Pope Francis blesses Our Lady of the Kazakh steppes
He did so as he bid farewell to the Catholic community of Kazakhstan at the end of his apostolic journey. The icon is dedicated to the largest Marian shrine in Central Asia. A work inspired "by love for the mother". The Pontiff's blessing pledges to be missionaries of peace.
Astana (AsiaNews) - Bidding farewell to the local Catholic community and to the whole of Kazakhstan, Pope Francis blessed the great icon "Yly Dala Anasy", the Mother of the Great Steppe, dedicated to Central Asia's largest Marian shrine in Ozornoe, to which local Catholics are particularly devoted. The author of the icon is a Kazakh artist, Dosbol Kasymov, who told Catholic-kazachstan about the experience of this particular work.
The first source of inspiration for the icon, the author confesses, is 'love for the mother', which all men feel according to any culture, but which has its particular nuances in the Kazakh tradition, which calls the mother 'Ana'. Mary holds the baby Jesus wrapped in the adult dressing gown called 'chapan', anticipating his future as a man, while she herself wears the 'kimeshek', the robe of married women that is given to mothers after the birth of their first child. It is not a luxurious robe, but even in its simplicity it is meant to emphasise the beauty and dignity of the humble woman, the poor woman of the steppe.
When asked how long he had been working on the image, Kasymov explains that "in a certain sense, his whole life", because "it is a figure that gives meaning to all creative capacity", and the icon blessed by the pope is a fulfilment of the painter's entire vocation. In Kazakh culture, the Mother par excellence is 'Umay', the guardian of all creation, reflected in all the mothers of the earth, the only beings capable of uniting all others.
In front of the mother's face, one feels "love, tenderness and also disturbance, one would like to go beyond artistic canons and human limits", and what the iconographer succeeds in reproducing on the panel "is only a small part of what one feels in one's heart", says Dosbol: "There is no time, one would have to write the icon for the whole of one's life". In Ozornoe's icon, the Christian faith in the Mother of God is expressed according to the canons of Kazakh art, that "of the great common house" capable of integrating different inspirations: "It pleases me to see how Our Lady communicates with our steppe mothers," says the painter.
A model pointed out by Dosbol is that of a famous contemporary Kazakh singer, Dimash Kudaybergen, who "sings in a way that can be understood by any man on earth, and that is why they love him everywhere". This is because 'art is a language comprehensible to every human being, to the whole world'; inspiration is a natural process in which personal history and that of one's own people enter, along with the many external sources that are difficult to explain in words. Francis' blessing was a moment that "recalled the sense of responsibility of the author, but also of all the faithful who pray before the image of Mary", whom the pope committed to be missionaries of peace and love for all.
In the icon, Our Lady does not look directly at the spectator, because "Kazakh women do not look their interlocutors in the face, it is considered rude", explains the author: "In Kazakh we say "tygylyp arama" (not to look into the eyes), it is a sign of humility and gentleness". The woman always looks beyond, and helps anyone she meets in this: 'She thinks of the future, of her child and of anyone she comes into contact with, we can call it feminine intuition, or divine prophecy'.
The Child looks the other way, unlike the classical canons of iconography. "In him there is a mix of feelings, he looks at the path ahead. Every man tries to foresee the future, the difficulties and the joys, and in Christ all the sufferings and all the graces of human beings are fulfilled. "He too would not want to detach himself from his mother, like every child, but he already understands that this will be his destiny". The child of the Mother and the Son reproduce elements of Kazakh carpets, the flower of Mary's 'Tuskeys' and the 'Shanjrak' of the Son's cross, which saves the world from the deep steppe of Asia.
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15/09/2022 21:10
