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Note: these excerpt threads are
subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority
permits
Adian Hart: "Biblical and patristic teaching on our divinely appointed task can be isembody in the three classical images of prophet, king and priest. Another way of expressing these roles is to say that we were created to be the poets, artists and musical conductors of the cosmos. These are our tasks which, like steps, will lead us up Mount Tabor not only to behold Christ transfigured, but to be transfigured with Him. These are all aspects of the single divine-human workshop of the Church, whose task is to weave a garment for Christ from the whole cosmos so that it might be transfigured with Him... God created each thing with a word, a logos spoken by the Logos Himself. Furthermore, the Fathers teach that each of these words continue within that created thing, be it rock, tree or creature. These are the logoi from the Logos. By the grace of God and our repentance, our senses are purified so that we can hear, can sense these words hidden within each created thing. Gradually we perceive that these individual words in fact form a pattern. We realize that the cosmos is in a poem of love from the Creator to us, a fragrance trailing behind the divine Lover which woos us to find Him... Our task is not to merely reorganise this created world, let alone treat it as an endless supply of free goods. Our task is rather to marry earth to heaven, to unite it to God. We are called to weave the beautiful raw creation into a garment for the Church, so that it might participate in its transfiguration. The very word cosmos - adornment - suggests that this is its purpose... what has been said of the priest in the Divine Liturgy can be seen in a more limited way of the iconographer: he holds the whole world in his hand like an apple. The iconographer takes representatives of all three levels of creation and fashions them into an ark for God. Pigments are mainly from the mineral kingdom, the wooden panel represents the whole vegetable kingdom, and the egg yolk binder represents the animal kingdom. Operating within the inspired council of the Church, he is meant to skillfully weave these materials into a garment for Christ and His saints, to make the invisible visible... To conclude, we must return to Christ, who is The Icon, The Prophet and Poet, The King and Artist, The Priest and Conductor. Our priesthood derives from participation in His priesthood. What we, the first Adam failed to do, Christ, the Second Adam accomplished. We can fulfill our task of uniting the created with the Creator only in the divine-human community of the Church, the Body of Christ..." Transfiguring Matter "Real humans are small gods; in Christ they are corulers of the universe. The universe is contained within man: when man falls, all creation falls with him and in him; when man rises in Christ, all creation rises, and sits with him in heavenly places. Man is to the cosmos what his own heart is to his body; by him the universe is offered as a hymn of praise to God, in the same way that the saints offer to God their whole selves - body, soul and spirit - upon the altar of their hearts. Through this transformation and offering of the physical world ... man the microtheos makes the good very good, the beautiful very beautiful. In his humility the great God wished man to be his co-worker, and thus ordered the universe in such a way that it needed man's priestly work, one means of the Church redeeming and offering the material world... When man, who is the soul and the sanctuary of the cosmos, is transfigured, so too is the cosmos, just as Christ's garments shone whiter than snow at his transfiguration... The cosmos shines not by itself but precisely as cosmos as man's adornment as man's priestly garment as a vast temple for the worshipping Church of the living God... Icons not only declare that God has become flesh, but they are themselves a means of extending this mystical descent of the Eternal One into created time and space..." The Sacrament of Iconography "Just as the Holy Spirit moved over the face of the waters on the first day of creation, and effected the Word of the Father in created works; just as he brought the formlessness of the primeval created world into the fullness of the seventh day, so also does he now, through the Body of Christ, transform mere biological life into personal, spiritual, communal life. The sacramental life of the Church, nearly always involving the sanctification of something material, is not only a means of saving man, but also of redeeming matter... An icon is made from wood, earth, ground stones, egg, gold-that is, from representatives of all the kingdoms of this world: the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. These good things, like individual notes of music, are drawn together by the composer saints into a symphony of praise; they are skillfully managed, like words by a poet, and prophetically declare the works of God. The creation which the first Adam and his sons worshipped, is now being turned by the second Adam and his sons into a cosmic hymn. A fallen world is a fragmented world, a broken cosmos that, being broken, is no longer the adornment that is its true nature. But the Incarnation restores the pristine unity of all things, and even takes them beyond what they were before, into an intimate unity with God through the Son's assumed flesh... Without man as its priest, prophet and king the cosmos was dumb, decapitated. But with its head, with worshipping humanity, the cosmos becomes articulate in thanksgiving to its Maker. Gold rejoiced to be melted, purified, beaten, that it could be offered by the wise men to the Ancient of Days. The frankincense tree was glad to be cut so that it could offer its aromatic gum to the One who brought it into existence from nonexistence and planted it in Paradise. Myrrh was glad to be crushed that it could prophecy the life-giving death of Life..." The Sacrament of Iconography "Icons are like names which the sons of the second Adam give to creation's creatures. Each name reveals the true identity of the thing named. Names are the unveiling of the unique logos of each individual thing, from stone and tree through to human beings. What is the saint, who, after Christ and the mother of God, is the prime subject of icons? A saint is a person who has become what he already is in the mind of God, who has become his God-given name; he is his logos realised, a small logos united to the great Logos. The saint is flesh phenomenon radiated from within by the union of the Creator Logos with his own created logos or hypostasis... Icons invite us to see the world in another way, that is, as God sees it, as much as this is possible for man. If the icon's multi-view perspective initially confuses us, it is precisely