Praying With Our Eyes: Lecture 4 How do we pray with our eyes? Icons, iconographers and prayer.

By Ian Knowles, Director Bethlehem Icon Centre, June 2, 2015

Over the previous three lectures I have spoken about icons as liturgical art, that is art intrinsic to the Liturgy, the public prayer of the church. Payer and icons are part and parcel of the same whole, mutually feeding each other.

We have also looked at how the icon is holy, which in a sense is what the whole iconoclastic movement was about. The radical idea proposed by the iconodules (lovers of icons) was that icons were holy, sacred, actually in their materiality transfigured signs which opened the door of heaven to those on earth, and while not holy as God or the saints, they were, in virtue of their sacred role in relationship to the things they made present, worthy of veneration. They were the physical moments when ordinary human beings could touch the Divine.

In this final lecture of the first part of this series, I want to take a closer look at this holiness of the icon, and how it impacts not just on the worshipper but on those who make them, the iconographers.

1. The holiness of the Icon

Lets begin with the most obvious elements, and then seek to go deeper, to penetrate something more of their mystery.

Icons are wonder-bearing artefacts. By this I mean that they bring all sorts of wonderful graces, be that healing or the pouring of sweet smelling oil from its surface, or simply bringing to us the remembrance of Christ, his Mother, and his saints. The history of the Christian Church is littered, in every generation including our own, with experiences of the material of the icons manifesting strange physical phenomena. And it is not the great artistic works which manifest these signs of Gods Kingdom on earth, but often the most humble, the least impressive, even printed icons.

Here is a contemporary account of two miraculous icons from a parish in Hawii which began to secrete chrism in 2007.

1) One is a mounted-print made, I believe, at the Sofrino Church factory near Moscow. It is an exact copy of the Montreal Myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon of the Holy Theotokos; this was the icon cared for by Blessed Martyr Brother Jos Muoz. It is a small icon, roughly 7 x 9 inches and approximately one inch thick. My parish priest, Fr. Anatole Lyovin, gifted it to me for my Name's Day in 1997 (). He said he purchased it at a church bookstore in Toronto when the parish in which he had grown up celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its founding. The icons from Sofrino have a distinctive style with a beautiful silk-screen riza (or oklad in Russian, Pokamiso in Greek) built into the icon. This is done so that those who cannot afford beautiful and very expensive icons can have something equally beautiful from Sofrino for less.2) The second icon is a hand-painted icon in the shape of a Cross, with the image of Our Lord's crucifixion in the traditional Byzantine style of iconography. A Greek monk from the Holy Mountain Athos painted it. It is roughly 8 x 11 inches and approximately 1 1/2 inches thick. I purchased a set of two near identical Cross icons and gave one to my father as a gift; I kept the other Around 10:30 p. m. that night, I was working in my office, which also doubles as our home chapel where our icon corner is located. My cat walked into the office and began to sniff around as if he smelled something. I did not smell anything. He proceeded to walk toward the area were our family reliquaries are kept. I thought this was strange since he would never go near the reliquaries; amazingly something always stopped him, and he's a nosy cat. Yet this time he stood on his hind legs and sniffed around, I assume in order to figure out what the smell was. I still didn't smell anything. I proceeded to pick him up and then I noticed the scent. It was so strong, even overwhelming. Never have I smelled anything like that in my life. I couldn't explain why I hadn't smelled it before. It was like a thousand roses had fallen into the room. I crossed myself and guarded myself with the Jesus Prayer. I put the cat down and proceeded to look at the icons. I admit I was afraid to look at the icons near the reliquaries. I finally came to the icon of the Cross and noticed that the bead of myrrh by the side-wound of Christ was still dry, for a split second I regained some composure, even as the smell of roses was getting stronger. I then looked down and my hand was wet -- it was myrrh. How did it get there? The icon was dry? Or was it? I then noticed that the left knee of the image of Our Lord was forming a bead of myrrh right before my eyes. I then called out to my wife. She came running, and when I asked her if she had spilled anything on the icons, she said no. She hadn't gone near them. I showed her the icon. She was in shock. I told her the smell is too strong. Help me look at the other icons... Finally I grabbed the icon of Iveron given to me by Fr. Anatole. It was completely wet. And then the smell got even stronger. Even my wife could smell it We were afraid. We asked one another if we cleaned or anointed the icons recently, and both of us said 'no'. 'What is going on?' I asked. I put the icons back where they were; we took a few pictures with our digital camera. Then I said an Akathist to the Mother of God in honor of her Iveron Icon and went to bed, or at least tried to.The next day, Sunday October 7th, after much debate, we left the icons at home and went to church. After the Liturgy we spoke to our kuma, who instructed us to speak with the priest immediately. We told Fr. Anatole what had happened. He listened patiently and said, 'Bring the icons to church!' We then arranged with the priest, to bring the icons to church the next Wednesday, October 10th. Up until that Wednesday, the icons continued to stream. I collected the myrrh on cotton and before them I said prayers for my sister who was ill and for several other people. Fr Anatole's Note: The next day, his sister called her father to say that her doctor cannot explain it, but that her pancreas, which had completely stopped functioning had returned to its normal state and that her diabetes was under control. ()On Wednesday October 10th, we brought the icons to church and placed them on two analogia (lecterns) in the center of the church. Fr. Anatole inspected them and wiped them down with cotton and proceeded to start the service of the Akathist Hymn of the Iveron Icon. After the service, the icons were wiped down again; they had streamed a little during the service. Fr. Anatole confirmed to us that it is 'definitely streaming myrrh' and that it is 'a very pure myrrh'. The smell of roses filled the air. I asked him what we were to do? He asked us to leave the icons in church for the time being. No one knew about the icons; they were safe at church.

