Assault

What was I saying about paying attention to beauty? ‘We’ve had visitors’, were the words that greeted me when I arrived for our hymn practice on Sunday evening. The visitors had made their presence felt, disturbing altar cloths and smashing the coloured candle holders at the statue of the BVM and the icon of St John. Altar cloths can be rearranged and smashed glass can be replaced, thanks to the offices of Hayes & Finch the church suppliers; but then I noticed a burn mark across the icon of St John itself. I unscrewed it from the wall and took it home. Below is what it should look like:

When I bought the icon from eBay a few years ago I thought it was just painted directly onto the wood, but the damage reveals that it was made in a far more traditional manner, with a layer of gauze laid on the wood and then covered with gesso. That makes it harder to repair the picture, and increases the sense of loss.

Icons aren’t just pictures: they are sacramental, bound up within the structure of promise and covenant which keeps the Church of Jesus Christ together. God promises to hear our prayers and we promise to make them, and in the midst is the icon, an image of faithfulness made in faithfulness. To attack an icon is to attack more than the icon. Icons have personalities, and even if only I have really invested that much prayer in this one, for me, at least, our St John is linked to the nature and identity of our little group of Christians. I look at the vile blister obliterating the saint’s face and I can feel the burn. Of course the children who did this won’t have thought about it like that: they won’t have thought about it at all. This act isn’t a product of thought.

To attack an image of a human being isn’t that far from attacking a human being themselves. And this morning as I thought about what had happened and the burning seared into my imagination again a thought came into my heart, This is what your sins do. The aggression and desire and fear you direct towards souls made in God’s image leave scorches and burns on you and on the world. You are implicated in this. So God have mercy on me, too.