In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
----------------------------------------------------------------
PDF version of this file
Daily Meditations
PRAYING WITH ICONS AND STATUES
July 19th, 2017
Icons and statuary
make important contributions to any spiritual environment that nurtures prayer.
Morning after morning, I used to watch a ninety-eight-year-old woman walk
brightly into church and take her usual seat. She would turn her head slightly
to the right and give a nod to the statue of Mary and then turn her head a good
deal more to the left and wink at the statue of St. Joseph. She would then sit
down in her pew and produce a number of prayer cards and place them in a row in
front of her. Finally, she would reach her arm into her vast purse and pull out
yards of rosary. Now ready to begin her prayers, her body assumed an obvious
and deep recollection. I don’t think she said a word from any of those prayer
cards or the rosary. Yet she was convinced she was forgetful during prayer and
wanted to hear no talk of what seemed to the naked eye to be the obvious truth:
she was immersed in the Silence in which the Word speaks Silence, the depthless
depth that all prayer leads to and emerges from.
Statues and icons
serve as visual mantras to help us focus. Icons especially seem to open up to
us in such a way that we are drawn into them. Some people, in fact, will place
an icon in front of them during the time of prayer and use it instead of a
prayer word to bring themselves back whenever they become distracted. Not a few
people will keep an icon of Christ or of the Theotokos (Mary with the infant
Jesus on her lap) on their desk or some other appropriate place at work. This
can be a great help in cultivating a prayerful inner stance throughout the day.
But there is a caveat in using external objects: we keep our attention focused
on an object of awareness. This has its place in certain formal prayers and
communal worship. But those maturing on the path of contemplation will miss the
subtler dynamics of contemplation that happen within awareness itself
and not on the screen of the awareness.
At some point, even if
it is on our deathbed, a great inner vastness opens up from within awareness.
It is not an object of awareness, and it is not our own subjectivity. Embracing
both objectivity and subjectivity, it washes onto the shores of perception, an
experience people often describe in metaphors of inner spaciousness, abiding
calm, luminous vastness. But these labels fail to pin it down, for there is
neither the subject nor the object that English syntax demands. Praying with statues
and icons has. an unquestionably valuable role, but it is a limited role; for
it exercises the attention in focusing on external objects of awareness, when
the thrust of contemplative practice is to cultivate what is beyond
subject-object dualism. One might rightly say that the prayer word is in effect
an object of awareness, albeit more interior than an external object like an
icon or statue.
Indeed, it is. That is
why we will at some point drop the prayer word; or the prayer word will blossom
from within as non-dual awareness-there is simply no one there to pray. There
is just an icon, just a statue, just a prayer word, but no separate and
independent person who is praying. This is a great inner liberation, the
transfer-to use a Pauline metaphor- to the Kingdom of His Beloved Son (see Col
1:12-20). But none of this shows up on a CCTV camera.
~Martin Laird, A
Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
http://www.saintsophiadc.com/2017/07/praying-icons-statues/
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/so-catholics-worship-statues
RETURN TO CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN TOOLS PAGE
The first commandment says:
I am the
Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for
yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you
shall not bow down to them or serve them (Ex. 20:2–5).
Well-meaning Evangelicals and Fundamentalists,
armed with the above text, often try to use it against Catholics: How can God make it
any clearer than this? We are not to have ‘graven images,’ or statues, yet what
do you see in almost every Catholic Church around the world? Statues!
This is the definition of idolatry. And please, do not give me any of this
nonsense about equating the statues in your churches to carrying a photograph
of a loved one in your wallet. In Exodus 20, as well as in Deuteronomy 5:7–8,
God specifically says we are not to make statues in the shape of anything in
the sky above, the earth below or the waters beneath the earth. How
are we to respond?
Clarifications
The Catholic Church does not believe any statue
or image has any power in and of itself. The beauty of statues and icons move
us to the contemplation of the Word of God as he is himself or as he works in
his saints. And, according to Scripture, as well as the testimony of the
centuries, God even uses them at times to impart blessings (e.g., healings)
according to his providential plan.
While it can certainly be understood how a superficial
reading of the first commandment could lead one to believe we Catholics are in
grave error with regard to our use of statues and icons, the key to a proper
understanding of the first commandment is found at the very end of that same
commandment, in verse 5 of Exodus 20: “You
shall not bow down to them or serve [adore] them.”
