Mary the Milkgiver

A unique icon of the Mother of God has much to teach us about God and motherhood

This morning as I read from the entry for January 12 from the Prologue of Ohrid, I learned that today is the feast day of the Icon of the Mother of God, the “Milkgiver,” or “Nourisher of Life.” I felt I just had to create a short post, since the ecumenical community in my corner of Substack will be reading all about “family feast days” this month on the wonderful Signs + Seasons newsletter—and what says “family feast day” like a feast day of a Mother nursing her Son?

My icon of the Theotokos, Milk-giver. This was given to me by my godmother from her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the year my daughter was born.

I am under the impression that most people who will read this fall into at least one of the following categories:

• People who already love our Mama Mary. 

• People who are interested in learning more about her. 

• Parents of small, or formerly small, children, whom they may or may not have breastfed. 

• People who belong to a historic Christian church, or are interested in learning about historic Christianity. 

And so, whichever category you may fall into, I hope you will enjoy learning about a historic and somewhat obscure icon of the Mother of God, which in recent years has once again become quite well-beloved. 

I’m not sure when I first became acquainted with this icon. I believe it was during the 2017-2018 school year, when as preschool teacher for my Orthodox church’s Sunday School, I decided that every Sunday, my two- and three-year-olds would simply color a different icon of the Mother of God. There must be one for almost every day of the year, each with its own legends and miracles. Here’s the story of this one: 

Long ago, in the city of Jerusalem about 400 years after the birth of Christ, there was a priest-monk named Sabbas. He was originally from Cappadocia in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), but lived most of his life in Jerusalem, founding many monasteries in the area. In one of the monasteries, he kept a beautiful icon of Mary feeding Christ at her breast. This icon was called “Galaktotryphousa,” the Nourisher-with-Milk. Sabbas prophesied to his monks that one day, a pilgrim named Sabbas would visit the monastery, and that this icon would be given to him. 

Eight hundred years later, a priest named Sava (Serbian for Sabbas) visited the monastery in Jerusalem, now called St. Sabbas’ Monastery (after its founder). The staff of St. Sabbas, the monastery’s founder, spontaneously fell down at Fr. Sava’s feet. The monks remembered the prophecy of old, and knew that its time had come. They gave Fr. Sava (who went on to become St. Sava the Serbian) the icon, as well as the staff, and another icon of the Mother of God. When St. Sava returned to his hermitage on Mt. Athos, he placed the three items in the chapel there. The icon of the Mother of God, the Milkgiver can still be seen there to this day. 

During the lifetime of St. Sabbas the Sanctified – the original keeper of the icon – the heresy of Monophysitism (sometimes known as Eutychianism) was wreaking havoc on the unity of the Church. This was a Gnostic heresy which essentially taught that Christ did not have a human nature, but only a divine one. It is easy to see, therefore, why this particular icon—showing as it does the Christ Child literally sucking at the breast of the Theotokos—would arise at this time, and why St. Sabbas would have a particular devotion to it. Having just celebrated the birth of Christ, meditations upon the Incarnation are fresh in our minds and hearts: veiled in flesh the Godhead see, / Hail, th’incarnate Deity... And yet, even so, contemplating this unfamiliar icon can make that reality stand out, almost scandalously, in relief. Fr. Dave of the Blood of Prokopius blog, on this day ten years ago, pointed out that the very final words of the beloved Supplicatory Canon to the Mother of God, which Orthodox Christians sing every day for two weeks leading up to her Dormition, are: “How do you nurse the Master?” 

It’s easy to see why orthodox Christians at the time of the Christological heresies would embrace this icon, depicting the human reality of Mary and Jesus. And, it’s equally easy to see why today, many mothers, and the people who love them, are also re-embracing this icon. Although she is a person like us¹, Mary can seem far removed from us. She says very little in the Gospels (though the Protoevangelium of James tells us quite a bit more about her life). How can we develop a relationship with her, much as we do with our Lord, through prayer and watching for His hand to intervene in our lives? I began growing really close to Mary as a young adult. I encountered some books, especially Marian Consecration for Children, that really taught me what it means to look to her as my mama:

One of the things that mothers love best is staying close to their children. Even when children are far away, mothers are close to them in their thoughts and hearts. Mothers consider their children's every need, and try to address all of their difficulties. This is also what Mary does. She knows you better than you know yourself, and she wants everything in your life to go according to the will of God.

All of us have a mother, and know from either positive or negative experiences what mothers should be like. But no matter what our earthly mother is like, she is different. Knowing Mary as our mama allows us to start anew, with a mother who will never leave or forsake us.

Becoming a physical mother also gave me a unique chance, for which I am very grateful, to go deeper in my relationship with Mama Mary, as I now began looking to her as my companion and role model in motherhood. I found icons depicting her motherhood, especially this one, Helper in Childbirth, Protectress of the Unborn, and even Christ’s First Steps, to be both comforting and validating images, granting a deeper, transcendent meaning to these everyday parts of my new reality.

Today, my devotion to Mary is similar to my love for God, in that I call upon both for help on a very regular basis. Mama… I can’t do this. Can you do it for me? Jesus, God, please help me. Thank you. I love you. Time and again, they have shown me that they can and will. Mama is always with me, looking out from our main icon corner, and from the icons we keep in almost every room of the house. When I get up in the morning and light the icon lamp, I give a kiss to Mama Mary and one to Jesus our Savior—just a simple, quiet hello—and today, I will especially think of my own breastfeeding as a sanctified experience, shared with the Mother of God herself. 

I would love to hear from you . . . How did you come to love Mary? Are you still in the process of coming to love her? Do you have a favorite icon of her, or form of devotion to her? 

1. The Orthodox Church does not teach the Immaculate Conception. From our perspective, such a teaching would imply that Mary actually is fundamentally different from us. The Immaculate Conception is a teaching officially promulgated in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, which teaches that Mary was “conceived without sin,” that she alone of all human beings conceived after the natural manner, did not inherit the guilt of Adam. Catholics may be interested to learn that from the Orthodox perspective, the IC is not "necessary" because of the different way in which the Eastern Fathers have always taught and understood the Fall of Adam. We can and do still call Mary “Ever-Blessed and Most Pure and the Mother of our God,” and “Most Holy, Most Pure, Most Blessed and Glorious Lady, Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary,” for she was made worthy to bear the Son of God in her own body. But as a Church, we do not teach, and have never taught, that Adam’s guilt is transmitted through sexual intercourse/procreation, or that all human beings inherit this guilt as a “stain” upon their souls, by virtue of being born as a result of “sinful” human procreation — two theories that were formulated and taught by Blessed Augustine, and were formative for theological thought in the West. Rather, the consensus of all the Eastern Fathers (which, properly speaking, is also the rightful inheritance of the Catholic Church, despite the schism) is more holistic: Adam and Eve’s sin “broke” mankind’s relationship with God, and we inherited that broken situation, but not their guilt. However, we do all earn our own share of guilt in our lives, as we are all sinners. This teaching on “original sin” — or as it is sometimes called in Orthodox theology to differentiate it from the Augustinian/Anselmian teaching, “ancestral sin” — has important implications. The Orthodox Church does not teach, and has never taught, for example, that babies who tragically pass away before being baptized are outside the embrace of God, or that the sexual intercourse of a husband and wife is inherently sinful. In general, as has been pointed out amply, the Eastern Church has maintained a certain silence or reticence on matters like this, which it deems more mysterious than we can fully understand with our limited human minds. (For more, see: “Infant Baptism” by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese.)