Authentic Beauty

This world desperately lacks understanding of symbols, and I wonder whether we shall regain the mind paradigm that deals strictly with the concept of symbols and our relation to it. Recently, I have come upon an icon of Virgin and Son. It was an icon Hodegetria: on one side was Mary and Jesus and the other, Jesus alone (what is known as Man of Sorrows).

I was struck by Virgin’s face: so sad, so intense; a young Mother grieving for her Son. But her grief or cry is not the one of confusion or absurdity. The beholder has no choice but to be led into the icon, completely, fully. His whole being is part of the mysticism that takes him outside of himself. Ego is overcome. The beholder is not only witnessing the suffering but also beauty as made manifest in this artistic expression. As Pope Benedict XVI writes, echoing Plato: beauty “wrenches him [man] away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum—it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it ‘reawakens’ him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft.” I wish I could write something like that!

Truly, beauty is order and upon seeing Mary’s sad and profound facial expression and intense yet feminine gaze, I see great beauty, extreme suffering and a model on how to be a woman, a human being. For me, her eyes and the expression are so profound, so mystical that I cannot help but be thrown into the suffering myself. The true emotion is alive in me like a single flame that remains in the midst of darkness and I must feel the loss as well.

Icon provides a path into entering another world altogether, another reality. Praying to an icon ought to be a transformative, if not mystical, experience. We are not simply saying words, emotionlessly, passionlessly, as if we are in a constant state of abjection. Rather, we allow ourselves to become part of the icon, and because we are responding to it, we become illuminated and transformed. An icon is not a question of a cheap tourist trinket; it creates a sacred space of private prayer and thoughts which reside deep in our hearts. Just as Jesus is unmasked on the Cross being part of both human and divine drama (unlike the actors of Greek theatre), so we are unmasked when we pray to an icon and God takes us as we are.

In an icon like this, theology, reality and mysticism come together and they are never fragmented but create a kind of a triad that leads the believer in transforming his own grief, his own loss and his own joy. The icon is about God and simultaneously about the believer.

Even in the midst of despair, we must try not to be blind to beauty. Once we become blind to beauty, we shall become blind to the good as well. A beholder must let himself into the icon, into the experience and “unlock the yearning of the human heart.” By stepping outside of himself and seeing the Other, the beholder will truly get to know himself.