| It's common to find icons in Episcopal parishes, cathedrals and homes.
The practice has grown in the past few generations as we have learned
more about the tradition from our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters.
Now there are a number of Episcopal artists making icons. This has been
an addition to the long tradition of representational art common in most
Episcopal Churches, e.g., paintings, nativity crèches, statues of Jesus
and saints, crucifixes, etc. The church's artistic tradition is
constantly growing. One of the more recent expansions of the tradition
has come in the establishing of "The
Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts", a program to
"encourage visual arts in the life of the Episcopal Church." It
includes a number of online exhibitions on its website and has begun to
generate energetic conversations about the role of visual arts in our
spiritual journeys.
 |
Icon of Our Lady of Tenderness (2000-012)
- One of the new icons in the Church Center
chapel (Episcopal News Service photo by
Arthur Evans) |
From The Episcopalian, September 1989
By definition, an "icon" (from the original Greek)
participates in the nature of the original. The word appears in the
first chapter of Genesis: God creates humanity as an icon of himself.
God creates us not as a portrait or a mirror image, but to participate
in his very nature. God is the first iconographer, and we are the icons
of God. ... Icons are not decoration. They say to the worshipper that
the congregation includes those not only those present, but also the
saints and angels in heaven. Icons enable us to visualize participation
in the very nature of God; they allow us to look into heaven.
..noted spiritual author Henri Nouwen says that after gazing for several
hours at a Russian painting of Christ, "I saw what I had never seen
before. I knew immediately that my eyes had been blessed in a special
way."
(See Nouwen's Behold
the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons
From Praying with Icons by Basil Minchin, 1979. Minchin was
attached to Canterbury Cathedral at the time.
At your place of prayer , and
after any prayer of preparation you wish to make, knowing yourself to be
in the Presence of God, look at the Icons you have chosen, or rather,
let the Icons look, at you. Let the Icon of the Blessed Trinity, of God
Incarnate, of His Mother, or of His Saints, or a Gospel 'happening' like
the Nativity, speak to you as the large-eyed persons hold your
attention. If you want to intellectualise your prayer for a while, try
to formulate what seems to you the important theological point of the
Icon. As you always have, tell God that you love Him, that you are sorry
for offending His Love, how you enjoy the communion of His saints, pray
for your loved ones, for the world, and that His will may be done.
Submit to whatever God may think is good for you, and thank Him for His
gifts and joys. Then seal the new, or renewed, relationship that you
have found by kissing Christ and/or His saints present in the Icons.
Examples of Episcopal Churches Making Use of Icons
St. John's in the
Village
St. Gregory of
Nyssa
A variety of links on icons
Icons
and Prayer - on the website The Episcopal Church and the
Visual Arts
Frequently
Asked Questions About Icons
Orthodox
Icons
The
Jesus Prayer With Icons
A Guide to
Byzantine Icons on the Internet
Icon
Painting
St.Andrei Rublev
Icon Studio
John
of Damascus: In Defense of Icons, c. 730
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