https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=bsbbn_nKUKQ
So tonight, for those who don’t know maybe who I am, my job, I’m an icon carver, which is a bit strange for some people. There aren’t that many icon carvers. Actually probably, they’re probably in America like one, I think. Maybe two, maybe there may be two. There’s more in, there are more in Greece, there are more in Russia, obviously, but it’s not something that is very useful. I hope it’s useful, not something that’s very usual. Hope that wasn’t a little Freudian slip there. It’s not very usual. And as I discovered traditional art and orthodox art, you know, learning my own skill, but also exploring the icons themselves and their symbolism and their relationships between the icons and scripture and the liturgy and the architecture, and really discovering this beautiful pattern that we have in our faith that’s been passed down and kept for thousands of years now. It’s something that I find a lot of joy in. And so one of the things I’m also doing is I’m on making YouTube videos and I talk about some of this stuff. I talk about iconography, but also how the traditional symbolism that we have in our liturgy and our icons and scripture, how it actually connects to everyday life. And especially how, this is what I’m going to try to show you tonight, that the icon of the nativity, it’s not just an image of a moment in history when a young child was born, but it’s actually an image of reality. It’s an image which shows us how reality lays itself out for us. And so hopefully we’ll be able to go through the icon and I’ll be able to show you how profound our faith is and how profound these images are. These images, obviously the problem with a lot of these images is that we come to take them for granted. Obviously we’ve seen them so much that they kind of go into the background of our minds, good to go back into them and let’s say reawaken our sensitivity to see what’s really going on in some of these images. This is Jonathan Pageau. Welcome to the Symbolic World. Now I wanted to start with this just because this is where we’re going. Everybody knows it’s November, we’re going towards this. We’re going towards this kind of crazy excess of everything for the holidays, this celebration, the bells, the velvet, the gold and all of that and we’re used to it. We see it happen every year. But we as Orthodox Christians, we have this fast here. It’s obviously quite a contrast as we’re watching everybody partying around us that we have this fast. I have to admit that it’s a much harder fast to follow than Lent because it’s just a lot harder because there’s so much going on, everybody celebrating. But I think we can at least look at why would we have a fast? What is it that we’re preparing for? Because that’s the point of the fast, that’s the point of Lent and that’s also the point of this fast. What is it that we’re preparing for? Why is it such a big deal for this notion of the Nativity or the Incarnation? We always have as Christians, most of us, we always have this trope where we say like what’s the real, we have Christmas, we celebrate, we give gifts, we have all that, we have Santa, we have everything. We ask like what’s the real reason for Christmas and we all have the answer, right? It’s the birth of Christ, that’s the answer. But we need to go more into it. Why is it such a big deal? And in the icon of the Nativity we can see with our eyes the way that the icon is made, why that’s such a big deal, how it shows us this. So I put in one of the icons that I’ve carved just so you can see for those who haven’t seen my work. So everybody knows the icon of the Nativity. Does everybody understand what’s happening? Maybe I’ll go through the elements of the icon just so that people kind of understand what’s going on first because it is a complicated icon for a feast. So we have the Mother of God in the center who’s lying down on a mat. She’s resting after having given birth. We have of course Christ, the Christ child who’s laying down in the manger. Surrounding him is the ass and the ox. By the way, the ass and the ox is one of the oldest elements of the Nativity. It doesn’t say in Scripture that there’s an ass and an ox specifically, but it is one of the oldest elements. In the first images we have where we see Christ in a manger, we see the ass and the ox. There’s some images from the third century where you just see a manger with Christ and an ass and an ox on each side. We’ll get to why that’s important. It’s very important. We have the three wise men who are coming to encounter Christ. Here we have a shepherd who is blowing his horn, celebrating. At the top we have the three angels that are announcing the birth of Christ. Here you can see it in this one. Can you see what it is? Can you see? That’s a star. Above the star is a glory. There are different ways of showing it, but it’s a glory which shows us in a symbolic manner the presence of God. Down below we have two scenes. We have, we’ll start here, we have the washing of the Christ child. We have St. Joseph who is being tempted by a shepherd slash devil. Those are the canonical images, the canonical elements of the icon. Is there, before I start explaining some of the elements, are there some things that you’ve never seen or that you’re surprised to hear of? When I said Joseph being tempted by a devil, I saw a few people sneering in the audience. Is that possible? Does everybody