It's all Greek

EDITOR’S NOTE: Julia Annas, Vestry member and Regents Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, shares her knowledge to offer insight about the cover of the seasonal bulletin for Lent.

Reading the icons? But they are images, not words!

Yes, but the maker of an icon is said to write it, and we can read it as we look at it.

Icons come to us from the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, whose ideas about the role of art in worship are different from ours. In using icons to illustrate our seasonal bulletins, we have a chance to experience and learn from a different way of looking at art and the sacred.

An icon is a devotional aid, not something to be judged as a work of art in its own right. Icon makers lack interest in many of our interests in Western sacred art, such as originality, virtuosity for its own sake, and realism in depiction. Christ, Mary, the apostles, and scenes like the Last Supper are always shown in certain fixed ways. Icons invite us to pray in a way that takes us through the familiar image—like looking through a window.

On the Lenten bulletin we see the most shocking image of Jesus Christ humiliated in his human nature, shown by Pilate to the people in a scene often called Ecce Homo (Behold the Man!) in Western art. But we are reminded to keep in mind his divine nature by his halo (always present in Orthodox icons) in which there is a cross and the letters ho on, Greek for The One Who Is. (These are the words that Moses hears from the burning bush.) Christ is flanked by abbreviations of the Greek words for JESUS on our left and CHRIST on our right.

On the right we see the Greek words ho numphios—The Bridegroom. At the beginning of Holy Week there is an Orthodox litany of Christ the Bridegroom, recalling the Gospel of Matthew 25: 1-13. The bridegroom comes at an unexpected time, so that some of the bridesmaids have thoughtlessly run out of oil for their lamps and miss his coming when buying more, while the wise bridesmaids have been more careful with their oil, and so are ready.

We are reminded of the need to be ready for Easter at the end of Lent and Holy Week. Although Christ is fully human and suffers as we do, he is also fully divine, the Bridegroom waiting for us, while we make ourselves ready—or fail to do so.