Byzantine Blog

Descent of the Holy Spirit: Birthday of The Church

“When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed as resting upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit...” (Acts 2:1-4).

The Holy Spirit that Christ had promised to his disciples came on the day of Pentecost (Jn 14:26, 15:26; Lk 24:49; Acts 1:5). The apostles received “the power from on high,” and they began to preach and bear witness to Jesus as the risen Christ, the King and the Lord. This moment has traditionally been called the birthday of the Church.

Day of the Holy Trinity

In the liturgical services of the Feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit is celebrated together with the full revelation of the divine Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The fullness of the Godhead is manifested with the Spirit’s coming to man, and the Church hymns celebrate this manifestation as the final act of God’s Self-disclosure and Self-donation to the world of His creation. For this reason Pentecost Sunday is also called Trinity Day in the Orthodox tradition. Often on this day the icon of the Holy Trinity — particularly that of the three angelic figures who appeared to Abraham, the forefather of the Christian faith — is placed in the center of the church. This icon is used with the traditional pentecostal icon which shows the tongues of fire hovering over the Twelve Apostles, the original prototype of the Church, who are sitting in unity surrounding a symbolic image of “cosmos,” the world.

On Pentecost we have the final fulfillment of the Christ’s Mission and the first beginning of the messianic age of the Kingdom of God mystically present in this world in the Church of the Messiah. For this reason the fiftieth day stands as the beginning of the era which is beyond the limitations of this world, fifty being that number which stands for eternal and heavenly fulfillment in Jewish and Christian mystical piety: seven times seven, plus one.

Pentecost Has Happened to Us

Thus, Pentecost is called an apocalyptic day, which means the day of final revelation. It is also called an eschatological day, which means the day of the final and perfect end (in Greek eschaton means the end). For when the Messiah comes and the Lord’s Day is at hand, the “last days” are inaugurated in which “God declares: ... I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” This is the ancient prophecy to which the Apostle Peter refers in the first sermon of the Christian Church which was preached on the first Sunday of Pentecost (Acts 2: 1 7; Joel 2: 28-32).

The feast of Pentecost is not simply the celebration of an event which took place centuries ago. It is the celebration of what must happen and does happen to us in the Church today. We all have died and risen with the Messiah-King, and we all have received his Most Holy Spirit. We are the “temples of the Holy Spirit.” God’s Spirit dwells in us (Rom 8; 1 Cor 2-3, 12; 2 Cor 3; Gal 5; Eph 2-3). We, by our own membership in the Church, have received “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit” in the sacrament of chrismation. Pentecost has happened to us.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:52 PM | Permalink

Guardian of Treasures

Article by Jori Finkel: After 15 Centuries, St. Peter Finally Leaves Home (New York Times)

It was a standoff in the desert heat between two kinds of authority: a Greek Orthodox monk and a group of Egyptian military officers. The monk, dressed in a long black robe and rugged gray vest, was clearly outgunned, but he was not afraid to raise his voice. Nor were the officers who stood in his way.

The soldiers had stopped the monk, Father Porphyrios, and his small caravan of cars and trucks at a checkpoint just before the Suez tunnel as the convoy made its way from the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai to the airport in Cairo. Their cargo could not have been more valuable: crates of centuries-old icons, devotional paintings that are as delicate as they are rare, destined for an exhibition 8,000 miles away in Los Angeles.

First the officers asked to see the customs paperwork, which the drivers quickly supplied. Then they demanded that the crates be opened. “There was a lot of shouting,” Father Porphyrios said, speaking through an interpreter in a recent interview. “There was no way I was going to let them open the boxes.”

They do not call him the monastery’s skevophylax, or guardian of the treasures, for nothing. After an intense hour of negotiation and some well-placed calls to the Culture Ministry in Cairo, Father Porphyrios prevailed. And the icons resumed their journey to the Cairo airport and their ultimate destination: the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai

Starting Tuesday the museum will display these paintings along with a few other rare liturgical objects as part of “Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai.” In all, 43 icons will be on view, 30 of which have never been lent before.

The Getty is undergoing something of a makeover for the occasion. The museum is dimming the lights and designing its main exhibition galleries to evoke the magisterial look and feel of St. Catherine, believed to be the oldest continuously operating Christian monastery in the world.

