The Son and the Spirit are the two hands of the Father which embraces the whole cosmos in himself. This cross is inscribed in the sacred circle of the Trinitian love. A cross appears within the vertical line of the whole composition, meeting the horizontal line between the halos of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This white table (the Word) supports the chalice (a symbol of the Eucharist) that signifies the profound revelation that “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son” (John 3:16). The table, with its four corners, represents the earth fulfilled by the four Gospels. The geometric shapes of the icon (the rectangle, the triangle, the circle, and the cross) are important, too. These gestures outline the dynamics of the spiritual life. The head of the Father and the Son lean toward each other with the Spirit partaking in their union. Each angel looks identical, denoting the equality of each, and they look both female and male, signifying that God is beyond biological sex. The bodies of each angle are fourteen times the size of the head which is double our human proportions, signifying the supernatural dimension of each person. The far left angel is the Son the middle angel is the Father, and the far right angel is the Holy Spirit.Ībove each angel’s head is a biblical image: Above the Father’s head is the tree of life above the Holy Spirit, the holy mountain and above the Son, a building representing the Church. I will follow Russian theologian Paul Evdokimov’s traditional reading of it. There are various ways of reading the icon, but here Trinity. The movement within the icon reflects the exitus-reditus (going out and return) of salvation history which also happens to be the movement of Christian prayer: through Christ we have access to the Father by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:18) which is also, in a way beyond words, the eternal movement of the Trinity. The icon depicts the dynamism and stability of the Trinity. It is a penetration into the deeper meaning of that story, which offers us a glimpse of the Trinity. Since I cannot do justice to the profundity of this icon, I refer you to Paul Evdokimov’s Art of the Icon for further explanation, but Rublev’s Trinity is a depiction of the Biblical story of the three pilgrims who visit Abraham under the oak of Mamre.

From then on, icons became a visual catechesis for me. I particularly remember his explanation of Rublev’s icon of the Trinity and how it helped me to better understand the Trinitarian dimensions of the liturgy, salvation history, and Christian prayer. Having studied patristics at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, later living in Russia for many years to learn Russian and to study its culture and icons, most of the icons he taught in class were Russian. Charles Borromeo, opened every Christology class by explaining an icon and how it threw light on some aspect of the mystery of Christ. Fr Paolo Prosperi, former assistant professor of patristics at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., and priest of the Fraternity of St. One of my best teachers used icons as a pedagogical tool in class. With this in mind, I’d like to argue that icons deserve a more prominent role in religious education. Like the Gospels, icons present “the form of Christ” who reveals the “form of God”.

When I asked, Father Steve kindly explained the theology of the icon, cluing me in on how effectively they can help to engage us and deepen our faith, and even teach us. Stranger than the image, however, was my feeling that Christ was staring right at me from within the depths of the icon. Sinai, and the Christ who stared at me was both of this world and beyond it. It was an Icon of the Christ Pantocrator of Mt. Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire, I was struck by a strange and beautiful image on his desk.

G manamon iconographer