Orthodox icons are seen as 'theology in color'
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Large icons are painted on the ceiling leading up to the huge resurrection icon behind the altar at the St. Ignatius Church at Antiochian Village outside Ligonier. -
Mother Alexandra and Father Anthony Yazge with the huge resurrection icon at Antiochian Village outside Ligonier.
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On a wall behind the altar of an Orthodox camp chapel near Ligonier is a larger-than-life icon of Jesus freeing souls from Hades.
The 8-foot Jesus, robed in white, stands on his broken cross. Its shards also represent the shattered gates of Hades, which in Orthodox theology is where the righteous and unrighteous await judgment. Grasping the hands of Adam and Eve, he raises them from a dark pit.
The icon illustrates an ancient understanding of Jesus' resurrection as the gift he offers to all humanity on a renewed Earth. While all Orthodox churches are filled with icons, the Resurrection icon in the camp chapel at Antiochian Village retreat and conference center is one of the largest in Pennsylvania and possibly the United States.
"An icon is theology in color," said Mother Alexandra, founder of the Convent of St. Thekla, which also is on the grounds of Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Westmoreland County. The center, which also houses a museum and bookstore, is a ministry of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
Today Eastern and Western Christians all celebrate Easter. Most years the Orthodox celebrate after Catholics and Protestants because they use a different formula to calculate the date of Easter and also observe it according to the Julian calendar. The Orthodox and Catholic churches were originally one, but split in 1054. Orthodoxy is dominant in the east, Catholicism in the west. Protestants split from Catholicism centuries later.
Icons are part of the essence of Orthodoxy, and are also venerated by Eastern Catholics. The images of Jesus and the saints are believed to reveal God's word much as the Bible does, with Scripture and icon complementing each other. Believers who gaze on icons in prayer say their minds and hearts are drawn to God.
"We sometimes refer to icons as doorways to heaven. Often they are explaining things about God in ways that let us see and enter into the event," said Mother Alexandra, a 44-year-old convert from Catholicism. Outsiders sometimes accuse the Orthodox of idolatry because they pray before images. But they are confusing veneration with worship, she said.
"The only one we worship is God," she said. "But we venerate those in whom we see Christ's light shining through, just as we venerate members of our family when we see that they are holy. Do we have a picture of our loved ones? We do in the church also. The saints are our family."
First Published April 4, 2010 12:00 am