The Lord did not prohibit statues; he prohibited
the adoration of them. If God truly meant that we were not to possess any
statues at all, then he would later contradict himself. Just five chapters
after this commandment in Exodus 20, God commanded Moses to build the ark of
the Covenant, which would contain the presence of God and was to be venerated
as the holiest place in all of Israel. Here is what God commanded Moses concerning
the statues on it:
And you
shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the
two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on
the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on
its two ends (Ex. 25:18–19).
In Numbers 21:8–9, not only did our Lord order
Moses to make another statue in the form of a bronze serpent, he commanded the
children of Israel to look to it in order to be healed. The context of the
passage is one where Israel had rebelled against God, and a plague of deadly
snakes was sent as a just punishment. This statue of a snake had no power
of itself—we know from John 3:14 it was merely a type of Christ—but God used
this image of a snake as an instrument to effect healing in his people.
Further, in 1 Kings 6, Solomon built a temple
for the glory of God, described as follows:
In the
inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high. . . .
He put the cherubim in the innermost part of the house. . . . He carved all the
walls of the house round about with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees,
and open flowers, in the inner and outer rooms. . . . For the entrance to the
inner sanctuary he made doors of olivewood. . . . He covered the two doors of
olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers; he overlaid
them with gold (1 Kgs. 6:23, 27, 29, 31, 32).
King Solomon ordered the construction of
multiple images of things both “in heaven above” (angels) and “in the earth
beneath” (palm trees and open flowers). And then, after the completion of the
temple, God declared he was pleased with its construction (1 Kgs. 9:3). Didn't
God know what King Solomon had done? It becomes apparent, given the above
evidence, that a strictly literal interpretation of Exodus 20:2–5 is erroneous.
Otherwise, we would conclude that God prohibits something in Exodus 20 that he
commands elsewhere.
RETURN TO CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN TOOLS PAGE
Guiding Us Home
Why would God use these images of serpents,
angels, palm trees, and open flowers? Why didn’t he heal the people directly
rather than use a “graven image”? Why didn’t he command Moses and Solomon to
build an ark and a temple void of any images at all?
First, God knows what his own commandments mean.
He never condemned the use of statues absolutely. Second, God created man as a
being who is essentially spiritual and physical. In order to draw us to
himself, God uses both spiritual and physical means. He will use statues, the
temple, or even creation itself to guide us to our heavenly home.
Psalm 19:1 tells us: The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims
his handiwork.”
Romans 1:20 says: Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his
eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have
been made.
Gazing at a sunset—or a great painting of a
sunset—and contemplating the greatness of God through the beauty of his
creation is not idolatry. Nor is it idolatrous to look at statues of great
saints of old in order to honor them for the great things God has done
through them. It is no more idolatrous for us to desire to imitate their holy
lives and honor them than it was for St. Paul to exhort the Corinthians to
imitate his own holy life (1 Cor. 4:16) and to “esteem very highly” those who
were “over [the Thessalonians] in the Lord and admonish [them]” (1 Thess.
5:12–13).
Jesus Is the Reason
It is Jesus Christ himself who gives us the
ultimate example of the value of statues and icons. Indeed, Christ, in his
humanity, has opened up an entirely new economy of iconography and statuary.
Christ becomes for us the ultimate reason for all representations of
the angels and saints. Why do we say this? Colossians 1:15 tells us Christ is,
“The image (Gr.-icon) of the invisible God.” Christ is the ultimate
icon! And what does this icon reveal to us? He reveals God the Father. When
Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” in John 14:9, he does not
mean that he is the Father. He isn’t. He’s the Son. Hebrews 1:3 tells
us Christ “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature.”
That is the essence of what statues and icons are. Just as “the word became
flesh” (John 1:14) and revealed the Father to us in a manner beyond the
imaginings of men before the advent of Christ, representations of God’s holy
angels and saints are also icons of Christ who by their heroic virtue
“reflect the glory of God” as well. Just as St. Paul told the Corinthians to
hold up his own life as a paradigm when he said, “I urge you, then, be
imitators of me,” the Church continues to hold up great men and women of faith
as “icons” of the life of Christ lived in fallen human nature aided by grace.
