Living and dead icons: our eternal image before God
This Sunday, the Church commemorates the Holy Fathers who defended Orthodoxy against the heresy of iconoclasm. Yet today we will look at the icon as an image we paint with our very lives.
The word “icon” in Greek means an image. Everything that surrounds us, including ourselves, is an icon created by the Divine Logos. All that is visible is an iconic embodiment of the ideas of God, which have always existed in Him.
The entire Universe is an icon painted by the Creator.
Every part of it is multilayered. To understand its essence, one must grasp the meaning of each image—a task beyond human power. We see only the surface, the very first layer, often unaware that it is but a tiny fragment of what each icon contains within itself.
This applies to all living and “non-living” nature. I put “non-living” in quotation marks deliberately, for the Living God created everything alive. Even a stone, which seems dead to us, has its own mysterious connection with the Creator. What the great Artist conceived about His creation is known only to Him. It is a mystery hidden even from the greatest of Angels.
We paint our eternal image
A human being, made in the image of God, has also been granted the ability to be a creator of icons. I do not mean artistic creation, but something else. Each day, everyone leaves behind countless images – reflections of ourselves in everything we encounter, even in what we merely think about.
Every gesture, action, and word is a stroke of iconographic paint.
Each of these strokes carries its own spiritual taste, fragrance, and color. We apply them to people and life circumstances – to everything our soul touches. They are forever imprinted in what we call eternal memory.
When a person’s earthly journey ends, the work on the icon of their soul is finished. What has been painted can no longer be rewritten. This icon becomes that person’s eternal new name. Centuries will pass, the world will collapse, “the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10), but that name will remain forever.
It is sorrowful to see people who, swept away by the fleeting river of time and driven by ambition, pride, and self-importance, are willing to paint their eternal image with the blood of the innocently slain – with the colors of pain, suffering, and torment of their victims. We are all wanderers and strangers on this earth, and all of us will face the Judgment of God.
The dead spirit and the living connection with God
We must also learn to distinguish colors to see what is in a person’s soul, not by what they say, but by what shines within their eyes, by the faint fragrance of their heart that even screens cannot conceal. The devil clothes himself in the garments of bright angels, yet the spirit with which demons approach the human soul is unmistakable. One can play a role, pretend, but one can never mask what comes from the very depths of one’s being.
New technologies will keep altering human consciousness – more and more so with time. It matters little which side of the barricades these people stand on; what matters is that they will soon begin to suffocate from the malice pumped into them by propaganda. There’s no point in convince someone whose heart has been struck down to its deepest core.
The world is changing rapidly. Love in it is growing scarce, while pain and suffering born of human pride, greed, and hatred are multiplying.
One is not dead because they have stopped breathing, but because they have lost their living connection with the Living God. The dead teach how to live, to believe, to love, and to pray. The dead bury their dead. Today, a dead spirit fills social networks, television, and the news. The media have become generators of hate energy. The world is preparing to meet the emissary of the prince of darkness and is dressing itself in black garments.
Simplicity as the beginning of all beginnings
But, thank God, there are still living icons. Those who have managed to preserve kindness and purity of sight. Those who have not forgotten how to rejoice, to be amazed, to forgive, and to give thanks. Those who have not lost their connection with Life. They are bound to it by an umbilical cord that comes from the heart.
It is not intellect, erudition, or education that distinguishes these people. Above all, it is simplicity.
Simplicity is the beginning of all beginnings – the thread upon which various beads of virtues are strung.
It is sad to hear when someone, speaking about a high-ranking cleric, enthusiastically shares how he did such and such alongside simple monks, priests, or parishioners. We have elevated what is normal to the rank of virtue. When an abbot labors alongside his monks, it is not a virtue but the norm of life. When a bishop behaves in his eparchy not as a ruler but as a mere mortal, which he truly is, it is also a simple human norm, nothing more. What is abnormal is when a clergyman is head and shoulders above his flock.
The icon we paint of ourselves determines our place in eternity.
God has given each of us His brushes and paints. Of course, they are different for each of us. Some have more talents, others fewer, but everyone possesses them. And when you look at the true beauty of a human soul, you realize that this is the greatest miracle that the Lord has created.
