No Icon of the Sacred Heart

To the Editor:
 
Imagine coming to mass and, at the point when the Our Father is prayed, it was mandatory to alternate a line of that prayer with a Divine Mercy prayer:

            Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy Name.
                        His Mercy be on us and on the whole world.
            Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
                        His Mercy be on us and on the whole world.
And so on.
          
That would be wrong. The prayer Jesus taught us belongs intact in the liturgy and in private prayer alike. For personal meditation, of course, someone might fruitfully interweave petitions of the Lord’s prayer with other texts or with free-form meditations, but that is a different matter: private meditation, or prayerful small group creativity in this way can be helpful and lovely. But in liturgy, the Our Father is to be prayed in the integrity of Jesus’ teaching.
           
Similarly, icons are a venerable part of Eastern worship, for which saints have been martyred in the eighth and ninth centuries during the Iconoclastic controversy. Saint John of Damascus wrote a defense of icons which is a staple of theology. Indeed, it is part of the Magisterium, for it was adopted in October 787 by the Second Council of Nicaea. Each icon is an inspired image, faithfully and prayerfully reproduced and with an iconography that goes back to the early centuries of the Church. St. Luke, who knew Our Lady well, is thought to have painted the icon of the Theotokos. The realism of the icon has its basis in historical events, so that Our Lady was originally modeled on Our Lady and so on with the saints of the New Testament. But the icon’s realism is heavenly; physical details and gravity matter less. The very use of the word “written” for an icon points to its being more than painting or setting mosaic tiles. Also, icons have names. That is significant: they can have names, because they are constant. The icon of Christ Pantocrator, “Christ, Ruler of All,” in which the Lord, with grave expression, holds his right hand in blessing and in his left hand holds the book of Scriptures; Theotokos Glykophilousa, “Sweet-loving Theotokos” in which the Virgin Mary is kissing the infant Jesus tenderly; the Philoxenia or Hospitality of Abraham, sometimes called the Old Testament Trinity, in which Abraham hosts the three angels, understood as a prefiguration of the Holy Trinity.
           
Through the centuries Eastern Christians have created new icons for new saints – such as the icons of St. John Paul II at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv – and in time of duress, such as war, ancient icons have been written using unusual material, such as ammo boxes, as described by George Weigel.

Icons are written by persons trained in a religious discipline that fits them for this, and they are done in prayer. Making icons is now divorced from such habits; a priest has offered to have a booth at a fair to paint icons to attract people; EWTN had a program in which a person described constant prayer while painting an icon – but he was turning frequently to the camera to discuss his prayerfulness while he was painting. Painting an icon is in one way like making love: one shouldn’t do anything else at the same time. And one shouldn’t have a class demonstrating either activity. The otherworldly quality of icons is off-putting to some who like photographic realism, and this has resulted in an American school of icons painted in a flat, rather cartoon-like style.

In modernity, some Western artists have, for understandable reasons, painted Western religious images in the style of icons and then called them icons. But writing icons is not merely a technique, nor is it a craft. It is itself a religious activity and icons are sacramentals. You could paint a copy of someone’s high school graduation picture as an icon, but that wouldn’t make it one. Devotions and themes which are popular in the West, but which in the East are not visually expressed and in some cases not even part of public or private devotion, cannot properly be icons. Also, some people – even prayerful, good people – paint traditional icons but alter details to express the artist’s personal piety. This is like a lector interpolating a clause into a Scriptural reading during mass.

            There is no icon of the Sacred Heart.

St. Pope John Paul II wrote eloquently of “Breathing with Both Lungs,” that is, of benefitting from the wisdom and spirituality of both the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. This requires respect for all these Catholic Churches and for their integrity.
 
                                                                                    Sincerely,
 
 
                                                                                 Catherine Brown Tkacz, Ph.D.


Thank you for your letter. First, I would like to clarify, I am not an expert in canonical issues, early councils or iconography.  What I can offer is that the icon of the Sacred Heart is a newer expression of a venerable tradition. The devotion to the Sacred Heart began to spread in its modern form after St. Margaret Mary Alacoques' visions of Christ in France in the 1670s. The Jesuit order helped spread this devotion throughout the Christian world. The devotion found favor in parts of Ukraine and with the some of the Carpathian Rus'. To this day, there are Eastern Catholic parishes named for the Sacred Heart and devotional Molebins (an Eastern Christian prayer service) written in honor of the Sacred Heart. Icons of the Sacred Heart may be found in these traditions as well. All of this may be part of unfortunate forced Latinizations, but some of it is still maintained after the mandates of the Second Vatican Council to renew of authentic Eastern traditions. 

There may not be a canonical mandate for icons of the Sacred Heart. Still, given the development of doctrine, development of canonical norms, and encouragement of the renewal of Eastern traditions among the eastern Churches, it does seem prudent that Roman Catholics be genuinely aware of the Eastern traditions before taking them up for their own use. I do not know if we can judge an icon is not an icon when the iconographic tradition has had development since the II Nicea Council. And I am further wary of judging the Icon of the Sacred Heart as a western innovation when icons of the Sacred Heart have been written in by Byzantine iconographers.

Thank you again for your letter. 

- Mitchell Palmquist