Sunday October 14th, was the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, and Fr. Anatole revealed the icons to the people. The icons streamed quite heavily; there was enough myrrh for everyone. They have continued streaming ever since. Many have come to see the icons, Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Roman Catholics, Protestants. All who approach the icons feel the Grace of God! There have been days when the icons have been completely dry, while on other days they are covered in myrrh. Yet whether they stream or not, they continuously give off an extremely strong scent of roses. It is truly a great miracle! I sometimes wonder if it is a warning [1]

In this way, I think, we can see God affirming that an icon is a thin place, a border crossing between two worlds, a sacred place. These miracles show it power, power to proclaim Christ and to draw all things into Christ, into relationship with Him. It truly belongs in the church as an essential accoutrement to the Liturgy, but even when taken out of that context and placed in a home, it begins to shape the place and make it a sort of extension of the church, an extension of the Eucharistic communion between God and His children. We can see this as a sort of mission or evangelisation within the matter of the cosmos to bring the two realities, the heavens and the earth, into a dynamic union. Even when placed in a museum or an art gallery they do not cease to work, however much the environment conspires against it.

Once we realise this we should take care to never debase an icon by becoming indifferent to its purpose, and should always make a reverence even if interiorly. As the fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council said, the icons remind those who pray of the icons prototypes and, through gazing upon the icons, the believers lift up their minds from the images to the prototypes.

The Church teaches that the icon makes a real and direct contact between the worshipper and the holy person depicted, the prototype, and it is this capacity which is the root of its sacredness. This unity between the paint and the wood and egg and the pigment comes through the identity of the image, hence the importance of inscribing the name, not of the artist, but of the saint or Christ Himself on the front of the icon. In simply reading the name, we are evoking the prototype and preparing to worship. By kissing the icon, touching it, or just pausing before it, we are acknowledging the holy person who stand before us just on the other side of the image our eyes can see. This isnt something necessarily moving or devotional, though it can be, but it is prayer especially when it brings us to formulate words of prayer on our lips and above all, in our hearts. This movement reveals that first moment of awareness and acknowledgement as the first step in acknowledging something greater than us, and our humility in receiving the revelation of that Presence.

1. The challenge of the icon

The icon is visually disconcerting, it pushes us, presses us to go beneath the surface because the appearance doest quite work until you do. Those without faith have dismissed iconography as a primitive art - such was the art historical consensus until well into the 20th century. For the modern world with its disdain for anything medieval the world of the icon remains lost like that of the world of indecipherable runes. Yet once you gain sight of the profundity of the medieval mindscape, its spiritual vitality and dazzling horizon of eternity against which everything was measured, the icon reveals itself. And once you immerse yourself in this perception so the icon becomes a work of conscious and subconscious prayer.

