Tag: Icon
Do icons get cold?
If you’ve visited my parish or other Eastern parishes, you might have noticed that some icons have a scarf around them:
Like many other people, you might have wondered “What’s that all about then?”
Read moreThe origin of the Easter Bunny
Nativity Icon, from start to finish…
On Holy Icons
I saw someone share this video and I thought it was an excellent introduction to the one of the most distinctive practices of the Catholic and Orthodox East – icons.
The presentation is given by Fr. Michael O’Loughlin and Deacon Basil (pronounced “Baz-ill”!) from a parish I’ve visited in Denver, Holy Protection of the Mother of God Byzantine Catholic Church:
Eastern Icons and the Gospel of Thomas?
If you ever visit an Eastern Catholic or Eastern Orthodox parish, you’ll find them adorned with many icons and, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these icons are dense with meaning.
At one point last year I brought a friend to my parish and we spent some time looking at the icons. He noticed that in the icons of the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), each of them is holding a book, symbolic of the Gospel attributed him. He then noticed the icon of St. Thomas and asked a question which caught me off-guard:
“Is the scroll he’s holding a reference to the ‘Gospel of Thomas’?”
I had never considered that association before! You see, the “Gospel of Thomas” is a non-Canonical work from the mid 2nd Century and was rejected by the Catholic Church. Bishop Eusebius from 3rd Century described it as “the fictions of heretics”. Given all that, it’s rather unlikely that the scroll in Thomas’ hand in a Catholic Church is a reference to a heretical work of antiquity!
So…what does the scroll in the Apostle’s hand represent? In Eastern iconography, a scroll represents holy wisdom and indicates that the person preached and held the rank of apostle.
Friday Frivolity: Our Lady of the Tardis
Okay, this is a bit of a weird one, but I think it says a lot about the way my mind works. Besides, it’s April 1st, and if I can’t post a tongue-in-cheek article on this day, when can I?!
I would like to begin by asking a question: what do these two things have common?