“We didn’t want to create a theme park version of the monastery,” said Kristen Collins, the Getty curator who organized the show with the Yale art historian Robert Nelson. “But we did want to try to evoke the experience of being there -- the whole sensory experience of hearing the chanting and just being wrapped by, surrounded by, these beautiful images.”

For starters they decided to build a streamlined version of a church’s iconostasis, a screen laden with icons that separates the bema of the clergy from the nave of the laity. Behind that they raised an altar, complete with treasures like a sixth-century bronze cross. And they have piped music into the room, hymns that will be heard in neighboring galleries and blend with chants from a short film, screened nearby, on the sights and sounds of St. Catherine at Easter.

Most of all, though, what promises to transform the space of the museum is the presence of the icons themselves. Richly colored paintings on wood panels that depict saints and other holy figures, icons play a very central and visible role in the Orthodox Church. For the devoted, praying before an image of a saint serves as a means of invoking that saint. And the icon serves as a window onto the spiritual world.

“They Call Me the American”

“I like to think of icons as reflections: in the classical sense where a mirror image was considered real, not illusory. It’s like a presence of the figure depicted,” said Father Justin, another monk from St. Catherine’s who, with Father Porphyrios, is staying in Los Angeles for most of the show. “To be surrounded by icons is to be surrounded by saints themselves.”

Even in the secular space of a museum? “Yes, even in a museum,” said Father Justin, who in his long white beard and flowing black robe cut a dramatic figure against the empty gallery on the first day of unpacking. “I’m positive once everything is installed, this will be a spiritual experience for those who seek it. We’re not making the museum into a church, but we are creating a reverential space.”

Born into a Protestant family in El Paso, Father Justin knows something about bridging two worlds. It was in college at the University of Texas at Austin that he began attending Orthodox services, after reading about the faith in general and St. Catherine in particular. He joined an Orthodox monastery in Boston before being admitted into St. Catherine, the only American ever to receive that honor.

“I don’t think of myself as American,” he said with a laugh. “But they call me the American.”

...Where Moses Saw the Burning Bush

St. Catherine is located at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it is believed that Moses saw the burning bush and received the Ten Commandments. The earliest written account of the monastery, dating from the fourth century, describes a small church and garden. In the sixth century the Byzantine emperor Justinian built a more impressive basilica on the same site.

Today that basilica remains the heart of the monastery. And its collection of Byzantine icons now numbers around 2,000, the world’s largest. Some were painted on the site by iconographers, monks trained in the symbol-rich and convention-heavy tradition of how to represent a saint. Others were brought as gifts.

Together they blanket the monastery. There are icons covering the walls and columns of the main basilica. (“Newer icons are within arm’s reach, older icons are on higher shelves,” Father Justin said.) Icons fill the 20 small chapels outside the main basilica. And there are icons, modern copies if not originals, hanging in the monk’s cells. The monks have even turned the treasury of the church into a small museum, catering to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who make the pilgrimage each year.

It is not an easy trip. For centuries traveling to the remote reaches of Sinai from Europe meant sailing to Alexandria and journeying inland by camel for maybe 15 days. Today the trip usually means flying to Cairo and driving six or seven hours from there. But this isolation has served the monastery well, especially during the heyday of iconoclasm in the eighth and ninth centuries. [...]

Entire article »

Posted by Svetlana at 05:38 AM | Permalink

Grace and Rhythm

Artist and iconographer Violeta Cvetkovska Ocokoljic lives and works in Belgrade, where she writes icons like elegant, graceful verses. She doesn’t say much on her site, about herself or her work, allowing her art and icons to speak for her.

Apart from being exceptionally intricate and rich in details -- a quality that many modern-day iconographers, unfortunately, discard as a remnant of the long gone era -- Violeta’s icons have an air of poetry and romance, a very personal and unique touch that is bound to stay as her recognizable style.

Posted by Svetlana at 03:16 PM | Permalink

The face of Christ is the human face of God.

The Holy Spirit rests on Him and reveals to us absolute Beauty, a divine-human Beauty, that no art can ever properly and fully make visible. Only the icon can suggest such Beauty by means of the Taboric light.

(...)

“I will sing to my God as long as I live” (Sept Ps 104:33). It is for this kind of “action” that man has been set apart and made holy. To sing to God, to sing His perfections, in a word to sing His Beauty, this is man's unique preoccupation, his unique and totally free “work.”

