Christ Pantocrator

Last month I was visiting Cyprus and Egypt, a trip completed days before the popular revolt that is sweeping across Northern Africa.  One highlight was a far-too-short time at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the traditional Mountain of Moses.  The monastery, protected by its remote location and a letter of protection by Mohammed, holds many treasures.

This icon of Christ Pantocrator stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it on the wall of the museum.  "Painted" with wax on flat boards, it is full size and hung on the wall so you can look straight into his eyes.  One of the few icons to survive the iconoclast period, this Christ is more human than divine.  You can see the hollow below his cheekbones with a rough beard on his cheeks.  My immediate thought was, "here is a real person," not the idealized, flattened image of the multiple icons I have seen in Russia, Bulgaria and Cyprus.  I felt like I was in the presence of a person who I know, but who I have not known quite so well as I would like to know Him.

Before that encounter, it has taken a lot of time to understand icons, to really look long enough to see what was being proclaimed.  With their stylized format, rigidly applied rules for how they are "written," I have always felt distance, not presence, effect not affect.

Many years ago, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, then later in Sophia, Bulgaria, I learned about why they were painted with such a flat appearance, what role they played in the practices of the faithful.  I began to distinguish some differences between Greek and Russian styles.  Taken out of churches, seen individually in museums, they were easier to approach without all of the elaborate frames or gathered in overwhelming  large groups.  

Just a few days earlier in Cyprus, I had seen an icon of the Archangel Michael. It was in the Byzantine Museum and Art Galleries of Lefkosia, in a display of dozens of icons.  As I had wandered around looking at them, I was wondering if one would "speak" to me.  Michael did, creating a sense of sadness that surprised yet also comforted me. I was pleased to be able to buy from the shop a large, high quality print which is currently at the frame shop.   I thought to myself, "Finally, I am beginning to understand what all the hype is about."

None of my previous experience and exposure to icons prepared me for what happened when I turned the corner at the museum at St. Catherine's.  For the second time that day, I had tears on my face absorbed by an image of Christ over 1,500 years old.  I looked at friends around me who were also astonished by it, one saying it is a very famous image.  I count myself fortunate to never have known it before that moment of seeing it in person.

I don't believe that somehow Christ was in or behind or through the physical composition of wood and wax of that icon.  But I also have a strong sense of knowing something about Christ through that image.  The monastery shop had an excellent photographic print, which is also being framed.  I look forward to living with this unique perspective into the person whom I call my Savior.