This work of prayer as it goes beyond simply acknowledging the prototype presented in the icon is not something easy; one eminent theologian, and interestingly also an eminent scientist described, it this way: a sharp penetration of a spiritual reality into the soul, a penetration almost like a physical blow or sudden burn that instantly shock the viewer who is seeing for the first time, one of the great works of sacred icon painting. There is not the slightest question in such experiences that what is coming through the icon is merely the viewers subjective invention, so undisputedly objective is its impact upon the viewer, an impact equally physical and spiritual. Like light pouring forth light, the icon stands revealed. And no matter where the icon is physically located in the space we encounter it, we can only describe our experience of seeing it as a beholding that ascends.[2]

In this way the icon demands we work hard to put on the mind of Christ as St Paul puts it. The world view of medieval man, despite its scientific limitations, was far more vast than ours in perceiving the unity of all things in the cosmos and the union of the material world and that of the spirit. Iconography emerged at the moment the ancient world began its transformation into a profoundly Christianised culture and it helped to shape it, and its prophetic role today is perhaps to keep that vision of revelation in touch with a world much more keenly aware of its contemporary zeitgeist and in danger of forgetting that there is more to reality than what meets the eye.

The strange faces, textures, colours of the icon refuse to submit to the tyranny of the present and demand of us the courage to look beyond with humility. The spiritual world of the invisible is not some infinitely far off kingdom; instead it everywhere surrounds us as an ocean; and we are like creatures lost on the bottom of the ocean floor while everywhere is streaming upward the fullness of a grace steadily growing brighter. But we, from the habit of immature spiritual sight, fail to see this light bearing kingdom; most often, we fail even to assume it exists, and therefore we only sense unclear in our hearts the spiritual currents of what is really happening around us.[3] This understanding of icon painting as a way of attaining supernatural perception, a way followed by both the great icon painters and those who supervised the icon painting process: such understanding is our gaol. [4] Engaging with the icon, and there can be no better way to do this than as a painter or maker of icons, draws us more and more deeper into the encounter with Christ, and as we respond more and more to His loving caress, so higher and higher we move along the mountain or ladder of spiritual ascent. We shouldnt make the mistake of thinking this is something about the magic of the icon, but it is simply that the icon is a normative part of the Christian life and integral to the liturgy, and so it encourages and nurtures us via our senses in that relationship.

This being drawn deeper isnt some ethereal thing, but a very definite life shaping encounter via our sense of sight. Jesus taught that The lamp of your body is your eye. When your eye is sound, your whole body too is filled with light; but when it is diseased, your body too will be darkness. Luke 11:34. The icon is a source of purification and an apprenticeship which helps us develop our interior vision.the ancient Fathers of the Church considered our sight as the most important of our senses, and images as a means of sanctification for the soul.[5] In an age of ubiquitous images, and when especially through advertising and pornography our senses are deliberately being aroused through our eyes in potentially Christ-alienating ways, the icon is a real medicine for the eyes and thus for the soul.

Indeed, in an age of unparalleled exposure to images, photographs, paintings, cinema, computers, of still, moving and even 3D images, where the image is so often used as a phenomenon of fantasy and imagination to dislocate us from the reality of the world we actually exist in, we need to educate our eyes to pray perhaps as never before. Our eyes languish, our sense of sight mesmerised by endless colours, shapes, movements all conspiring to be alluring, distracting, indeed to be controlling of our deepest selves via the arousal of emotions and feelings and memories and associations. Our sense of sight is essential to the experience of life for contemporary mankind as never before in history, and so the time of the icon, as the authentic manifestation of incarnational art, of the redemption of the sense of sight, has come.