know that story? In the tradition there is a story which talks about, it comes from the Protoevangelium of James, which is the book out of which most of our traditions for the Mother of God and for the Nativity come from outside of the Bible. In that book you have this scene where Joseph is not permitted to be there when the Mother of God gives birth. Imagine we’re so used to our modern way of thinking with the dad in the hospital with the doctor, but that is not the traditional way that a woman would have given birth. A woman would give birth with, what’s the word in English? Midwives, there you go. Sorry, my French is going to come back. Joseph midwives, and so Joseph was told to leave the place where Christ is born. So then he’s mulling over in his mind and he’s thinking, is this really possible? Is this for real? He knows he’s not the father, and so he’s wondering, is this the real deal? Is this really the birth from a virgin? It’s this devil figure who is tempting and who’s saying, who’s asking them questions and getting him to wonder whether or not this is actually possible. And then the midwives are the ones who are here watching the Christ child. So those are the basic elements. As for the ass and the ox, that is also a very, very ancient tradition. Also the other tradition which is quite old is the fact that Christ was born in a cave. That in scripture doesn’t say that. The only thing it says in scripture is that Christ was laid in a manger, which means that Christ was laid in a food trough for animals. That’s what a manger is. Sometimes we forget. A manger is basically a food trough for animals. And so it doesn’t say that he was born in a stable or born like we know we have these little images of nativities with Christ in the little stable. But the tradition from very early, from the first century we have in St. Justin Martyr talks about how Christ was born in a cave. So those are the basic elements of the icon. And the way they’re laid out, first of all, can help us understand something about iconography, which is icons are not snapshots. They’re not just someone who would come on an event and just take a picture of something that’s going on. Because all of these events are happening at different times and different places. The wise men were in the east when they saw the star. And when they arrived at the place where Christ was, it was like a year later, several months later. And then here’s the mother of God giving birth, but then here’s Christ here, and then here’s Christ here again being washed. And so what the icon does is it compresses things together. It takes these different elements of the story and it brings them into one place where you can see things in their meaning, you could say, how all these elements in the story come together and participate in the meaning. And so it can give us a different sense of what these things mean and how they come together. So what you see, for example, in the icon, you see it quite clearly. You see this joining of these kind of, you could say these wild opposites. You have these angels up above. You have this kind of demonic figure there below. You have these wise men who are from very, very far away and who are probably an elite nobles in the west. They were considered kings, we say the three wise kings. And so they’re the elite, but they’re also from far away. And then you have these homely shepherds who are just the guys next door who are participating in this event. And so look at how the icon is actually brought together. The whole thing is like a bullseye. It’s this concentric structure. You have something going on in the middle which brings together everything from everything that’s around it. And that already starts to tell us a little bit of the mystery of what it is that’s happening on in that moment. What it is that’s going on? What is this Christ child? What is he for us? And the first thing that we can see is that he’s bringing together all these opposites. You could say something like he’s gathering together all of creation, all of everything, gathering it together into himself. And once you start to see that, then you start to understand also when I told you about the ass and the ox. This is a little bit more kind of esoteric, but just bear with me. You’ll see how it makes sense. The ass and the ox relate to Old Testament laws. So there were foods in the Old Testament which people could eat. Today Jews call it kosher food. And there are some foods that people couldn’t eat. They were impure foods. Now the ox is a pure food and the ass or the donkey is an impure food. You’re not allowed to eat donkeys. So because of that, the donkey becomes in the symbolism an image for us actually. Most of us. I don’t know, are there any Jews here? Maybe not. But for all the nations, let’s say, all those that aren’t Jewish, and you read in the Church Fathers, they talk about this ass and this ox as in the, and there’s a law in the Old Testament which says you cannot yoke an ass and an ox together if you’re going to plow. So it’s like that’s a very strange law for people, you know, especially for kind of atheist types. They always like that. They want to make fun of the Bible. They’ll say, here’s this crazy law which says that you can’t yoke an ass and an ox together. But what it meant is exactly is what I told you, is that you cannot bring together the outside and the inside. You cannot join with the foreigners. You cannot mix the pure