because it is challenging our rationalism so that we can become truly rational, so that we can go beyond mere mental concepts and sensual perception and enter the Paradise of God. In that garden, things are seen from the inside out, not from the outside in. Icons unveil the logoi of creation... When the baptised person has entered the seemingly insignificant door of his heart, he finds himself in Paradise, in the open space where Christ walks with his disciples... Then the iconographer paints those whom he has seen with his own spiritual eyes. Then he paints not images of images, but an image taken from the living prototype. Certainly he will receive the physical likeness of the saint from existing icons, but these icons he experiences sacramentally, not as a replacement for the real thing, but as a sacramental bearer of the very person depicted..." The Sacrament of Iconography "We are made in God’s image. But God is three, triune. He is a communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is why we can say that God is love, even before He created anything outside of Himself to love. While each person of the Trinity is fully God, each goes out of themselves in love for the others. The Church Fathers have called this an ecstasy, which means literally a going out from one’s place. We also are created to be ecstatic beings, longing always to go out of ourselves in love for God and for others. Each one of us is not a part of the whole, but are the whole. At the same time, each one of us exists not in isolation but as members of one another. We cannot see our own faces but are seen by others. To be ourselves we need to be seen and loved by another... beside being bodies we are also souls. And at the core of our being is the spiritual heart, and the seeing or perceiving faculty of the heart is what the Greek Fathers call the nous. By this nous we can know and be known in an unmediated way. Through the rational faculty we can know about things and people, but we cannot know them as they are in themselves. But the nous can do this... Through the heart we can know people from the inside out... so to live the miracle of being truly human requires a life of the heart. The heart is created to unite all the faculties of body and mind and emotions in the cause of love. But to enter this inner garden wherein God walks needs calling upon the mercy of Christ, who has died to open the door to Paradise. It needs sacrifice and even death..." Icons and the Human Heart "What does it mean to be an icon, an image of God? Unlike a painted icon, we are living icons. We are flesh and blood, living creatures with heart and mind. This means that we are not static icons but have implanted in us a longing to be united to our archetype, to God Himself. So to be truly human is to be more than human. To be truly human is to become nothing less than gods by grace. Every fiber of our being thirsts for this union with God... the pure in heart are those who are only heart, who are all eye, all ear, who are fully human. The pure are those who are their true selves and not a series of masks. It is surely significant that the English word holy means whole. If I am physically unwell and am in pain it is difficult to concentrate on others. If I am whole, then I can forget myself and enter the joys and sorrows of the other, become all eye, all ear for them. So to the extent that I become my true self, I can forget myself and love the other, can discover God in the other..." Icons and the Human Heart "There is only one human nature. Each one of us, unique as we are, participate in this one nature. If we truly realized this the world would be a different place. I would experience my neighbor’s suffering and my neighbor’s pain as quite literally my own, because it is our nature which is suffering, our nature which is rejoicing... When we learn to live this identity of our shared nature a miracle occurs. I share in another man’s suffering nature, and I find that I am sharing in Christ’s divinity. I behold and love my own flesh and blood - that is, my fellow human - and I find that I am beholding and loving the Creator of the universe... So to be human is to love. The more we thirst for God, the more God opens our eyes to behold Him in other people... The thirsting soul is granted to see profound beauty in others. She is like a bee who seeks the nectar of a lone flower in a concrete yard. The hungry soul naturally seeks out all that is good in those whom she meets. When she does encounter sin in the other, she does not treat this sin as part of their true person, but as something foreign to them. We can learn to live in this way by meeting saints. In the presence of the saint we are changed... They speak to us as a citizen of God’s creation. They speak to us from that Paradise, and so their words and deeds carry the scents of that place. This fragrance reminds us of the time we were in Paradise, in the loins of Adam and Eve. And so a meeting with a saint gives birth to longing, nostalgia. He or she awakens in us longing for our Edenic homeland..." Icons and the Human Heart "The saint, the true human, does not teach. He feels that he is less than all others. But because he is full of light, and we have so much darkness, it cannot be otherwise than that his or her light enters our darkness. We feel that he speaks to us from another place - not a foreign place, but from our homeland. He does not teach, he merely describes the place where he lives. Being with him, I realize that it is I who am in a foreign land, and it is he who is at home. The saint does not threaten me. Because he is already dead to this world he has nothing mortal to lose and therefore to defend. The saint has removed the masks, so he is what he is. He is natural, spontaneous. He can afford to be natural because he has nothing to hide... And the saint does not only understood and cherish the things I share with him; he also transforms them, bringing out their deeper levels..." Icons and the Human Heart "We have said that each of us is a profound mystery... The Church Fathers teach us that while God is truly knowable through His uncreated energies which flow out to us, He is also utterly unknowable in His essence. I remember the day when it was revealed to me that each person too is unknowable in their essence. From that day, with varying degrees of clarity, I have felt a tremendous awe of people. Each person is a created god, a being with hidden depths before which even angels tremble...The lives of the saints show us what profound effect repentance has on others, and continues to have after their departure from this life. To be human is awesome, if only we knew it. Standing in your midst, I am standing amidst little gods. Each one of us is a new holy place, holy because God has revealed Himself there. Each one of us is new holy mountain..." Icons and the Human Heart |