In the dark we cannot see, our sight cannot function. Darkness brings confusion, a sense of being lost, of loosing direction and purpose. Even in such a situation of faith the icon continues to do its work. The icon acts as a mirror reflecting the light of God in and through his saints, and above all in his Son. For those on the way to salvation there is in the icon something very pure and radiant that sings about the essence of things, while for those searching for God, even when the icons seem oddly disturbing, we sense something of Gods holiness through them, they evoke a sense of the holy. And in the midst of so many conflicting thoughts and possibilities the icon is dreadfully real, an objective reality, something beyond ourselves and our subjectivity, rooted in the reality of the spiritual realm, and the Gospel. When we are still enough to look, this can stir within us the beginnings of conversion and repentance.

2. The iconographer

The holiness of the icon & the implication for the iconographer

The 7th Ecumenical Council, in AD787 stated that only the technical part of icon painting belongs to the artist; the determination of the icon itself plainly belongs to the FathersThe Holy Fathers of the Church create the art because they are the ones who contemplate the persons and events that the icon must depict. How could someone create an icon who does not have continuously before him - who has never even glimpsed-the icons prototype? it would be the height of arrogance for people to claim that they have depicted the spiritual real (that realm which even the saints behold only fragmentarily and fleetingly) when they themselves have never seen it at all? [6]

In the icon there is a tranquility of composition, which aids and leads to contemplation. This tranquility is also a fruit of an inner freedom, a lack of distraction, compulsion, preoccupation in those who have designed the icon. When we are so turned in on ourselves, or so consumed with desire for aspects of creation, we loose sight of the whole picture and become darkened within. This darkness casts a veil over our eyes. St Paul talks about seeing darkly as in a mirror but after this life we will see face to face. We cannot see things as they really are, as God has made them or more significantly what they are created to be, when our sight is so dull and our eyes so weak. As we grow in Christ so our ability to see, to perceive reality, increases and deepens. For there to be sight the light coming from our heart must be in harmony with the light coming from God. Gods extravagant generosity in spreading out such a feast of creations beauty needs be met by mans thankfulness if this feast is to be joyous rather than debauched. its beauty consists of it being a manifestation of the personal God. The cosmos is not a show of vanity, but a showing forth of love.[7] The iconographer as a fashioner of matter, a shaper of things, who moulds paint into beauty, can obviously do this with much more alacrity when he can himself see the world transfigured.

This tranquility - in its composition and artistic treatment- is a tranquility which flows from within the iconographer, a tranquility based on an inner freedom, a lack of distraction, compulsion, preoccupation. The icon acts as a mirror reflecting the light of God in and through his saints, and above all in his Son. For those on the way to salvation there is in the icon something very pure and radiant that sings about the essence of things, while for those searching for God, even when the icons seem oddly disturbing, we sense something of Gods holiness through them. In the midst of so many conflicting thoughts and possibilities the icon is dreadfully real, an objective reality, something beyond ourselves and our subjectivity, rooted in the reality of the spiritual realm, and the Gospel. When we are still enough to look, this can stir within us the beginnings of conversion and repentance. This is the icon as salvific, as the mediator of the redemption experience in Christ.

In contemplating the icon all of us, but in particular the iconographer, are involved in making a spiritual ascent through our sense of sight, from the image to its prototype, from symbol to the reality, and when this is watered with faith it becomes our spiritual life, our enlightenment and our transfiguration. It is obviously quite possible to look at an icon without any faith at all, or with a weak faith, or a strong one, but that faith will shape the experience of seeing to the point that we either see more or less completely, or not at all. And for the iconographer himself, the more deeply we see the more truly creative we are free to be, because we are seeing more clearly, and hence our echoes of the prototype will be more appropriate, more evocative of the reality they proclaim.

We all begin with rather stilted mental notes, where we ask what this colour means or this figure or this composition, like little children who persistently ask whats this mummy. But as we mature and begin to see not just the individual elements but the meaning beneath the whole, i.e. of the interconnectedness of these individual elements, so we begin to perceive with less and less effort. Our sense of the realities being conveyed depends on the degree to which we live our life in Christ, the degree to which our hearts and minds are desiring Jesus and the relationship with God he alone makes possible. The icon is a participation, as we have seen earlier, in the Incarnation, that is in the Person of Jesus Christ through whom we find the forgiveness of our sins and the joy of eternal life dawns upon our impoverished souls. The icon is the art not just describing this reality, but is something springs directly from it. Thus in order to be proficient in perceiving it and in making it we need to live deeply rooted in those realities which bring it into bud and to bear fruit.

