Blessed is the Kingdom

Seeking The Kingdom In All Things

There’s Blood on the Creed

Though I’ve never officially met him, I’ve often quoted Fr. Cyprian Davis, a monk of St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana who once said, “You can’t change the Creed because there is blood on the Creed.” This past spring was one of those occasions. I was visiting my friend Steve Robinson in Arizona. We were having dinner with his friend and fellow Orthodox podcaster Bill Gould and I metnioned Fr. Cyprian’s words in our dinner conversation. Bill raised his eyebrows as any good Orthodox Christian should when Catholics start talking about how one shouldn’t change the creed. Filioque or not, Christians ought to be able to agree that there are certain beliefs that we hold firm. There are things truths that are engraved upon our hearts that cannot and should not be changed. Iconography helps keep this truth in front of me.

One of the first steps of writing an icon is to name it. The iconographer begins with a gessoed board that is pure white, there is contained in the whiteness of the board endless possibilities. Then the board is marked with a pattern that names the icon. Up to this point it could be any saint, any Christian feast, any event in the life of Christ or His Church. I recently traced a pattern of St. Mary Magdalene on to my newest gessoed board. Now I am in the process of retracing those lines that were first written in graphite with a stylus that engraves the lines permanently on to the board. They are hard lines, ones that I will follow throughout the entire process. It is important that they be right from the beginning so that they will guide my hands to make the right lines when I reach the end of the process.

The engraved lines mirror the words of the Creed that should be engraved on the hearts of all Christian believers. It is important that we get them right at the outset as these words of faith will continue to carry us on our earthly pilgrimage. To get one part of the creed wrong can over time lead us further and further from the truth we seek.

I am looking forward to the process of writing this new icon of St. Mary Magdalene. Her role as apostle to the apostle is one that I hope to learn from. I hope you will journey with me as I deepen my understanding of Mary and of her dear friend, Jesus Christ.

Related Posts:

Tags: , , , , , , ,


This entry was posted by on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Fr. Christian is the pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Lenoir City, TN.

Comments

  • http://pithlessthoughts.blogspot.com/2004/08/election.html s-p

    Beautiful thoughts. Indeed the Creed gives us the outline for the image in which we are created, in a sense we, through our faith and love fill in the “color” and make that image a unique expression, a “personal” manifestation of God. May your hands be blessed!

  • http://avowofconversation.wordpress.com Macrina Walker

    Father Christian,

    Thank you for this post. I hadn’t heard that quote before, and find that I am very moved by it. Both it and your example of the icon – and indeed the feast of the Transfiguration on which I’m writing this – points to something within that radiates outwards. The words, that are engraved on the heart, as you put it…

    I don’t want to get polemical about this, but a while ago someone made a comment on my blog that part of the difference between the way authority works in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (at least in practice) is that for the former it tends to come from within whereas for the latter it tends to come from without. While this leads to jurisdictional (and probably also other) problems for the Orthodox, the problems that Catholics face is what happens when the external authority breaks down, something that has caused me considerable pain.

    Of course this raises all sorts of ongoing challenges for all of us, but I am glad to see you writing something that points to a recovering of that inner authority.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Thank you for the comment Macrina. I often wonder what could happen if we could ever bring East and West back together so as to help strengthen one another’s weak spots.

    It seems to me that true authority in the church does come from within, but there still needs to be some sort of external verification. Growing up in the Bible Belt has shown me all too well what can happen when we rely only upon internal validation – so many people out there preaching their own version of the Gospel based upon a private call from God.

    I hope you will pray for me as I continue writing this icon. It has already helped me in my daily struggles against temptation.

  • http://avowofconversation.wordpress.com Macrina Walker

    Thanks for your reply, Father Christian. I certainly agree that there are dangers in purely subjective authority – whether on the Bible belt or among those thinking that the authority of enlightened elders overides that of the bishops. It seems rather that the intenal and the external need to coincide, but that is too big a topic to begin writing on in a comment box! And I will remember you in my prayers.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    Yes….that is a pretty big topic. Perhaps it deserves a post or two….hmmm

«     »