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If we speak about icons it is necessary to mention "the
lightful Grace of Christ". An orthodox doctrine - isichasm - found
expression in icon-painting. God is unknowable in His essence but He shows
Himself through His Grace - the divine energy is effused by Him into the
world.
According to St. Gregory Palama (1296-1359) Jesus Christ is the Light,
and his teaching is the enlightenment of people. This Divine Light was
shown by Jesus Christ to His closest disciples on Mount Tabor in a comprehensive
form. "…Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother,
and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured
before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white
as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking
with him" (Mt.XVII, 1-3).
The Tabor's Light of the Transfiguration was not tangible and not created,
but the disciples radiant with it were honored with a physical perception
of the "supernatural light".
The Light in Orthodoxy acquired a special importance and a special meaning
under the influence of isichasm. Everything concerning God is penetrated
with the divine radiance and is full of light. And God Himself in His
incomprehensibility and unknowability is "the superlight darkness".
What is the way to show such an idea even in the language of symbols?
Are there any means to show this "white as light radiance" in
the scene of Transfiguration? Icon-painters tried to do the impossible.
We can see how they succeeded looking at the images of Transfiguration
that survive to our days.
The Divine Energies roused the earth, "… a bright cloud overshadowed
them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him" (Mt.XVII, 5). And
the staggered Apostles fell prostrate covering their eyes with their palms.
The Figure of Christ sheds an inconceivable light that brings peace, grace
and spiritual enlightenment to the world. The beams of that light are
drawn on the icon with the golden lines, radiating form the inconceivable
Source.
It is interesting to compare Russian icons of the Transfiguration with
Byzantine ones. It can help to imagine the strain of spiritual life in
Old Russia and the attitudes of icon-painters to the mysterious act of
Transfiguration.
 The
"Lightful Grace" was drawn on the ancient icons with golden
strokes on the folds of Christ's clothes, and on the later ones - on the
wings of angels and on the folds of Theotokos' clothes. The flickering
shine of the golden strokes gave icons a special radiance that penetrated
the air around them.
The anxious attitude of a pious Russian man to the flame of a candle is
symbolic in the same way: the candle light is also symbol of the descended
lightful God's Grace.
Isichasm (from a Greek word isichia - meaning repose, detachment) is also
the teaching about uniting with God through repentance. "Having purified
with repentance and flows of tears I become a god myself through the unspeakable
joining ". This is a citation from a Byzantine religious philosopher
Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022).
This explains once again, why the faces of Saints on icons are liki (holy
faces), that is the faces of those who are out of time, in eternity. The
individual features - the accidental attributes of temporary earthly life
- are left only as signs necessary for recognition.
Lik is a face that got free from the worldly passions, that transformed
spiritually. The canonical set of characteristics (book, clothes, beard,
moustache and others) is the only way to recognize a Saint or distinguish
him from others. This set is in some sense an iconographic continuation
repeated without changes when painting this Saint on different icons in
different epochs.
Despite the fact that the liki are symbols of the highest man's spirituality,
they still represent faces of people. And the human face itself also becomes
an icon since "a man embodied the image of God in himself more than
angels, who are pure spirits by nature". A man, his flesh, and his
appearance were consecrated by Christ in the great Mystery of the Incarnation:
"God raised the man's nature having prepared it originally as His
clothes, which he put on through the Virgin".
But icons do not glorify the flesh as the art of Pagan Antiquity did.
They reconstruct only those of its visible features, which express invisible
characteristics of the Prototype such as humility, kindness, tolerance,
generosity, and mildness. |