The iconographers spiritual state and its relation to the holiness of the icon

There can be a pious fantasy that as the icon is an object of prayer, it should be made with strict and demanding schedules of prayer, strict fasting and so on and that that is what makes it special. Now it is true that some iconographers follow a deep ascetically path, but that is perhaps more a fruit of the icon rather than a prerequisite for making it! And we should also point out that such notions are dangerous for an iconographer because it can unleash uncontrollable waves of spiritual pride, a sense that it is through my ascetical efforts that the icon attains some nebulous sense of holiness or that because I write icons I must in some sense be special and holy compared to those who dont. The icon is and remains a humble reality, a fragile composition of wood and paint and the reason why some icons are chosen to be wonderworking is beyond our knowing. As I have mentioned, even paper printed icons have been known to weep oil, recently one of St Nicholas in the United States. And I know from my own work that it isnt my most technically accomplished work which has touched people the most, but in fact one painted very crudely on the Israeli concrete separation wall. The Spirit blows where he wills, and its not for us to reason why or to accrue or project that holiness beyond its proper locus.

Having said that, it is obviously good for the iconographer to be in harmony with the realities of the world he seeks to depict. Just as in portraiture, in the icon the iconographer isnt simply copying a photograph but painting what he sees, senses, feels as he looks at the subject. A great artist is able to engage in a deep level with his subject and convey that experience to others in a way which speaks, or in the case of the icon speaks to the heart. This is why the most important thing about the context of prayer for the making of liturgical art is an active spiritual life rooted in that of the particular church community to which you belong. If a layman, then the life of the parish, if a monk, the life of the monastery, not done to extremes but with a gentle tranquility and with humility to accept above all the will of God in all things.

This tranquility is an essential aspect of the icons design, and at this level ideally the icon and its maker should sit in restful harmony. The icon has a tranquil centre, a resting point for the eyes and the soul, so that unencumbered with distractions the truth might emerge and embrace the beholder, inspiring and nurturing his faith in the Living God. It is like the Burning Bush, which while it was ablaze didnt consume or blacken the branches, in the midst of the roaring flames a stillness out of which the voice of God spoke. Each and every icon is a theophany, a manifestation of God and in order to behold what is being manifest we have to have a restfulness to pierce with understanding and recognition.

Prayer is the place where we learn to know God. We come to know God in the same way we learn to know another human being. When you stop to think about it, how else could we know the incarnate Christ? We look and we like what we see; we spend more time together in speech and in silence; we meet one anothers friends and find interests in commonWe go closer to that personSlowly we become more involved in the relationship until we commit ourselves to the one we have learned to love. [8]

Icons are about proclamation, as is the whole of the Christian liturgy, so if we do not know Christ our iconography is a hollow shell, proclaiming nothing except by way of accident, or even worse proclaiming our confusion and ignorance, though when we write the icon with humility, accepting our limitations of faith and ability and trying to copy as faithfully as we can, then the icon can do its work, not just on others but also on us, proclaiming Christ and itself drawing us deeper into the faith. The iconfills a constant task, which has been that of Christian art from the beginning: to reveal the true relationships between God and man To the disoriented world the icon brings a testimony of authenticity, of the reality of another way of life the icon (can teach us) about God, man, and creation, a new attitude toward the world. [9]

The icon is above all the art of the face, and the revelation of what it means to be truly human through the encounter with the perfect Man Jesus Christ. The iconographer spends much of his time gazing at the face of Christ and of Christ in the face of the saints. As such his gaze is held by Christ, or at least if he paints with spiritual perception. And when one paints with faith, the very incarnatedness of Christ in the icon is visible proof of both the abasement of God towards humanity as well as of the lan or impetus of humanity towards God (Ouspensky) or as Monk Gregory Kroug put it, it is the visible and tangible evidence of the grafting of created humanity onto the Divine Uncreated Being. As such it sets the tone for the iconographers spiritual life, for Christ has created the first icon, of Himself as icon of the Father, and anything an iconographer does is a pale imitation of that, yet a real imitation of it none the less.