RETURN TO CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN TOOLS PAGE
Adoration Is As Adoration Does
Many Protestants will claim that, while the
Catholic may say he does not adore statues, his actions prove
otherwise. Catholics kiss statues, bow down before them, and pray in front of
them. According to these same Protestants, that represents the adoration that
is due God alone. Peter, when Cornelius bowed down to adore him,
ordered him to “stand up; I too am a man” (Acts 10:26). When John bowed down
before an angel, the angel told him, “You must not do that! I am a fellow
servant with you” (Rev. 19:10). But Catholics have no problem bowing down
before what is less—a statue of Peter or John!
Is kissing or kneeling down before a statue the
same as adoring it? Not necessarily. Both Peter in Acts 10 and the angel
in Revelation 19 rebuked Cornelius and John, respectively, specifically for
adoring them as if each was adoring the Lord. The problem was not with the
bowing; it was with the adoration. Bowing does not necessarily entail
adoration. For example, Jacob bowed to the ground on his knees seven times to
his elder brother Esau (Gen. 33:3), Bathsheba bowed to her husband David (1
Kgs. 1:16), and Solomon bowed to his mother Bathsheba (1 Kgs. 2:19). In fact,
in Revelation 3:9, John records the words of Jesus:
Behold, I
will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are
not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and
learn that I have loved you.
Here, John uses the same verb for “bow down” (proskuneo)
that he used in Revelation 19:10 for “adoration” when he acknowledged his own
error in adoring the angel. Would anyone dare say that Jesus would make
someone commit idolatry? Of course not!
I argue that in a sense, Jesus is saying to
those who do not know him, "You can either bow down to my people (respect
and honor them) now in this life, or I will compel you to do so in the next.
It's your choice." But however you interpret Rev. 3:9, it is probably the
clearest example in the New Testament of why bowing does not equal adoring (or
worshipping).
This may sound shocking to Christians raised in
what has become a very cold Western world that has lost, for the most part, a
true affective sense. On one side we have a culture that has become
so inundated with everthing sexual, we've lost what the ancient people of God
did not so much put to words as they did live from the core of
their collective being. They knew how to love and respect each other.
St. Paul, for example, encouraged Christians to greet one another with a
holy kiss (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26).
"Are you kidding me, St. Paul? Get away
from me, pal!"
On the other side, we have a large portion of Protestants
who fear any act of reverence directed toward a human or angel will bring the
immediate wrath of a "jealous God." How far is this removed from what
we saw from Jesus in Rev. 3:9, or from the clergy in Ephesus who we find
embracing and kissing Paul after his final discourse to them in Acts
20:37. As the context of these passages make clear, these are acts of
affection, not adoration. And, Lord have mercy, they are certainly
not representative of anything untoward.
Conclusion
I suppose the message we should send to those outside of
the Catholic Church who don't get why we bow down before, kiss, put flowers in
front of, etc. statues and icons, is that we Catholics take very seriously
the biblical injunctions to praise and honor great members of God’s family (see,
for example, Ps. 45:17; Luke 1:48; 1 Thess. 5:12–13; 1 Tim. 5:17; 1 Pet. 5:5–6,
etc.). And we do not change our beliefs because either the world, or certain
people who name the name of Christ may walk away from them.
We also believe, as Scripture makes very clear,
that death does not separate us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:38), or from
his body, which is the Church (Col. 1:24). Our “elders in heaven” (cf. Rev.
5:8) should be honored as much or even more than our greatest members on
earth. So having statues honoring God or great saints brings to mind the God we
adore and the saints we love and respect. This is a no-brainder for
Catholics. To us, having statues is just as natural as—you guessed
it—having pictures in our wallets to remind us of the ones we love here on
earth. But reminding ourselves of loved ones is a far cry from idolatry. If you
would like to dive deeper into this topic and others related to it, I would
recommend
Friends in High Places Catholic Answers Press $29.95 Speaker:
Tim Staples 6 CD’s 340 minutes
RETURN TO CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN TOOLS PAGE
----------------------------------------------------------------
In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
----------------------------------------------------------------
© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
+ + + + + + + + + + + +
