Conclusion

East and West were united in the struggle to defend images. Today, centuries later, the West has rediscovered the icon and its profound theological and liturgical significance. The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium makes explicit mention of the Second Council of Nicaea and refers to its decrees on icons (No. 51); paragraph 67 of the Constitution states: “Let those decrees, given in the early days regarding the cult of images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, be religiously observed.” The icon “lives” in personal and liturgical prayer. Pope John Paul II has observed that “art for art’s sake, which only refers to the author, without establishing a relationship with the divine world, does not have its place in the Christian concept of the icon. No matter what style is adopted, all sacred art must express the faith and hope of the Church. The tradition of the icon shows that the artist must be conscious of fulfilling a mission of service to the Church” (Duodecimum Saeculum, No. 11) And Patriarch Dimitrios I has stated that “the presence of icons in Churches, as the priests celebrate and the faithful pray, is the realization of that moment when the mystery of the communion of saints in adoration of the Trinitarian God will be accomplished: the communion of all who were pleasing to God and who form the praying Church of today and of centuries to come. And the veneration of icons in the worship of the Church is of even greater importance, because it draws the faithful who venerate them closer to God, to the hypostatic presence of the persons portrayed and to the sacramental gestures celebrated in the fear of the Lord” (Encyclical, 15 September 1987, No. 30). Images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints placed in Churches frequently become icons of the ecclesial space they occupy. What is more, very often the liturgical space is occupied not only by faces, but also by a narration of the history of salvation. The representation of God’s revelation in the past comes to be fully realised in the present and in the future. Iconography has found its proper setting, the Church, and its proper time, the calendar of liturgical feasts. The Liturgy has become the context and the official reference point for images.

In the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, decorated with mosaics at the wish of the Holy Father in the years 1996-99, the mosaic iconography was planned in relation to the places of celebration – the chair, the lectern, the altar, in order to underline the two movements in the history of salvation celebrated in the Liturgy. The side walls illustrate the descending movement, God’s descent into humanity, and the ascending movement, the divinisation of mankind. The chair is set near the entrance wall of the Chapel and portrays the Christ of the parousia, who comes to celebrate the final Eucharist with humanity. The lectern is at the centre of the Chapel, corresponding to the Christ Pantocrator who dominates the ceiling. The altar is located close to the back wall, which portrays the nuptial banquet in the heavenly Jerusalem, dominated by the Most Holy Trinity and at whose centre is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Iconography ought to reveal the human and yet be a transparent image of the divine. There is a need to rediscover the synergy existing between celebration, architecture and iconography. Apart from this synergy, there can be no genuine liturgical art, but only generic sacred art. We need to return to the tradition of the holy Fathers, and to let icons come alive in their appropriate context: that of personal prayer and liturgical celebration. The Liturgy enables the mystery of Christ to become the mystery of the Church, so that Christians may become, in the eloquent expression of Irenaeus of Lyons, “the Son of God himself,” (Adv. Haer., III, 19,1): icons are a precious help along the way of our assimilation to Christ.

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Iconography and Liturgy

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