The icon of the Theotokos “Nursing the Child” (Mlekopitatelnitsa) has been known since ancient times in the Christian East. It is painted based on the truth of the Gospel: that the Most Holy Mother of God nursed the incarnate Lord Christ as her Son — as the woman in the Gospel confessed with the words addressed to Christ: “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You” (Luke 11:27).
