Tuesday, November 20, 2007

"He hagia hesychia": "Holy silence"


The figure in the icon has wings, an sign of an Angel, a communicator of the Divine, as in Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity, or many icons of John the Baptist, the Angel of the Desert. Christ is wearing red robes. Red is the color of the rich flow of grace from the Passion.
In iconography, Christ as Hesychia or Silence is sometimes depicted as masculine and at other times, as in this instance, in feminine or angelic androgeny, unincarnate.
Wisdom, if not depicted in the Old Testament as a Person in the Trinitarian sense, is certainly personified and identified very closely with God. In Hebrew and Greek, Wisdom is feminine. Therefore Divine Wisdom is "she". See, for example, Proverbs 8 and the beginning of the following chapter. Christians understood these Old Testament references to Wisdom as foreshadowing Christ. The Gospels tell of Jesus Christ in words that are often reminiscent of Holy Wisdom, and St. Paul more than once calls Christ the Wisdom of God.
Now it was my birthday a few days ago and if some multi millionaire wanted to buy me just a small present this was quite cheap, it is from the Temple Galleries Christmas Exhibition.
Here are a few other possible presents for friends from the exhibition, a group of Monastic founders, St George, the Protecting Veil, Our Lady of Vladymir, St Demitry and Sainted Metropolitans of Moscow .

3 comments:

gemoftheocean said...

Fr. Blake, if an when I win the lottery big time, you can have them all. It might be a little too soon to start mentally placing them on the walls of your study, but you can dream. If you have a spare one of these lying around somewhere, neglected and unloved, let me know, I know someone who'd love it.

Karen

Fr Ray Blake said...

Again, how kind.

We don't have a spare one but there is a very beautiful one that is part of the Presbytery furnishings. I'll put a picture up soon.

gemoftheocean said...

Terrific. She's been a favorite of mine since I was little.

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