History of Byzantine Iconography (con'd)

Liturgical Art is not only our offering to God, but also God’s descent into our midst, one of the forms in which is accomplished the meeting of God with man, of grace with nature, eternity with time. The meaning of church art, and in particular of the icon, is that it transmits, or rather testifies visually to the reality of God and of the world, of grace and of nature. Thus, through the icon, as through the Holy Scriptures we not only learn about God, but also know God.

The icon never strives to stir the emotions of the faithful. Its task is not to provoke in them natural human emotion, but to guide every emotion as well as the reason and all the other faculties of human nature on the way toward transfiguration. Sanctity not only has a personal, but also a general human as well as a cosmic significance. Therefore, the visible world represented in the icon changes, becomes the image of the future unity of the whole creation – The Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. All that is depicted in the icon reflects not the disorder of our sinful world, but Divine Order, peace, a realm governed not by earthly logic, not by human morality, but by Divine Grace. This is why what we see in the icon is so unlike what we see in ordinary life.

Thus, the icon is both the way and the means; it is prayer itself.

Byzantine art and Byzantine iconography are not obsolete. It is the art of the 21^st century. By the world over it is considered to be a form of modern art. This is true because it is the first art born in the souls of Christians and spirituality has not been replaced in any other style of art.