The figure in the praying position, the Orant, found in the catacombs, represents the proper attitude of the human soul, its inner structure in the form of prayer. The command “to fill the earth and conquer it...” (Gn 1:28) is a command to transform the earth into a cosmic temple in which to worship God and then to offer that earth to the Creator. We have here a much loved iconographic subject. It sums up the gospel message in a single word XAIRE: “rejoice and worship... let every creature that breathes give thanks to God.”

In a masterly fashion, St. Paul sets out the ultimate goal of God's charisms: “You have been sealed in the Holy Spirit... and God has obtained [these sealed persons] for the praise of His glory” (Ep 1:14). There is no better way to express the transcendent vocation of man and his doxological and iconographic ministry. The Church expresses this same notion when she sings: “Gathered together in Your temple, we see ourselves in the light of Your heavenly beauty.”

Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty

Posted by Svetlana at 12:05 AM | Permalink

These wonderfully fresh iconic images are a work of a Serbian artist Biljana Jovanovic.

Biljana was born in Belgrade in 1970, and works in Serbia and Greece. In iconography, as in all the other art forms, there is a “high” and “low” or “naive” style, where “naive” would be represented by the icons written by peasants or people unschooled in the art and the use of materials, self-taught who are religious and have some measure of talent.

There are many of these kinds of icons available today in Serbia and other Orthodox lands, they are brought on the markets and sold for pennies, along with sacks of potato, peppers and eggs... Biljana has adopted that “naive” style of iconography, so she even decorates her icons with craft motifs creating pieces of art with the warmth of childhood memories, while her crosses have an appeal of fragrant heart cookies from the grandma's jars.

Unlike many other representatives of this iconographic style (who simply don't know how to paint), Biljana does a great job with it - her icons are still very spiritual, she doesn't caricaturize the images, but they are also very fresh, warm and moving.

While this kind of work gives the impression of ease and simplicity, it is actually not easy to paint in this manner and achieve the same effect without making the images completely ridiculous and unrecognizable.

Posted by Svetlana at 11:25 PM | Permalink

Through the dogma of “Infallibility” the Western church lost its spiritual freedom. It lost its beauty and balance, and was deprived of the wealth of the grace of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ - from spirit and soul ended up a dead body. We are truly grieved for the injustice done to the church and we pray from the bottom of our hearts that the Holy Spirit illumine the mind and the heart of the Most Blessed Pontiff to have him return to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that which he took from her, something that should never have taken place. (St. Nektarios of Aegina)

Iconographer Paul Azkoul writes in his excellent illustrated study On the Differences of Western Religious Art and Orthodox Iconography:

Only those who have adopted “faith once delivered to the saints” [Jude 3], following an uninterrupted tradition, of true doctrine, the same yesterday, today and forever, can paint icons, because icons are not just inspirational, and educational, but they are a representation of true doctrine, an expression of one faith and one baptism. Faith means nothing if it is a false faith. If iconography is Theology, or as Trubetskoi said, “Theology in Color,” then false theology begets false iconography. The reverse also being true, and therefore he or she who espouses false doctrine can not paint icons. They may attempt it, but only a pseudo reproduction will have been their greatest achievement. They may be technically accurate, and aesthetically beautiful, but they will not be grace filled, and so, consequently, not an icon, but a religious painting. Iconography must have two natures as did Christ, spiritual and physical. Those with false doctrine have only the physical. The logic is supremely simple.

Posted by Svetlana at 09:56 PM | Permalink

The Incarnation was not only the work of the Father, of His Virtue, and of His Spirit, but also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the consent of the Most-Pure One, without the agreement of her faith, this great project would have been as impossible as without the intervention of the Three divine Persons Themselves.

God took Mary for His Mother only after having instructed her and convinced her; He was thus able to take flesh from her because she freely chose to give it to Him. In the same way that God wanted to become incarnate, He wanted His Mother to bear Him freely, of her own free will.

Nicholas Cabasilas, Homily on the Annunciation

Posted by Svetlana at 03:53 PM | Permalink

Many times during the last year and a half since I created Byzantine Sacred Art web site I wished I could add a quick comment in response to some of the most frequent questions I was receiving through emails, or introduce articles that would relate to current issues, mostly regarding Balkan politics and Serbia in particular. This is not only time consuming (making whole new static html web pages), but also very difficult to incorporate in a web site dedicated primarily to Orthodox iconography, without making a complete chaos of dozens of different, faintly related subjects.

