The Synaxis of the Icon of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary that is called The Burning Bush.
The commemoration today of the Icon of the Burning Bush is not in the printed Greek Menaion or the Synaxarion of Saint Nicodemus, but rather follows the usage of Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. The reference is to the epiphany of Exodus 3:2–6 when God appeared to Moses from out of the bush that burned with fire, but was not consumed, which is a figure of the Most Holy Theotokos, who bore the Fire of the Godhead in her womb without being consumed. The icon shown above illustrates in the four corners this and three other epiphanies from the Old Testament that prefigured the Mother of God. These are, clockwise from the upper left:
The Burning Bush;
A Seraphim approaching the Prophet Esaias to touch his mouth with a live coal that he held with tongs, which prefigure the holy Virgin, as we chant on the Feast of the Meeting in the Temple on February 2, “Thou, O Maiden Mariam, * art in truth the mystic tongs, * who within thy blessed womb * hast conceived the Ember, Christ.” (February Menaion, page 20) and elsewhere in the Feast.
The ladder seen by the Patriarch Jacob (Gen. 28:12–13);
The shut gate seen by Ezekiel, through which the Lord, the God of Israel, alone entered (Ezekiel 44:1–2).
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