An incarnational spiritual path

Unlike words, icons are not abstract conceptions in our heads, but experience of our senses which our minds reflect upon. It gives an objectivity to our reflection about faith, and Gods interaction with the universe of which we are a part. Our labour is in some rudimentary way, even without faith, Christ centred, or at least Christ focused. This is stronger when iconography is done in a community of friends, of consecrated persons or of dedicated artists, so that the Presence of Jesus fulfils Scripture: where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them. The objective reality is shaped by the common faith and the icon re-inforces that and re-echoes that in the subconscious of each individual. When this has a liturgical focus in which the icon is allowed to speak the nurturing of the soul and mind is tangible. The icon is a work of proclamation, as I mentioned in a previous lecture, and its whole design is to present the prototype to the worshipper, so as the iconographer works on doing this, so he is in turn worked upon.

The iconographer thus sits before the icon, as a participant in this process, and in a very profound way the icon becomes his way of prayer, that his the foundation of the way God relates and saves him, and his humble response. As Florensky said, icon painting is the occupation of a person who sees the world as sacred, and while this is primarily about the Holy Fathers who establish the main designs and types of icons, it can also, I would say, be extended at least to a degree to all those who in fact paint them because the process of making the icon is not to be constrained as one of simple slavishness which those without faith can easily do, but a genuine engagement with a disciple before His Master. If not, then iconography becomes a very empty and robotic manufacture rather than the Creator resonating through His creations rational pinnacle in the work of prayer.

As iconography is an authentic meeting with Christ so it can and should be the path to great sanctity, but you can be a good iconographer while deeply sinful if that is combined at least with a deep craving for the mercy of God and the humility of the publican in the temple. In other words the iconographer needs to carve out a path of repentance, of the desire to become more and more united with Christ and the more creative an iconographer desires to be the more the need for true, clear sight grows. When we are so turned in on ourselves, or so consumed with desire for aspects of creation, we loose sight of the whole picture and become darkened within. This darkness casts a veil over our eyes. St Paul talks about seeing darkly as in a mirror but after this life we will see face to face. We cannot see things as they really are, as God has made them, or more significantly what they are created to be, when our sight is so dull and our eyes so weak. For there to be sight the light coming from our heart must be in harmony with the light coming from God. Gods extravagant generosity in spreading out such a feast of creations beauty needs be met by mans thankfulness if this feast is to be joyous rather than debauched. its beauty consists of it being a manifestation of the personal God. The cosmos is not a show of vanity, but a showing forth of love.[10] The iconographer as a fashioner of matter, a shaper of things, who moulds paint into beauty, can obviously do this with much more alacrity when he can himself see the world transfigured, and that can only come when he is transfigured himself.

Henri Nouwen spoke about the spiritual life as having three movements - from hostility to hospitality, from loneliness to solitude and from illusion to prayer. Prayer draws us into the very presence of Ultimate Being, i.e. of God Himself. Prayer draws us more and more into the Light, where our delusions and illusions about ourselves and our place in the world are stripped away. The icon is art fundamentally devoid of illusion, with its pared down features, omission of shadows, its angular draperies and perspectives which compile time from the perspective of eternity. It says that there is more than the eye can see, yet that the eye can see even if only in a limited way. It draws our eye to look, and then to look again, to look beyond and to contemplate realities otherwise beyond us.

For the iconographer the icon is the way of relationship with Christ and his saints, with the heavenly world that is his destiny. It shapes his mentality, and therefore his life.

[1]: http://orthodoxhawaii.org/icons.html (http://orthodoxhawaii.org/icons.html)

[2]: Pavel Florensky, p.72

[3]: Florensky, ibid. p.64

[4]: Florensky, ibid. p.67

[5]: Michel Quenot, The Icon, p. 147

[6]: Florensky, op.cit. p.67

[7]: Aidan Hart, Beauty, Spirit, Matter, p.117.

[8]: Lynette Martin, Sacred Doorways, p.218

[9]: Ouspensky, quoted by Quinot, op.cit. p.218

[10]: Aidan Hart, op. cit., p.117.