Holy Mother of God and Christ - Mercy of the Virgin Mary. Icon of the Holy Virgin of Eleusis - Mercy. Empathy or Eleusa (compassion, sympathy) is one of the most common types of images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Child. In Greek they are also called Glycophilus (sweet-loving). On them, the Infant is depicted sitting in the arms of the Mother of God, 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 there are in the church, there is always someone in front of this image. And how different the people are: quite young and with a worldly appearance, a large man - he almost shrunk, was silent for a moment, old grandmothers, of course, but also a student 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 church - 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 "sensual 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 - an intercessor for him, for each one before the King of glory.