Connecting a blog, which contains a number of various categories on its own and can be quickly and easily updated, to the site seemed a perfect solution. This small section of the web site also allows me some more room to speak about broader subjects of art and design, and offer a view from another angle, the Orthodox one, on current events as they unfold. Another great advantage is that blog opens communication lines and allows visitors to exchange views directly, rather then through private emails. So, feel free to join in and visit these pages from time to time for updates.

Posted by Svetlana at 11:13 PM | Permalink

A number of people have asked me about iconographer's rules. These are the ones I received from my church. I give them to my students and to anyone interested in writing icons. Just keep in mind that with faith and humility, by allowing yourself to be guided, and with good measure of patience you can create beautiful, ever-lasting traditional icons.

1. Before starting the work, make the sign of the cross. Pray in silence and forgive your enemies.
2. Work with care on every detail of your icon, as if you were working in front of the Lord Himself.
3. Pray during work in order to strengthen yourself physically and spiritually. Above all, avoid all useless words and keep silence.
4. Pray in particular to the Saint whose Image you are writing. Guard your mind from distractions, and the Saint will be close to you.
5. When you have to choose a color, reach out to the Lord inwardly and ask His counsel.
6. Do not be jealous of your neighbor's work - his success is your success too.
7. When your icon is finished, thank the Lord for His Mercy that granted you the grace to paint the Holy Images.
8. Have your icon blessed by putting it in the altar for forty days. Be the first to pray before it, before giving it to others.
9. Never forget the joy of spreading icons in the world, the joy of the work of icon-writing, the joy of serving the Lord shining through the icons, the joy of being in union with the Saint whose Image you are writing.

Posted by Svetlana at 02:09 AM | Permalink

• An Idol

  Icon is not an idol - we do not worship icons. The worship is only extended to God, not to His Saints, and not to icons. If Make yourself no graven images commandment would apply to Orthodox icons, it would also have to apply to the Lord's instruction for building the Arc of the Covenant: "And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover." (Exodus, 25:18-20)
  
  These cherubim that God commanded through Moses to be made are, in fact, the very first icons mankind knows of. They are most certainly the very first icons of incorporeal heavenly powers to which angels, archangels, seraphim and cherubim all belong.
  
  Make yourself no graven images applies to the golden-calf type of idolatry and worshiping anything other then God, since "no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew, 6:24; Luke 16:13) That's idolatry.

• Blasphemous

  The long ago dealt with iconoclastic accusation influenced primarily by Islam, that making images of God and His Prophets is a blasphemy, unfortunately, can still be heard even among some Christians today. It is a shameful thing for a Christian to say, because it boils down to a form of denial of Christ's Incarnation.
  
  If Christ was not born to a Woman, if He did not choose to "come down to earth and become a Man" for our salvation, if He did not walk among us, if He did not suffer for our sins, if He was not crucified, if He did not resurrect... we would not have the right to write His icons. At the same time, there would be no Christianity and no Christians. Icon is a form of perpetual, ceaseless testimony of God-Man Christ, the Incarnate Lord Who "became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory" (John, 1:14). Icon exists ever since "God is revealed in the flesh" (I Tim. 3:16), it is repeating the same good news that "a Savior has been born to you, He is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11) and it is a part of the Church He built. Furthermore, each icon of Mother of God, Lord's Prophets, Saints and Martyrs we write is a confirmation of Christ's Glory and of His immeasurable love for mankind.

• Merely Another Art-form

  Icon is born in the Church, it is of the Church and it belongs to Church. Without Orthodox Church which incorporated icons into the Holy Liturgy, iconography as we know it today would not be preserved - it would cease to exist long time ago. Iconography is not an expression of one's creativity, since it has nothing to do with imagination and individualism. Icon is a mirror of the Gospels and Holy Tradition to such an extent that even the colors that are mentioned in the Gospels are exclusively used on certain icons, without exception (for example, Christ's robes in the scene of Transfiguration).
  
  At the same time, paintings on religious themes are not icons. Many artists throughout the history have offered their vision of Bible events and their versions of Holy Personages. Some were unsuccessful, some have earned the worldwide praise and fame, but what they created, however beautiful, are not icons.

