By Robert Lazu Kmita
A few years ago, I attended a lecture given by a wise Benedictine abbot, who recounted an experience from a trip to the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos. What he described was an episode directly related to the veneration of sacred images in the Eastern tradition.
A pilgrim father entered a church holding his young son by the hand. With firm and slow steps, he approached an icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He bowed before it, made the Sign of the Holy Cross, and kissed the icon. Then he lifted his little one, who kissed Christ the Savior noisily, as one kisses one’s own mother on the cheek.
The monk evoked this episode by emphasizing the naturalness of the gesture. We were all witnesses to an authentic lesson in sacred good manners, presented by someone who knew what it means to worship God the Son, represented in a holy image.
In the face of the iconoclasm of the Protestant reformers, the Church founded by our Savior Jesus Christ reacted with the most important event in its history: the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Amid its numerous sessions (twenty-five), the conciliar Fathers also discussed the role and value of sacred images. They reviewed the doctrine on them, showing that there are two categories of religious visual creations. These are
- sacred images, which involve the representation of persons who exist in the invisible world, and
- religious paintings, of a pedagogical nature, which depict scenes from the earthly life of holy persons.
There are, of course, many crucial “technical” differences between these two categories of visual representations. But perhaps the most important distinction is the attitude adopted toward them.
“Sacred images” are always intended for worship. In other words, they truly place us in the presence of the persons represented. When we are before an icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we must practice adoration with all the appropriate gestures. When we are before an icon of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, we must practice hyperdulia and the gestures corresponding to it.
As for the angels and saints, they must be venerated with the gestures appropriate to them. After nearly fifteen years of teaching catechesis in numerous Catholic parishes, I can say that, unfortunately, such distinctions are unknown to most of the faithful.
As a convert from schismatic Eastern Christianity—to which the father and his little one in the abbot’s story belonged—I immediately noticed, upon beginning to attend Catholic liturgies, the absence of gestures directed toward the holy persons represented in those statues and paintings that belong to the category of sacred images.
Over time, I attended Masses in Roman Catholic churches where these gestures were completely absent. In Arizona, North Carolina, and New York, as well as in Italy and Scotland, I visited churches that seemed more like sports pavilions or auditoriums than sacred spaces. It is no wonder that appropriate gestures are lacking before icons, where they still exist. This can also be observed by comparing the two great catechisms of the Church.
The teaching on sacred images is present both in the Roman Catechism (1566) and in the more recent Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). The essence of the doctrine on icons remains intact in both. This is what the Roman Catechism states:
The images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints should be had and kept especially in temples, and the due honor and veneration should be given to them; not because it is believed that there is any divinity or virtue in them for which they are to be worshiped, nor because anything is to be asked of them, nor because confidence is to be placed in images, as the Gentiles of old placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and kneel, we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear. (Session XXV)
The relationship between the image—the representation—and the person represented—the prototype—is clearly emphasized. The Christian sacred image is a “window” through which we honor real and living persons who dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem.
The same teaching is repeated in the more recent Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Based on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified, against the iconoclasts, the veneration of icons—of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, of the angels, and of all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new “economy” of images. The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, “the honor paid to an image passes on to its prototype,” and “whoever venerates an image venerates the person represented in it.” The honor paid to sacred images is a “respectful veneration,” not the adoration which is due to God alone: religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images that lead us to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not stop at it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is. (2131-2132)
Based on the Council of Nicaea, both catechisms capture the essential. And yet, something is missing in the more recent catechism: the mention of gestures—above all the kiss—by which sacred images can and should be venerated. Is this a simple “oversight” or a sign of a strange amnesia that could well be an indication of a cooling of the love and worship due to the holy persons in Heaven?
What is certain is that the new iconoclasm has made—and continues to make—victims.
About the author
Robert Lazu Kmita is a novelist, essayist, and columnist, with a doctorate in Philosophy. His novel The Island without Seasons was published by Os Justi in 2023. He is also the author and editor of numerous books (including an Encyclopedia of J. R. R. Tolkien’s world, in Romanian). He writes regularly on his Substack, Kmita’s Library.