and the impure. But Christ brings us a different vision of the world, brings us a different reality where in fact he does. I always say Christ is the only one who’s allowed to break that law because he does in fact bring the ass and the ox together and he does it and we see it happen in this icon. And so the ass and the ox become this image of how the Jews and the Gentiles are going to join together and the church will be born out of that union. And I’m not making this stuff up by the way. I don’t have the quotes, but in the Church Fathers they explicitly talk about this symbolism. Now the other kind of let’s say strange element or important element is the cave. Why does Christ have to be born in a cave? One of the secrets to kind of understanding why Christ has to be born in a cave is if you look at the manger. So look at the manger. What does it look like? Sorry? Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like. And so the manger is already a tomb. And so this descent into the cave, this image of Christ being born in a cave is already showing us what the whole story is about. What the whole story is about, which is it is already this descent into death. And the descent into death appears, you know, we symbolize the imagery of the manger as a tomb, but the manger itself is already an image of that. This idea of descending down into animality, descending down into the place of animals, that is the state of the fall itself. When Adam and Eve fell in the garden, God gave them these garments of animal skins to cover them. And so this idea of descending into the place of the animal is this descent into death. And the early Christians knew that very, very well. They would actually create images which would link all of those things together. A good example here in the, these are images taken from the catacombs. So these are images taken from literally from the graves of Christians. And so what do they represent in the space of death? They represent something which is akin to what we saw. That is these three images. This is, can anybody guess what that image is of up there? Yeah, it’s Noah’s Ark. It’s a very strange Noah’s Ark, but that’s Noah’s Ark. You can tell because you see he’s got a bird and he’s got this giant box floating in water. Who can guess what this one is? Yes, Jonah. And then this one, you can read his name is written, so it’s not that hard. So there’s Daniel in the lion’s den. So there are three images, three images from the Old Testament which help us see what it is that’s going on. This descent into death, this descent into a cave, this descent into the place of animals, into the animal existence, you could say, which is that existence of death. And so the image of Christ, and I talk about that and I feel like maybe I’m actually ruining Christmas for you because Christmas, we celebrate, and it’s fine, we should celebrate Christmas. We should, but in our icon, we have a reminder of something which is far more austere, something which is far more serious than just this kind of celebration of the birth of a child. There are other images of Christ, other icons of Christ which happened underground, you would say, and we’ve got two of them. One is this one. Everybody know what this is? Right? The baptism of Christ. And the other, I’ll show it later. The other is the Anastasis, which is Christ descending into death. Those two images happened underground. And those two images are also images of Christ descending into death. So you have this repeated pattern from the nativity of Christ descending into death. And then the baptism of Christ and the Anastasis. In this version of the Anastasis, of the baptism, he’s actually standing on the doors of death, just like in the icon of the resurrection. So in the icon of the resurrection, here’s another one of my carvings if you want to know. Another one of the resurrection, in the icon of the resurrection, you see Christ standing on the doors of death. All right. So why is it, I’m telling you that this is an image of reality. This icon is actually a picture of how the world works. Why is that so? Well, there are a few things. This idea of the Christ child. God told, Gabriel told, St. Gabriel told the mother of God to name her child Emmanuel. And what does Emmanuel mean? Yes, God with us. Or God in us. So it is both. This descent of Christ into the cave is of course this descent of the origin of the universe into the world. And in a way it’s like this story obviously is a total scandal. You can understand why people rejected it. It is a crazy story. It is a crazy story to say that God, that the logos, that the divine logos which created the world would become a person, would enter into the world and reveal himself in this specific moment in history. And you think it is an insanely crazy story. But at the same time, it’s not a scandal because what it’s showing us, it’s showing us how reality actually works. It’s showing us the mystery that St. Paul announced. St. Paul talked to us about what is this mystery of the incarnation. And he says that Christ has revealed to us the mystery that was hidden for all ages and generations but is now revealed to his saints. And what is this mystery? It is Christ in you. The hope of glory. We say as Orthodox people and we repeat it all the time, we say God became man so that man could become God. That is Christ is revealing us the manner in which the world actually exists. Everything in the world. And