Mother of Mercy with Jesus Christ. Icon of the Holy Virgin of Eleusis, Mercy. On them, the Infant is depicted sitting in the arms of the Virgin, pressing his cheek to Her cheek. The earliest such image is preserved from 650 in a fresco in the Basilica of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome, the work of a Byzantine master. Something really appeals to this image No matter how few people are in a church, there is always someone in front of this image. And how different the people are: quite young and with a worldly appearance, a big man - he almost shrunk, he was silent for a moment, old grandmothers, of course, but also a schoolboy and a schoolgirl. It seems to me that this icon - which according to the Orthodox canon is called with the expressive name "Mother of Mercy - Tenderness", is so spontaneously the preferred place even for the non-church person in the Orthodox temple - because it captures the innermost essence of the Mother of God. That she is the "heart of the Church". If Christ is "the Head"; if He animates the Body of the Church, then its "sense center", the place where all the pains and tremors of the "members" of this Body gather, is precisely the Mother of God. If Christ is the Father, she is the Mother. If Christ is the head of the home, she is the heart of the home.