Images for Prayer
Submitted by Jeff Geerling on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 3:22am
As we celebrate all the Saints today, we know we have a great gift in the Church of beautiful images which not only remind us of the great men and women that went before us in faith, but also lead us to prayer. Earlier this year, Zenit ran a wonderful article outlining the ability for sacred icons to lead people to prayer:
ROME, MARCH 5, 2009 (Zenit.org) — To learn the art of icons is to learn the art of prayer that leads to communion with God, according to an iconographer and teacher who just finished imparting a specialized course in Rome.
Fabio Nones, doctor in theology and director of a center of iconography in Trent, Italy, concluded last Saturday an advanced course for a select group of artists in an ecumenical center near the Vatican.
Nones explained to ZENIT that there is a great difference between an artist, in the ordinary sense of the word, and a painter of icons.
"The artist who creates a work of ark looks to communicate his sentiments, his vision of the world," he explained. "Meanwhile, the painter of icons is called an iconographer and this is a vocation that looks to express through the colors not so much what he feels, his sentiments, but the faith of the Church, of the Christian community he carries inside."
Icons invite to prayer, Nones continued, and "prayer is communion with God; is it not necessarily only to recite formulas but rather to live in communion with his presence and thus certainly in painting an icon, I pray to have a very strong communion with God."
The artist contended that icons are not just for experts but an invitation for everyone, because "art is very impoverished at the spiritual level and people seek the sacred more than religious art, as an instrument to communion with God, to arrive to God."
The icon in one such "very strong" instrument, Nones said, "fascinating from this point of view."