when you say Christ in you, it’s not just Christ in you but Christ in everything. Christ in the world. God is hidden in the world just like Christ is born hidden in this cave. God is, of course, there are different levels here. We have to be careful. I’m not saying that the whole world is the incarnation. But the incarnation is showing us how God is hiding in the world and is hiding behind phenomena. And in fact, without this divine spark or this child, this invisible thing which is hidden inside all phenomena, the world doesn’t exist. And I’m saying this like I’m saying this very technically. I’m not saying it in a way that that that is just I’m not just spouting this off. The world is actually. The world is made of too much stuff. Everything in the world scatters into details. Why is it that this microphone? How is it that you say that it’s a microphone? Why don’t you see all its parts without without seeing that it’s one thing? There’s something about the world, the way the world works, which which makes the world come together into unity. And that’s for anything, any object, anything in the world. Everything has multiple, multiple, multiple parts and indefinite, infinite amount of parts. Why how is it that we can say that that that some things exist? And you hear like people kind of talking that people say that like it’s all just a quantum flux, right? It’s all just flux. Nothing is actually real. If you take the microphone, you could say this is this is a wire and it’s a mesh of steel and it’s black paint and it’s white paint and I could keep going and keep going and keep going. I could describe the microphone forever without ever saying that it’s a microphone. How is it that I can see that it is something? And it’s a mystery. We can’t totally know exactly how it works. But what we do know is that that is that is the that is the ontology that we are living in. That is the the worldview that the Orthodox Christian lives in. St. Maximus, the confessor, talks about this explicitly. He talks about how hidden in the world are these purposes, these hidden kernels that bring things together that make us make us actually make the world exist. And so when we see Christ coming down into this cave hidden in the world, it is an image of how the world exists. And when we see St. Joseph there doubting and asking himself, is this is this possible? Is this possible that someone can be born of a virgin? What is he asking? He’s asking a huge question. He’s asking the question. He’s asking, how is it possible for there for something to come out of nothing? How is it possible for this union between the spiritual and the physical to happen? How is it possible that we that the world exists? Ultimately, that is what he’s asking. When we talk of the Mother of God, we use certain terms which are very, very strong to help us understand this mystery. We say that that that Christ that she that she had you say, how do we say that? Her womb contained that who him who the world cannot contain or that the cosmos cannot contain. And so she contained in her room that which could not be contained. And it is and it is a pointing right. It is a pointing to the mystery right there, even from the beginning of scripture. It is linking us to that beginning of scripture of this primordial primordial earth. And then you see that the the the word come down and the word of God, which manifests the world out of this primordial waters. This image is is helping us see what the mystery is about. And you see that ray of light coming down, that star that comes down. It’s not a it’s not arbitrary that they showed it like this ray of light which comes down and points and points to this hidden kernel, this hidden reason why the world exists, this why things exist. So I think what’s important, I mean, what’s important is a few things that are important. One is to understand what it is that we’re celebrating and to to understand especially that we have we’ve been in a certain ways we’ve been we’ve been ruined by the modern world. We’ve been told that as Christians, we believe these things and these things are arbitrary that here it is. You know, I there are these things that I believe and they’re somewhat arbitrary. And here it is that I believe them. But that is not the case. What we believe our faith is real. It is the things that we that it talks about, the things that it manifests to us. Really the mysteries of how the world exists. Because the question that that that St. Joseph is asking himself, that’s the question that the atheist asked himself to about the entire cosmos. How is it possible? Why is there something rather than nothing? You can hear you can hear the physicians that the physicist asked that today. It’s like they say the Big Bang. It’s like, why is there something? How did something come out of nothing? Those questions, these those questions are being asked today. And the incarnation is obviously to be careful. I’m not I’m not saying that this is all the same thing, right? I’m trying to help you show that the incarnation of Christ brings us into the very manner in which the world exists and anchors us to a way that we can understand, but not just understand, but participate in how the world exists. And so what I would like to suggest is that that is what we are preparing for. And you know, it’s not totally arbitrary. The fact that Christmas Nativity comes at around the time of the solstice. You know, I don’t think