Offsite Post: ‘Icons Are a Great Fit for the South’

 

The first Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church celebrates the restoration of the icons – specially stylized paintings of Christ, the Mother of God and other saints, and the angels – after more than one hundred years of imperial persecution of those who venerated them.  Though the official theology of much of Southern Protestantism is firmly against the use of religious images in Christian life, much of Southern life is nevertheless very favorable to icons.

In many a home in Dixie there will usually be displayed at least a few exceptionally old pictures of departed family members that look something like this one:

 

(Photograph of Confederate Cavalry Commander JEB Stuart)

Southrons show these pictures of their ancestors as a proclamation of their love for them and to keep their memory alive both for themselves and for future generations.  These also are some of the main reasons Orthodox Christians display icons.

The sentiment of Southerners towards these images of their ancestors is summarized well by George Fitzhugh in his book Sociology for the South:

The Roman dwelling was a holy and sacred place; a temple of the gods, over which Manes, and Lares, and Penates watched and hovered. Each hearthstone was an altar on which daily sacrifice was offered. The family was hedged all round with divinities, with departed ancestry purified and apotheosised, who with kindly interest guarded and guided the household. Roman elevation of sentiment and of character is easily accounted for, when we reflect that they felt themselves ever in the presence of deities.

The pictures of noble Southern ancestors have become something akin to the Roman household gods and goddesses that guarded and blessed the house and family.  With Orthodox icons, however, we get the proper fulfilment of this desire to fill our homes with virtue and holiness and the divine, with guardians and intercessors.  The wonderful teacher of Holy Scripture and the spiritual life in general, Father Athanasios Mitilinaios (+2006), says of the holy icons:

It is also known that whatever a holy person touches in this world, gives grace, conveys grace. In the Gospel according to St. Mark, this happened with Christ. Pay attention to what he says:

 

“And wherever He went, into villages, or cities, or the countryside, they laid the sick in the streets and begged Him that they might touch even the hem of His garment; and all those who touched Him were healed.” (Mark 6: 56)

 

As it happened with Christ, my beloved, He now gives to the Apostles and Saints. Listen:

 

“...they brought out the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.” (Acts 5:15)

 

They were all healed. They took the handkerchiefs and aprons of the Apostle Paul, threw them on the patients and they recovered.7

 

Why? Because the objects that came in contact with their skin were sanctified. Thus, sanctified people, when their lives were hagiographed8 [i.e., displayed on icons—W.G.], these icons are now miraculous. This is why, my beloved, icons work miracles.

 . . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/3746-2/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!