When I was reading that article yesterday entitled "What We Have Discovered About Not-So-Free Love" I came across this interesting tidbit about an icon often given to newly married couples in the Orthodox tradition:
The conceptions of St. John the Baptist and of Jesus are described in Scripture, and these rapidly became annual celebrations in the early Church. Not much later, the conception of Mary was honored as well. But although the Bible records miraculous stories surrounding the conception of Jesus and his cousin, Mary was conceived in the regular way. The icon of the feast, accordingly, shows a married couple in the privacy of their bedroom. In my copy, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, are standing on a blue carpet before their bed, which has a blue striped cover and an embroidered pillow. They look serious, yet tender. They are in a graceful embrace; Anna has stretched up on tiptoe to press her face against her husband’s, with her arm around his neck. This is how the life of a daughter begins.This is a popular icon in Orthodoxy, one often given as a wedding gift and hung near the marital bed. It is a reminder of the goodness of sexual love and of God’s intention that we use it in joy. But Christians do oppose the misuse of sex, including temporary heterosexual encounters that lack a wedding ring.I was intrigued to see if I could find this icon. I found about half a dozen. This one is about the closest I could find to what the author described. I also wanted to find out a bit more about Anna and Joachim. They seem to be honored a bit more in the Orthodox traditions. This was the shortest summary I could find that gives some background to the icon:
Anna and Joachim had lived devoutly in marriage for fifty years. They gave a third of their income to the poor and a third to the Temple. Still, they were scorned for being without offspring. With heavy hearts, they prayed that God would bless them with a child to comfort them in their old age. The Lord God answered their prayers by allowing Anna to conceive a child who would become the Mother of God. Thus, we see in this feast how marvelously God prepared for the birth of his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of God was mystically born in the flesh from the virginal womb of a woman who, herself, was conceived from a barren womb.