that it’s purposeful in the sense that a lot of people think that somehow Christians just took over the pagan holidays. Actually, I don’t think that that’s how it happened. But it isn’t also arbitrary. Because that’s the that’s the in the time of the solstice is what happens. This secret mystery, too. You can imagine it’s hard now because we live in the city and we have lights and everything. But we can imagine the sun going down and down and down and down. And there’s this darkness which is rising and rising and rising. And you think and you wonder, do you think how far is it going to go? Is the sun going to vanish? Is the sun going to go away? Is it going to end? Is this going to finish? And then in that secret place, as the sun is at its lowest point, in that secret place is where the sun is born again. And we don’t see it right away, right? It’s a mystery. We don’t see it until mid-January. We don’t realize that the days are getting longer. And again, that image is the same image as what we’re seeing here. Here’s the light which comes down and manifests itself in the secret place, in this hidden spark which is there and which will grow and start to reveal itself. And then and then, you know, and we’ll go all the way into into Paska to the final kind of glorious manifestation of what was already started here. It was already intimated in the very story of the birth of our Lord. So that is what I want to encourage you today, mostly to kind of understand how important it is. And also in the Orthodox faith, we have kept what I believe to be the most complete and the most profound understanding and version of this in our hymns, in our icons, in our liturgy, and in the writings of the Fathers, we have kept the most profound version of this. And so we do have an answer to, you know, the crazy commodification of Christmas. And this is our answer. And we know how deep it goes. It goes to the bottom of the world. So thank you very much. So I know that we said that if anybody has questions, it can be about this, but it could also be about anything else. If you want to ask questions about iconography or about, you know, this strange fellow who’s carves icons, then the floor is open. Yeah. The two strange disturbing figures. I will tell you what they are. Let’s put them up and I’ll tell you what they are. These guys? Okay. So that is the sea and the Jordan. It’s actually a, their representations of the waters. So there’s a Psalm in which it is said that the sea and the Jordan receded before the Lord, that they kind of made way for the Lord. And so this is a representation of the Jordan and the sea kind of making way for their Lord, who’s coming down. But there’s something more very interesting about this as well is that the way in which they’re represented, they’re represented as old gods. They’re like old river gods. These are, these are Roman, like Roman river gods and river nymphs and whatever. It’s all these kind of weird Roman gods. And so what happens is that not only are the seas and the rivers kind of making way for Christ, but the old gods are making way for Christ as well. And they’re kind of getting out of the way to make way for Christ. And you have this image, you know, we talk about baptism, you know, you go in to baptism and then you come out and you person and you leave something down in the waters, right? You leave the, let’s say the chaotic aspect of yourself or the aspect of yourself, which was not, could not be brought in into union with Christ. You leave it down in the waters. And that’s in terms of civilizations, it’s the same. We talk about how orthodoxy baptizes cultures, right? Orthodoxy went into Russia, baptized Russia, baptized Rome, baptized different cultures. But there are some aspects of that culture, which they got to stay in the waters. And so this is a, this is a kind of very elaborate way to show all these different things at the same time. Yep. Oh, so the axe refers to Saint John the Baptist. Saint John the Baptist, when he’s preaching out in the desert, he says the axe, he talks about how people need to repent and need to be baptized. And he says the axe is at the foot of the tree. And he’s saying basically the judgment is coming. You need to repent because soon everything that doesn’t bear fruit is going to be cut off. So that’s what that represents. Yeah. I have a weird question. I don’t know. Sure. What came first, the Bible or icons? What’s the oldest icon that’s ever existed? Is that coming before the Bible or? Well, it depends what you mean by icon. If by icon, you just mean an image. Yeah. Well, for sure, for sure, the icons of Christ, as we know of, they came after the Bible. But it’s very difficult to know what was going on. Because the church was being persecuted, we do have some images here and there, early, early images. We don’t have a lot. And so it’s difficult to know. We do know that already in the second century, there is a church that they found in the city called Dura Europis, which was a home church, which was next to a synagogue. And in that home church from the second century, they found two images of Christ. One of Christ healing the paralytic and one of Christ pulling St. Peter out of the water. And so that’s what we have. And don’t let historians tell you that those are the first icons. There may be more, some before, we have no idea. It’s just that because the church was persecuted, it’s hard to know. