Love; on her right, a deep red cherub represents Wisdom; below, a green many-winged ophanim angel upholds the disc of the Kingdom of Heaven and represents the stable Will of God. And in the lower corners, two silhouetted angels ceaselessly proclaim Axios! Worthy! and Agios! Holy!

Joyfully we echo the saints who sing, “Thy womb is become an holy table, bearing Christ the heavenly bread. All that eat from it shall not die, as hath said the Nourisher of all, O Mother of God. More honorable than the cherubim and more glorious than the seraphim: without defilement you gave birth to God the Word, True Theotokos, we magnify you!”

Share This