Here is a detail of the Salus Populi icon: just the faces of the Mother of God and the Christ. I think there are two take-aways here. The first: notice that the Mother of God is looking out at us with full face and wide-awake eyes. However, she does not look directly ahead, but to her right. It is as if she is looking off afar to the margins. Is is a searching gaze.
Did you ever scope out a seat in the last row of a classroom because you were ill-prepared or late and didn't want to be noticed? Maybe it's something like that. She sees human kind where we hide in shadow and ignorance. She sees us in the things we think and plan that would shame us if they were known: the deals, the machinations, the covert plans, the things that take place underground, off in safe places, in hidden rooms and cells.
As she presents her Healing-Son to the world, she observes and is fully aware of us where we are at our worst. Salus Populi: she is Mother of the People - the people who build great cathedrals and discover cures, but also the people who kill children and can't stop blowing up things.
Secondly, the Infant Christ doesn't look at us, but at his Mother. It would be very easy to reduce this to sentiment, "Oh baby Jesus is looking at his Mother lovingly." There is more to it than that. In any icon of the Mother of God holding her Infant Son, Jesus never looks like the delicate child on a baby food jar. He is always depicted as a miniature man. He is always the Lord. So here, this "adult" Jesus looks at his Mother, yes, but who is also his first disciple. She is the first to say yes to him.
And you and I are in the long lineage of those who say yes to Jesus. In effect then, he is looking at us, the other disciples. She is the first of us, the ones who go to Jesus, not to clap and cheer, but to learn. That's what a disciple is: one who learns.
And the learning doesn't mean lamenting that I haven't read the catechism or dropped out of religious instruction after Confirmation, but that there is something heaven wants me to learn personally about how to live my life authentically and fully, as Jesus lived his.
And the learning doesn't mean lamenting that I haven't read the catechism or dropped out of religious instruction after Confirmation, but that there is something heaven wants me to learn personally about how to live my life authentically and fully, as Jesus lived his.