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s just a question about the baptismal iconography. We baptize obviously as infants, most of the times. Yeah. But the comments about leaving the chaotic part of your existence behind, I have a hard time recognizing that when we speak of newborn infants or children. Let me ask you this. Do you exercise the newborn before you baptize them? You exercise them? Yeah, you do. Yeah. So even when we’re born, we are still… St. Gregory of Nyssa, we do talk about children as having a certain innocence, if that’s true. But St. Gregory of Nyssa talks about right there, talks about even the child, even the infant who screams for his mother’s breast is already showing the passions that he’ll have to deal with later in life. And so it’s like we already, because we are living in a body of death, the passions are there very, very early. Yeah. How about the snakes underneath the door? Well, the snakes underneath the door have more to do with these… In the baptism prayers, if you’ve heard the baptism prayers, we talk about these… They’re great. They’re my favorite prayers, by the way. Where it’s like we chase away the dragons that are in the water, and we chase away the serpent that’s hiding at the bottom of the waters. This ancient idea of these chaotic beings, the Leviathan or sea monsters that hide in the waters, and they represent all of this, all of these things that we exercise, all of these fringe elements of ourselves that need to be cleansed. And so that’s what that is. So he’s pushing down the serpents, the sea serpents. Yeah. What got you to carving or painting? I studied contemporary art here at Concordia. At that time, I wasn’t Orthodox. I was evangelical. And I was really struggling to unite my faith and the painting and the fact that my Christianity, contemporary art, and also being a Protestant, which is very iconoclastic. And so it was just a huge struggle. And all through college, I was just beating myself over the head, constantly trying to get this to make sense. And then finally, I just gave up and I just destroyed all my paintings and just decided, that’s it. I’m not going to be an artist. I’m going to be a regular person and have a job and I’ll do that. My wife thought that was hilarious, by the way. She was like, yeah, you don’t know yourself, Jonathan. That’s when I kind of went through just a general spiritual crisis. And I discovered the Church Fathers and then I discovered the traditional art of the Church. At first, I discovered kind of medieval art, Western medieval art. And I thought, wow, this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. It was just this amazing language, visual language, that the whole Church had kind of developed all at the same time. And I thought, this is so powerful. And so I was like, I want this. I want to do this. And at first, I thought, I can’t because it’s gone. Middle ages are finished. But then I discovered the Orthodox Church and I discovered the mystical tradition and I discovered the icons and I thought, yes, it’s alive and well. So that’s when I became Orthodox. And when I became Orthodox, when I was a catechumen, I was at the sign of the Theotokos here. And I wanted to paint icons so badly. But I couldn’t find a teacher. I think now it’s easier to find a teacher, but at that time, it was nearly impossible to find a teacher. And I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own. I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do it. So I was just fuming, just bubbling inside. I would spend all day at McGill going through old books of ancient manuscripts and just medieval images and just spending all day looking at icons. But I couldn’t. So one day, my parents cut down a linden tree in their yard and they said, hey, Jonathan, I hear this wood’s good for carving. Why don’t you want a few pieces and figure it out? And I’m like, yeah. And I thought, I’ll make a blessing cross. So I got this piece of linden and I had no tools. Basically, I had X-Acto knives. And I carved this whole cross out of X-Acto knives. And I still have it today. It’s really testimony to my shame. I just keep it. It’s very bad. But I still showed it to the priest who was following me. And he was like, OK, keep going. And then I got some proper wood and some proper tools. And I carved an icon again. And this time, the priest was like, OK, yeah, really, keep going. And then that was it. It was almost like I fell accidentally just out of a desire to paint icons and not being able to. And I really enjoyed it. And I just kept going. And yeah, here I am. Very strange. And yeah, it is my job. I don’t believe in myself, but I do the full-time icon carver. Who would have thought? How did you find the work of art, Church? Ken. Ken. