Wisdom! Be attentive! Let us pay close attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Heb 2:1). Our Lord has declared our salvation as already begun! How will we escape a just requital if we neglect this declaration (Heb 2:2-3)?

Our salvation in our incarnate Lord and God Jesus Christ is preached to us today. The Lord declares our salvation and those who hear him, attest to that salvation (Heb 2:3). And this proclamation of our salvation is part of our salvation. Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, “I do not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not try to save others.”

We know our salvation because it has been shared with us. Those who knew Jesus, and witnessed his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection proclaim it to the world. And those who believe proclaim it to the next generation and so on and on until the present. This is tradition – traditio – that which is handed down to us from Jesus Christ through his apostles and their successors by the power of the Holy Spirit in unbroken continuity to us here today. This is the gospel to which God bears witness by signs and wonders and various miracles (Heb 2:4) such as the healing of the paralyzed man in today’s gospel (Mark 2:10-12).

A purpose of all of healings and miracles – including those that many of us here today have personally experienced – is to point to our new life in Christ – the everlasting life in Christ – that is, the resurrected and glorified life through death that awaits all of us who come to believe and live faithfully.

If we really hear and really believe the gospel, then we don’t stop with hearing. We can’t. Because it is the gospel that we must go and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). We are to evangelize.

My, how we Catholics often loathe the thought sharing the gospel with our neighbors. Of admitting to people how in love we are with Jesus Christ. But if we don’t share, they won’t know.

We tend to cling to an old model of church growth through fertility – of passive proselytism by propagation if you will. We don’t mind sharing our faith with our children, but we’re terrified of sharing it with a neighbor who might disagree with us about it. I think our accommodation of our surrounding culture has become too deeply ingrained at this point.

We must learn again how to evangelize. How to preach the gospel to the world – to every creature – to the whole cosmos (Mark 16:15). It doesn’t involve casting our pearls before swine (Matt 7:6), but it also doesn’t involve hiding a light under a bushel basket (Matt 5:15). There is mystagogy only for the initiated, there is catechesis for the uninitiated, and there is evangelism for everybody. To all people, we preach Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1:23).

The Philokalia, or the writings of holy father Gregory Palamas in defense of holy hesychasm probably don’t make a good opening salvo in our proclamation of the gospel to the world. These are like pearls before the world’s swine. These are treasures that aid in living the life in Christ, after we have answered his call and entered into his holy mysteries.

But our light shining before all – which comes from living this mystery – is our love for one another, for God, and for all. This is a word for all: Christ, and him crucified – that our God so loves us that he comes among us in every way but sin.

Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). If we never hear this word, we never have an opportunity to believe it. So we must preach the gospel at all times, and use words constantly – not with wise-sounding words, but with the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:17-18).

The words of the gospel are good to speak. They need to be heard. And so they need to be preached – with words – but also with the example of life lived in Christ. The gospel is worth talking about, and it’s even more worth living. Without this, we can actually do a disservice to the gospel we preach. Our hypocrisy can be a bad witness.

I used to be a bumper sticker guy. So, I used to want to put bumper stickers on my car that express my Christian faith, and my own perspective on Christian faith. So I designed one that said, “Is the pope Orthodox?” – playing on the expression “Is the pope Catholic?” And I designed another one that said “Liturgy is Life,” playing off those old “Basketball is life” or “Football is life” stickers that I used to see. Anyway, I’ve always hesitated to actually put Christian bumper stickers on my car because I’m such a bad driver. I mean, I’m all over the road, and I have a lead foot, and I crash into things a lot. I probably shouldn’t have a license. I feared, you understand, being a bad witness. It’s one thing to share with people how much I love liturgical worship, it’s another thing to share it with them while I’m cutting them off in traffic, which is a selfish and unchristian thing to do. Lord, have mercy.

Let us share the gospel with words and with our way of life – and even with how we drive. Evangelism is all-encompassing and cannot be reduced to any technique.

But what is the gospel really – the εὐαγγέλιον – the good news?

Jesus gives a foretaste of the good news today in his healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:10-12). And he has been healing many people. As soon as Jesus begins his ministry, he immediately begins driving out unclean spirits (Mark 1:22-26, 34), lifting up those who lay fevered (Mark 1:29-31), cleansing lepers (Mark 1:40-42), and healing many with various diseases (Mark 1:34).

“What is the point of all of this?” some have objected. All these people that Jesus heals will only get sick again anyway and someday die. There is a seeming finality and inevitability about death. Well, these healings are signs pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel is that our coming healing is not temporary, but everlasting.

Imagine for a moment that you know a doctor who has a diet plan that is the cure for cancer. I’m talking about a cure. Cancer killed both my parents. And it’s killing people right now in its many and varied forms. So it is our enemy and we rightly seek to destroy it. Well, what if you knew a doctor who has the cure? Would you say, I need to tell everybody about this doctor, but only use words when necessary? No, I hope you would tell everyone by every means available to you. I hope you wouldn’t hesitate and worry, what people might think of you if you fail to keep this cancer-curing diet yourself at times. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet, whether you keep it or not. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet using spoken and written words and images and videos and Facebook and social media and everything available to you and yes keep the diet yourself, but even when you fail in some of this, don’t neglect the rest.

Well, the gospel is like this. I really do know a guy who has the cure for cancer. In fact, though my parents are already dead from cancer, he can still cure them. Not only can he, but he has cured them. He has risen them from the dead in the eschaton which is present, as well as future. And I can only see it with eyes of faith, but I can see it. I’ve been given eyes to see. I’m going to tell you about him. And I’m going to use words, which are at all times necessary.