• Naive or Primitive Art

  People who don't know enough about iconography, the rules it follows and icon's function and place in Church tend to pass condescending remarks leading to conclusion iconography is a "primitive" form of art. I have even heard a non-Orthodox Christian say Byzantine masters "didn't know how to paint", so that's why we have inverted perspective, elongated figures and hieratic, austere compositions. This is pure nonsense and reflection of ignorance.
  
  One only needs to visit few churches in Greece or Serbia (apart from glorious Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and churches in Ravenna, Italy, with mosaics made by Byzantine iconographers Emperor Justinian brought along with him from Constantinople in 6th and 7th century), built and fresco painted before Renaissance, to understand a number of renowned art historians world-wide in their unreserved admiration and appreciation of the Byzantine iconography. Byzantine icon is guided by Church canons and rules that exclude everything profane, sensual, material and naturalistic. Icon has to draw our souls and minds upwards, to spiritual, holy, transcendent, mystical and eternal. And that is precisely what it does.

Posted by Svetlana at 05:19 PM | Permalink

Sophia wrote to say she's giving an icon to a non-Orthodox person and would like to include a description of what icon is with her present. At first I thought my articles about icon tradition, Byzantine icons and non-traditional icons provide enough introductory information to iconography. But additional clarification of the basic iconographic concepts and an answer to the question what icon is may be useful.

Means of Worship and Veneration

Icon's primary function is liturgical. Iconography is one of three ecclesiastical art forms (Church hymns and music are the other two) that is used as a means of worshiping God and venerating His Saints. It serves to lead the soul from the visible to the invisible, from the material to the spiritual. Icons are given honorable reverence by Orthodox Christians that is not equal to worship: "the honor which is given to the icon passes over to the prototype" (St. Basil the Great). Even though God and His Saints do not need the honor we offer them, as Constantine Cavarnos notes, "it is only proper for us to do so (...) as the adoration of God and the admiration of saints are expressions of a soul that sees and loves the beauty of holiness, of spiritual perfection, and feels grateful to the Deity and to holy men for their many benefactions to mankind. Such a response is not merely something proper for us, but is also conductive to our salvation." (Orthodox Iconography, by Constantine Cavarnos)

Window into Heaven

Icon is a window through which we peer into the heavenly realm. We see holy men and women glorified by God, in their transcendent, sanctified bodies and forms.

Theology in Color

Icon helps us learn about our Faith. It faithfully follows the Scripture and illustrates it through Festal icons. This is partly why iconographer is not allowed to improvise and give us her own vision - Scriptures cannot be re-written or changed. It is not a dialogue, an iconographer serves to re-tell the same Story, in colors and forms.

Image and Likeness

If it wasn't for icons, we wouldn't know how St. Nicholas looked. Through icons, we learn St. Nicholas is not a jolly fat man dressed in red velvet pants and white fur, but a dignified Hierarch, Holy Bishop of the Church and a Miracle Worker. Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved the clear and untainted memory for two thousand years. Through generations of faithful iconographers, it has also preserved the images of her Hierarchs, Holy Fathers and Martyrs. Each Holy Image is a prototype that cannot be changed and has to be instantly recognizable by every Christian, even if they can't read the inscription and don't know whose icon we intended to write. This is integral part of Holy Tradition.

Aid to Prayer

Icon helps us focus our minds on prayer and in prayerful contemplation. When we pray in front of an icon of our Lord, Most Holy Theotokos or Saints, we are not addressing the board, or the painting on it, but the one whose image it represents. Church, like a true Body of Christ with Him as its Head, is an Arc of Salvation for sinful men and made to fit our measure, not some unattainable ideal. And men who learned they have a Living God in Person have a need to address their Protectors as those who are ever-present, with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Reminder

Icon is a constant reminder of the Heavenly Church we belong to and the Heavenly Communion we take part in when taking our place in Holy Liturgy. Church is not just this or that temple where we worship our Lord, it is comprised of all its members, living and passed, the Clergy, Apostles, all of our Holy Fathers and Martyrs. We are all members of One, Holy, Catholic (Universal) and Apostolic Church Whose Head is Christ. "My beach is my church" may work for some, but it has nothing to do with actual Church, established by Christ, where we worship Him fully and properly.

Ideal Models

Icon arouses us to imitate the virtues of the Holy Personages depicted on them. Icon is an inspiration to Orthodox Christian who strives to better himself. It helps transform our characters, it lifts our spirits up and motivates us morally and spiritually.

Posted by Svetlana at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)