icon corners — Blog — The Way of Beauty

I recently did a FB photopost on my icon lapel pin, and was surprised by the positive reaction, so I decided to write a little bit more about it!

In the West, we live in a time of steadily increasing hostility towards Christianity. Famously, the late and much missed Cardinal George of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who died of cancer in 2015, summed up the situation with the following statement made several years before his death:

I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

This statement caught attention at the time, but it is not quite as pessimistic a statement as some have suggested. Clearly, there is an assumption here that his successors would be as orthodox in their faith as he was in his, and so merit attack from secular forces. Some might say that in itself was optimistic to the point of foolishness! But also, he went on to say in the same statement, that after the death of the martyr bishop:

His [the martyr's] successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.

In other words, we should not lose heart, for the Church will prevail regardless of the malice of men or the devil.

I thought about this recently when I heard a homily about the need to bear witness to the Faith today. The pastor made the point that while we are not at the point yet of being persecuted for our faith in this country, it might happen in the future and it is more likely to happen if we do not stand up for the Faith now. Countering prejudice at an early stage, he suggested, can help to stop it growing into open hatred and persecution in the future. He reminded us of how blessed we are in this country, still, compared with many who live in real fear for their lives for practising their faith, especially those in some predominantly Islamic countries.

I pray that if required, I might have the courage of the martyrs through the centuries who stood up to oppression whether it be from ISIS or the Emporer Diocletian.

In the meantime, the question is what can I do here and now to play my part? How do I bear witness in such as way that people know that I am Catholic and is likely to create a positive enough impression to draw people to the Faith?

The first thing, I think, is to acknowledge my need for God's grace to be able even to begin to live up to Christian ideals.

Second is let people know that I am a Christian. I live in the San Francisco Bay area and I often hear derogatory remarks about Christians and Christianity. Wherever possible I try to respond by casually and cheerily remarking that I am Christian. Usually, that has the simple effect of halting the conversation because no longer is 'the Christian' an abstraction in their imaginations, he is a real person. And I find that even here, most people shy away from offending flesh-and-blood people standing in front of them.

In his sermon, our pastor (at St Elias Melkite Catholic Church) suggested one simple way of discreetly but visibly making such a statement would be to wear a cross. He said that it would arouse curiosity and people would ask what it was. It would also, he suggested, give us the motivation to be better Christians because we are so clearly identifying ourselves with the Faith.

I have bought one and wear it, but I'll admit it sits under my shirt, only sometimes visible when I have an open-necked shirt. A necklace or medallion is not something that I would ordinarily wear and I don't feel absolutely comfortable with it. I decided to do something different that felt more natural to me. I found a company online that makes personalized lapel pins and so asked them to create some for me based on the Holy Face. I sent them a jpeg of the following icon:

When the batch came (I had to order 100) they looked like this:

Already, people have asked about it, and one even asked where I go to church, so I gave her a St Elias Melkite Catholic Church business card (which the pastor had printed up and encouraged us to have in our wallets, just in case!). I also see many people looking at it when I wear it although most do not say anything. Nevertheless, I am pleased about this because I feel that I have made a statement without saying anything in a way that I feel comfortable with.

I might be wrong, but I don't feel I am the sort whose natural gifts extend to being able to attract people to the Faith by standing on a soapbox and preaching on a street corner to passers-by; or by wearing a sandwich board that says: 'The End is Nigh' - as a man used to do for years in Liverpool city center when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s.

Perhaps I am less courageous than this man. But a lapel pin is my way of being in-your-face with the Holy Face, while not looking as though that's what I'm trying to do. It was easy enough to do - you could easily create your own if you have a jpeg file of an image you like.

I am curious to hear from readers. Do you have any ways that tell people you are Christian without putting people off? I'd love to hear about what you do and the reactions you get. This is probably something that would appeal more to men than women, so what might women do alternatively?

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for someone to come up and incense my jacket...perhaps one day, you never know.

Make your public shrine or icon corner with www.waysideshrines.com

Following on from recent articles encouraging people to think about creating ceramic icon corners that can be beautiful and discreet, yet clearly visible signs of faith, here, and here, here is someone who can create such images and also carve beautiful shrines in wood or stone to house them in. It is Jerome Quigley of www.waysideshrines.org.

I met him at an Art and Faith event at St Pius X Catholic Church in Rock Island, Illinois this past week. He explained to me that he creates the carvings himself in wood or an artificial granite (used for heavy kitchen surfaces and which can be carved like wood). He can respond to commission and even more interestingly, he has a process whereby he can set images into porcelain. This is not a print, but rather one in which the pigment is set directly into the chemical structure of the substrate porcelain - similar to the way in which pigment is incorporated into the plaster in frescoes.

The tradition of reproducing paintings on porcelain goes back to the 19th century at least. I have recently seen several handpainted porcelain copies of the highest quality made in that time. The look of these hand-painted antique reproductions is the same those that Jerome makes. Here is a 19th-century example. Porcelain has a luminosity to it that you can see in this photograph.

I spoke to him about the possibility of creating icon corners consisting of three images and he was confident that he could produce something beautiful, either on a shrine or as a ceramic piece that could be set in a building by the purchaser, for example. It would need demand from customers for this to happen, but if the business logic is there for Jerome to do it, I am happy to work with him to help create outdoor icon corners.

Here are some more examples of his work. Once again his website is www.waysideshrines.org.