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it was kind of like this weird, long process, kind of very like this, where at first I read. At first, I was kind of reading the Church Fathers, because I had been told that there are no Christians from Constantine to Martin Luther. And I was like, I was pretty suspicious about that. And so I just started reading Church Fathers and then reading St. Augustine at first, which was more accessible. And then slowly read. And then when I read St. Gregory of Nyssa, I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I’m like, why did they hide this from me? And just trying to figure out how this was still alive. And I was reading kind of more traditional authors from other traditions, even from Sufis, and trying to find my way. And then I found the book, The Meaning of Icons. And that book has an introduction by Vladimir Lossky, which is just, it’s called Tradition and Traditions. And it’s so weird, because a lot of people really don’t like it, because it’s very technical, very kind of dry, I guess. But I was crying. I was reading, and I was like crying. I’m like, this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. And I had never been in an Orthodox church yet. So I just asking around, like, where’s an Orthodox church? Like, how can I find an Orthodox church? And it was actually a Baptist pastor who was teaching Greek at McGill, who said, all right, I have a student who’s Orthodox. Maybe you want to meet him. And he’s like, but I’m not sure I want to give you his number, because I’m not sure I want you to go to an Orthodox church. He was joking though. So I did. And as soon as I went into the sign of the Theotokos, and it was during Lent, and it was during a presanctified liturgy. And so I just walked into this dark church, and it was all prostrations and just all, you know, repentance. And Father John had such a, like, a strong voice. And I was like, OK, this is it. Because I already knew I was home. That was it. Yeah? Are there right or wrong icons? Let me explain. There’s, you know, this one seems pretty traditional. But there’s also the Western depiction of religious scenes. So are they icons just like in another, in a Western flavor? Yeah. Well, OK. I would say this is actually a very, it’s a very controversial subject right now, especially with my friends from St. Blasca here. It’s a very disputed and controversial subject. I think that, how can I say this? I think that in terms of the iconology, I think for sure they are right and wrong icon. That’s for sure. That is, there are some things which the church has brought together and you see a consensus in the church about the manner in which something is represented. And so to go out of that consensus is, I think, is problematic. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some flexibility within the image. There is flexibility. All images are different. But there are these strains, these elements that help us to know that it’s, let’s say, canonical, you could say. But there is no official canon. There’s no written down anywhere, like this icon is good, this icon is bad. There were some discussions in Russia later on about that, but it’s kind of shady, because it was at a strange time. As for style, that is a more problematic question, because for the same reason, there are no writings which tell us about style. And there are also, when the Western icons entered into the church, no one said anything. No one complained. And so the argument that Western depictions are fine, that’s what it’s based on, is that no one complained. Here are these images. The counter argument, which is one that I tend to participate in, is that even though the church didn’t say anything when the Western icons arrived and started to become prolific, despite that, it happened at a time where the church hit its crazy time, crazy time in the late 19th and early 20th century. So the Western ideas, the Marxist ideas, the nationalist ideas, all of these ideas crept into the churches. All of this crept in, and then we saw this smash at a point where there were no icons anymore. No one was making icons in Russia anymore. And barely anybody was making icons in Greece, and Mount Athos was empty, and that was that. Now, what happens is that in the restoration of the icon, which happened just two generations ago, it’s very recent that we have practicing iconographers, once again, in the restoration of the icon, the people who restored the icon asked themselves, where do we go now? And the answer, and sometimes the answer was maybe ill-formulated, sometimes they use arguments which maybe weren’t the right types of arguments. But I think the answer they gave, which is we will go back to a time when Orthodoxy was thriving, when the art was thriving, when we were building churches, when we didn’t have revolutionaries at the door. And that’s what happened. And so the restoration of the icon is based on a reconnection with the 14th to 16th century iconography. That’s when most of the restoration is based upon. But a lot of people will say there is no theological justification for that. But there is, I think, a justification for it, which is that it’s because we went there, and it’s because we looked at those images that we have a thriving iconography today. If we had just gone to the Western images, what would it be? I don’t think it would have had that life that we’re discovering now. And that’s the way it happened, and that’s the way it is today. I warn people not to argue too strongly against that. Because if we think that iconography is not in danger of dying once again, and that the Orthodox Church is in danger of dying once again, we have to be seriously naive, because the world does not like us. And so we have to be very attentive to these things. Do you see a difference between an iconoclasm and the ending of icons? What do you mean in terms of the ending of icons? You mean the ending of icons that happens in our tradition? Right. The ending of icons that happened in our tradition was an outright attack on orthodoxy itself. I mean, it was this slow atheist thing that happened. I don’t mean the Western icons right