“Some people reprove us for honoring images of the Savior, of the Mother of God and other holy servants of Christ.”

These are the words of St. John of Damascus[i] writing in the 8th century, but he might as well have written them today. I don’t know about you, but my whole life I have encountered rebukes from others against our veneration of holy images in the Catholic Church. The struggle against iconoclasm continues.

Today in the United States, we may hear these criticisms most often from some of our Protestant brothers and sisters, who accuse us of idolatry when they see us bowing down before the holy images. And criticism continues to come also from our Muslim brothers and sisters just as it has for around fourteen hundred years.

In fact, iconoclasm among Christians may well have initially grown as a movement at least partly in response to the influence of Islam. The truth is, iconography has had a place in Christian worship from as soon as it became feasible for us to make them. We have surviving examples of Christian imagery from as early as the 2^nd century. If we go to the catacombs where the early Christians worshipped, there on the walls we find iconography. The use of iconography among Christians was only criticized and threatened after the rise of Islam.

St. John of Damascus lived and worked among Muslims his whole life. It is an interesting irony of history actually that this was the means by which he was able (without being killed, that is) to defy the iconoclasm that had become so prevalent among Christians. The Emperor Leo forbade the use of icons, but St. John was immune to the persecutions of the iconoclasts because he lived under Muslim rule. That’s right, here is a Christian saint being protected… from Christians… by Muslims.

Yet St. John was surely intimately familiar with the criticism leveled against our veneration of the holy images. Of these critics he says,

“But let them think for a moment. In the beginning God created humanity in his own image. Why ever should we have such respect for one another, if not because we are made in the image of God? In Basil’s words, ‘the honor paid to the image is in reality paid to its prototype,’ that is to say, to what the image represents. Thus, the Jewish people revered the Tabernacle because that, much more than the rest of creation, was an image of God. The making and the veneration of images are not a novelty. They are based on a very ancient tradition. God made the first human being as an image of himself.”

Note this: God himself is the first and best iconographer – the first image-maker. He makes us in his image. Each of us are icons of God made by God. How can that not be worthy of veneration?

St. John continues: “Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and all the prophets saw God, not in his true being, but in his image.”

God reveals and gives himself to us through image as much as through word. As an artist, this is especially important to me. God joins himself to us through all of our faculties and encounters the whole human person. He does not limit himself to our verbal headspace, or to propositions and ideas.

Yet, to the diminishment of the power of the image, sometimes people insist that icons are not “painted” so much as “written.” And they will point to the etymology of the Greek word, “iconography.” Ikon means “image” and graphí means “to write”. “Calligraphy” is “beautiful writing” and “iconography” is “image writing.” So the claim goes. And I’m sure the intention of this is good – it’s thought by some that saying that icons are “written” gives them a more spiritual or theological sense – but there are two problems with this.

Firstly, it’s really just a bad translation. You see, iconography could be used in Greek to speak of depiction with images in general. It could be said of the Mona Lisa or any street sign as must as of our icons of the Lord and his saints. Icons are painted (or assembled in the case of mosaics).

Secondly, and more importantly, this is really a kind of subtle iconoclasm, if you ask me. What they’re claiming is that “writing” is more spiritual or theological than “painting,” which suggests that words are more spiritual or theological than images. And the whole point of what we’re celebrating today – the veneration of the holy images – is that this is very much not true. God reveals himself through image just as much as through word. Image is just as spiritual and theological as is word. This is the iconodulia we celebrate today.

The whole human experience – and not just part of it – is divinized by God becoming the man Jesus Christ. And even before this, as St. John observes, the prophets were seeing the image of God as well as hearing his voice.

Today we remember these holy prophets. There are actually two commemorations on this first Sunday of the Great Fast. Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which celebrates the restoration of the holy icons after the triumph of orthodoxy over iconoclasm. But even before that, this Sunday was set aside in memory of the holy prophets. That is why our readings today make mention of the prophets. Philip says to Nathanael of Jesus, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (John 1:45). I daresay our lectionary is older that the Sunday of Orthodoxy. But God is with us in the Church, and so I also daresay that the bringing together of the prophets and the icons is no meaningless thing. St. John of Damascus is showing us a way that these two commemorations are related. The prophets, you see, were the first to see God in images, as well as to hear his word. They were the first iconodules, the first to venerate icons.

For example, St. John points out that “the burning bush was an image of the Mother of God.”

You see, the bush burned but was not consumed and the Theotokos conceived and bore God, yet remained a virgin.

“When Moses wanted to approach [the burning bush], God said to him: ‘Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ [Exod. 3:5] If the ground on which Moses saw the image of the Mother of God was holy, how much more holy will the image itself be!”

The holy images are worthy of great veneration. They are a means through which we can experience God, by his grace.

Moses we also call the God-seer, for he saw the back of the Lord when his glory had passed by him (Ex 33:18-23). The fact that the Lord would not let Moses see his “face” but only his “back” is a metaphor for the reality that the prophets could not “see God in his true being,” as St. John writes, “but in his image.” The image becomes the way for us to venerate God without being destroyed by the power of his glory. “No one may see the face of God and live” (Ex 33:20). The honor we pay to the image passes to what the image represents, as says St. Basil, to God himself. Therefore, the image is a necessary part of our worship.

 

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[i] St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, 4, 16 (PG94, 1168ff.); Discourses on Images, 2, 16ff. (PG94, 1301ff.)