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Written by Baba
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 |
Dear Baba - IconsDear Baba; We’ve had our procession of icons for the Sunday of Orthodoxy and a few weeks before that we had the visit of the Kursk Root wonderworking icon. It was great but now I’m confused and the more I thought about it, the more unsure I was. Why did the priest traveling with the Kursk Root icon say the Mother of God was visiting us rather than saying an icon was? How is an icon miraculous? I tried to explain it to non-Orthodox friends and realized I had no clue what to say.
My dear iconic friend, I’m so glad you’ve stopped by. I have a nice fresh pot of tea all brewed and some Lenten cookies that we can share as we discuss this very important topic. In the Sunday of Orthodoxy we celebrate the triumph over the iconoclasts who deliberately went about destroying every icon they could find. Many saints suffered brutal persecution during this time not because they were emotionally attached to the wood and pigments but because of the very statement iconography makes. Christ became fully man for our salvation – he is true God and true man. Only because of His incarnation can we represent Him in an icon just as we could represent any other human being we have seen with our own eyes. To deny an icon is to deny His humanity. And it is still as much an issue today as ever.
It all ultimately points back to Christ. The seventh ecumenical council specifically re-established the proper veneration of icons. It, like the councils that preceded it, ultimately answered the question of who Christ is. Look at icons of the Theotokos and you will see she too points to Christ. Our focus always gets pulled back to Our Lord and Savior doesn’t it my dear? And rightly so.
Often we will call icons our “windows into heaven” which makes intuitive sense and yet be hard to explain as well. There is a wonderful story recounted in Frederica Mathewes-Greene's book, Facing East. Like you, a convert was struggling to find the right words to explain to her family this idea of windows into heaven, of venerating the saints depicted in the icon and not coming to a complete stop at the wooden icon itself. Mommy and Daddy called while she was watching her grandchild and after talking with them, the conversation closed with her grandchild planting a noisy, smoochy goodbye kiss on the telephone. Was this sweet child kissing only the phone? Of course not! This was merely the means to communicate with beloved people on the other side of the line. The kiss wasn’t meant for the plastic receiver of the phone but directly to Mommy and Daddy. And despite the miles, you and I know they got the kiss.
The telephone is plastic and electronic components put together to serve its purpose. Icons take the elements of nature – wood, pigment and sometimes precious metals and restore them to the original intent of all of creation – to give glory to God. For us they do much more than just set the tone in church like merely inspirational religious art. Restored to its original intent, it becomes holy. How prayers said before them are offered directly to the prototype is a mystery but we know it happens. If not, we really would be straying into idolatry. Icons are truly windows into heaven. And when we are blessed to have a wonderworking icon, that window is wide open.
A friend of mine was recently telling me a way she used in her Sunday school class to describe open windows to heaven. She told her class to imagine they were walking around in an all-glass skyscraper. As they walked around the building, they took in the remarkable views. As you can see, my dear, this is not the same as working in an office with a great view. This view is breathtaking and consuming. Walking around, they would ponder the sights, study the history of what they were seeing and directly relate to it in a way they couldn’t do from ground level. The glass would not stop their interaction with reality. In fact, they would probably even forget it was there.
Suddenly they would enter a room where the glass was gone. The effect would be easy to imagine. They would feel the wind and all the elements and would be physically part of what they had been experiencing through the glass just moments before. It would clearly pull all of us out of our comfort zone and would force us to engage and react. There could be no complacent observation or for that matter, it wouldn’t be simply a matter of setting the tone for the room. It would seize the space and make it one with the outdoors.
So it is also with a wonder-working icon. The difference is that we aren’t just taking in the scenery of heaven but are with the very citizens of heaven, the church triumphant – that invisible cloud of witnesses that surround and encourage us here on earth, the church militant. The thin veil that separates us is pulled back and we experience the heavenly realm. One of the spots where the veil is pulled back is contained in the borders of one of these special wonderworking icons. So when the icon is brought into the church, there is nothing separating heaven and earth. The Theotokos is right there and ready to intercede. The icon brings her direct presence into our midst. So it is very true that the Theotokos herself was escorted into the church. I can assure you there was no confusion that the icon itself had somehow become the Theotokos. That would be idolatry and really rather silly.
The iconoclasts sought to destroy the icons because they could see them as nothing more than art and nothing more than wood and pigment and objects of idolatry. But that is not an icon. They are written to proclaim a truth. They are written to give hope that each of us could become a hallowed saint – so filled and transformed by the light of Christ – just like the invisible cloud of witnesses who stand encouraging us as we struggle.
And most importantly, they are used by God to give us a taste of the glorious joy of the kingdom of heaven. When He pulls back the veil, He allows the healing grace to pour forth through certain icons like the one which visited us not long ago. It isn’t the wood, pigment or a beautiful precious metal ‘riza’ that does it. In fact, simple icon prints have become wide open windows to heaven like the weeping icon at the monastery in Resaca. If you would like a beautiful explanation, I encourage you to read “The Defense of Icons” by St. John of Damascus given at the Seventh Ecumenical Council so many centuries ago.
We must remember that heaven isn’t a far-off place where we tend only to our own pleasures. It is being in the presence of God without anything standing between us. It is in that presence that all impurity, sighing and sorrow vanish. It is no wonder then that a miracle working icon would be a true foretaste of heaven.
The beautiful thing is that as living icons, we too can be the vessels for God’s grace to pour forth into the world.
So my dear, as I put the kettle on to freshen our tea, it does bring to mind the quote from C. S. Lewis from his essay “The Problem of Pain” that “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.” When we confront the physical presence of Our Lord and Savior as we approach the chalice or are blessed by the grace flowing through a wonderworking icon – we see how thin the veil is between heaven and earth. Why are we so quick to yank the veil back down as we shake off the experience and return to our regular lives? Why are we so fearful of losing ourselves in God that we slam the door shut and try and keep God at a distance on our terms?
We are made in the image and likeness of God and cannot be filled by anything else. It is misery, darkness, and despair to try. Now just imagine what can be done through us if we would only allow that veil over our hearts to be lifted, unlock the gates and let God heal us and fill us with His presence. It would be heaven on earth. Truly.
With Enveloping Hugs;
Baba |
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Living Faith 