away. What I mean is what all that led into. It’s like, when I think that the iconographers that painted in the Western style, I don’t blame them. And I don’t have a problem with venerating those icons either. I don’t think that they’re not icons. And I think we have to be careful not to say that, because you’ll hear people say things like, if an icon is painted in a Western style, it’s not an icon. And that is hogwash. A photocopy of an icon can be an icon. And we know, because we have mirror bearing icons that are reproductions. We have miracle icons which are painted in Western style. All of this is real. Now, the question we ask ourselves, though, is as a church, what do we want to do? And as iconographers, what do we want to promote? That’s a different question. But to your question, I think that the end of iconography through all of this, the Western practice was part of it. But it was mostly just this. I mean, it was just the Bolsheviks at the door, or the Nationalists coming in to cut off the crosses. That’s what smashed, and also wars, is what smashed iconography. This is a bit awkward, this question. Over time, I’ve collected at events and things here and there. People give me what icon they got at a smaller store or something. And I end up with sort of extraneous images that don’t really speak to me, but because Christ is depicted on them, I don’t really know what to do with them. I’m wondering, is there a proper way of… To dispose of them? …disposing of them. Yeah. Well, usually, if you want to dispose of an icon, you should burn it and not throw it away. Yeah, you should burn it so that it doesn’t… So you don’t have a decomposing icon in the trash that would be like half an icon. And so that’s how you should… But it’s a really complicated question, because the modern world has really made it difficult to understand iconography, because it’s like you have an icon on your… I’m sure you have an icon here. So this is an image here in the church. It has a halo. It says St. George Orthodox Church, so it’s kind of iffy. But the question is, you have a picture of an icon, and it has the saint, and it has the name, and it has the halo. Is it an icon? What do you do with it? It’s complicated. It’s very, very complicated. And so I think that we kind of have to throw ourselves on the grace of God with that one, but it’s very difficult to know. But I think that if you know you have these icons which have been used in prayer that have participated in the prayer life of someone somehow, then I think that you should burn them to dispose of them. Or try to give them to someone, too. I find some of them are just so cheaply made. It’s almost like already made. Yeah, I understand. I don’t appreciate looking at it. I understand. I understand. So that’s a couple of things. And when bulletins almost have a cause, and we have stacks and stacks and stacks, we obviously don’t want to put it out. What do you do over time? I don’t know. I have no good answer for you. It’s a very difficult… The situation of icons… So one of the… You could say… One of the things that I think is objective and you can say is that for an icon to, let’s say, be a sacred image in the way that we consider a sacred image, that the best way to understand it is that it’s participating in the liturgical life of the church to a certain extent. And so I think that if an image is now participating in the liturgical life of the church, it’s not as big a deal. You know what I mean? It’s not… Yeah, it’s not as big a deal. But I don’t know what the answer is to that. It’s not an easy… It’s not an easy answer. It’s not an easy question to totally answer. When I was younger, I would be gifted an icon and my icon, you would bring it to be blessed by a beast. Are we supposed to do that or we don’t do that as if not? So according to the very oldest tradition, icons were not blessed. One of the arguments that the… that the iconodules during the iconoclastic controversy made to the… made was that they didn’t bless the icons specially, they just participated in the life of the church the way other things participated. And so we see in the documents, you can find that they weren’t blessing icons. But I don’t… I think it’s fine to bless icons. It’s not a… I mean, we bless everything, right? Bless cars, we bless… So it’s… No, I don’t think that it’s not an icon. But I think there’s nothing… It can be good to have an icon blessed just because it brings it into the life of the church. It’s like your spiritual authority, your priest is going to… He’s going to pray over that icon, he prays over you. So it’s like this whole prayer relationship that’s going on. And so I think that it can be good to do that. Also, when you take that icon and you bring it home, you’re going to also carry that with you, carry that whole blessing with you. Whereas you’re going to consider this image, maybe you’ll take more care of it, you’ll have more attention to it, and you won’t take it as lightly as you might if you didn’t. So I think that it’s a fine practice. There are some people who are against blessing icons. And there’s some people who say that if you don’t bless an icon, then you can’t use it in prayer. I think we need to find a normal… Like a normal way, a middle way. All right. Well, everybody, I really appreciate your attention. Thank you for listening to me. And I wish you all the best on this mentoring program. Sounds like a lot of fun. So thanks, Father Justin.