Mosaics!

Shawn Tribe at the New Liturgical Movement found a neat site with ancient mosaics.

From Revenna (yes my favorite!): is this St. George?

From the Vatican News Service: The Tenth Inter-Christian Symposium between Catholics and Orthodox

Theologians representing Rome and the Orthodox are meeting in continuation of a dialogue of two decades. Benedict XVI hopes these talks "will contribute to upholding and corroborating the real - though imperfect - communion that exists between Catholics and Orthodox, so that we may reach that fullness which will one day enable us to concelebrate the one Eucharist."

St. John Chrysostom pray for us.

VATICAN CITY, SEP 17, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father has written a Message to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for the Tenth Inter-Christian Symposium between Catholics and Orthodox, which is being held from September 16 to 19 on the Greek island of Tinos.

The symposium, organized every two years by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality at Rome's Antonianum Pontifical Athenaeum, and by the faculty of theology at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, Greece, aims to study Catholics' and Orthodox' shared patrimony of faith and tradition. The current meeting - which has as its theme "St. John Chrysostom, a bridge between East and West" - coincides with the 1,600th anniversary of the death of that saint, considered as a Father of the Church in both East and West.

In his Message, the Pope expresses his happiness at the fact that the gathering is being held on Tinos "where Orthodox and Catholics coexist fraternally," and he recalls how "ecumenical cooperation in the academic field contributes to maintaining an impetus towards the longed-for communion among all Christians.

On the subject of ecumenical cooperation, the Pope points out how "Vatican Council II recognized in this field an opportunity to involve the entire People of God in the search for full unity."

The Holy Father then goes on to refer to St. John Chrysostom as "a valiant, illuminated and faithful preacher of the Word of God, ... such an extraordinary hermeneutist and speaker that, from the fifth century, he was given the title of Chrysostom, which means golden-mouthed. A man whose contribution to the formation of the Byzantine liturgy is known to everyone," and whose mortal remains "after complex historical events have, since 1626, rested in St. Peter's Basilica."

"In 2004," Pope Benedict writes, "my venerated predecessor John Paul II donated part of the relics to His Holiness Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch, so that the great Father of the Church could be venerated both in the Vatican Basilica and in the church of St. George in Fanar."

The symposium will consider St. John Chrysostom and communion with the Church of the West, studying a number of current problems. This, writes the Pope "will contribute to upholding and corroborating the real - though imperfect - communion that exists between Catholics and Orthodox, so that we may reach that fullness which will one day enable us to concelebrate the one Eucharist.

"And it is to that blessed day," the Holy Father adds in conclusion, "that we look with hope, organizing practical initiatives such as this one."

MESS/SYMPOSIUM:JOHN CHRYSOSTOM/KASPER VIS 070917 (440)

Evangelicals Turn Toward ... the Orthodox Church?

Jason Zengerle, "Evangelicals Turn Toward ... the Orthodox Church? The Iconoclasts" in the August 27th issue of The New Republic.

The New Republic, a generally left of center magazine of opinion, focuses on an interesting phenomenon: the conversion of former evangelicals to Orthodoxy. Movement from such a non-liturgical, even anti-liturgical religion to quintessentially liturgical Christianity is interesting. Jason Zengerle chronicles the journey of Wilbur Ellsworth, once pastor of the First Baptist Church of Wheaton, Illinois, the heart of evangelical Christianity. This journey ended with Ellsworth a priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Antioch is one of the Patriarchal sees. Antioch was where we were first called Christians. Peter was the first bishop.

Zengerle writes, "Ellsworth's story is hardly unique. Most of the approximately 150 members of the Orthodox parish he now leads are former evangelicals themselves. Even Ellsworth's transition from evangelical minister to Orthodox priest is not uncommon. Of the more than 250 parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, some 60 percent are led by convert priests, most of whom are from evangelical backgrounds. And, according to Bradley Nassif, a professor at North Park University and the leading academic expert on Evangelical- Orthodox dialogue, the Antiochian Archdiocese has seen over 150 percent church growth in the last 20 years, approximately 75 percent of which is attributable to converts.

While it's unlikely that the Orthodox Church--which, according to the best estimate, has only 1.2 million American members--will ever pose any sort of existential threat to evangelical Christianity in the United States, it is significant nonetheless that a growing number of Southern Baptists and Presbyterians and Assemblies of God members have left the evangelical fold, turning to a religion that is not only not American, but not even Western. Their flight signals a growing dissatisfaction among some evangelicals with the state of their churches and their complicated relationship with the modern world."

At the First Baptist Church, the church's interior holding the minister, choir, and congregation is called "the sanctuary." Zengerle reveals either his own Evangelical background or limited knowledge of other traditions. I would be most surprised to hear the Orthodox refer to the part of the church in front of the iconostasis as "the sanctuary."

Thanks to Robin Moroney of the Wall Street Journal for the lead.

Why Icons Do Not Look Quite Real

St. John Chrysostom with liturgical Scroll: The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai; Photography by Bruce M. White, 2005

Why Are Icons Not Quite Realistic?

The answer is partly liturgical: because the artists want them to be really real! The church fathers understood the divine liturgy, what we Catholics call the “mass,” as action in which we mortals join the angels, saints, and martyrs in the work of praising God and offering the divine sacrifice.

What does this mean for art? Since our coworkers in the liturgy (those angels, saints, and martyrs) are not here on earth, they should not look like they are here on earth. Their reality is literally otherworldly. The artist must convey the difference between a being that is “really real” (to borrow a phrase from The Last Battle) rather than simply in the flesh. To achieve this, their icons consciously deviate from the use of perspective and other skills used to make a two dimensional picture look like something we see in our three dimensional world.

The ancient Greeks knew perspective. They had the technology to paint realistic paintings. Some time during the long Byzantine period, they lost the ability to portray with perspective. Why? I do not know. If I had to guess, it was because icons’ dominance crowded out painting that was “realistic” in a purely earthly way.

"Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai" at the Getty Museum

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is showing an exhibit of icons, "Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai." The Wall Street Journal’s Tom L. Freudenheim writes about this “inspired and inspiring exhibition.” He tells us it is “a singular event simply because these rare Byzantine works of art have rarely been seen away from their home at St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, and never before in such profusion.”

St. Catherine's is an Orthodox monastery built on the mountain where God spoke to Moses and gave him the law. It is the source of the Sinaiticus codex, one of the earliest and best sources for the scripture. This manuscript is now in the Vatican library.

Freudenheim continues, “The Getty's expansive exhibition catalog suggests that there is much we have yet to learn about the early Christian tradition, in which icons -- painted images of sacred subjects -- were primarily used in private worship, before they became part of Byzantine church decoration. Of the 70 awe-inspiring objects in the exhibition, ranging from the sixth to the 16th centuries, 62 are on loan from St. Catherine's, so it's surprising to learn that they were first published only in the 1950s.” Read on...