Does the Catholic Church Have Graven Images- A Eastern Church Father Speaks

Papa Benedict has returned to talking about the Church Father at his Wednesday audiences. He gave a great and I mean great presentation on a Father that might not be familiar to many. That is Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople. There is a lot there about his thought and influence.

The Full English translation is not up yet at the Vatican. See 29 April 2009, St Germanus, Bishop and Patriarch of Constantinople. I expect they will have it early next week. But the Ratzinger Forum has a translation up on this page.

There is a lot more than the image issue but that is what I will focus on as to the Pope comments.

The Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople, whom I will speak about today, is not among the most representative figures of the Greek-speaking Oriental Christian world, but nonetheless his name appears with some solemnity in the list of great defenders of sacred images listed in the Second Council of Nicaea (784), the seventh of the Church's ecumenical councils.

The Greek Church celebrates his feast in the liturgy of May 12. He had a significant role in the complex history of the fight in favor of sacred images during the so-called iconoclastic crisis. He valiantly resisted the pressures of an iconoclastic Emperor - one who was an adversary of images - in Leo III. During the Patriarchate of Germanus (715-730), the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, underwent a very dangerous siege by the Saracens.

On that occasion (1717-718), a solemn procession was organized in the city with the exposition of the image of the Mother of God, the Theotokos, and a relic of the Holy Cross, to invoke the Supreme Power in the defense of the city. Afterwards, the enemy decided to desist from their idea of establishing their capital in the city that was a symbol of the Christian empire, and the people's acknowledgment for the divine assistance was extremely great.

Patriarch Germanus, after that, was convinced that the intervention of God should be considered evident approval of the piety shown by the people towards holy icons. But a completely different view was held by Emperor Leo III, who in that year, seated himself in Constantinople as the undisputed Emperor, reigning until 741.

After the liberation of Constantinople [from the Saracen siege] and other victories, the Christian emperor started to show more openly that the consolidation of empire should start with a reordering of manifestations of the faith, particularly against the risk of idolatry to which he believed the people were exposed as a result of an excessive cult of icons. In vain did Patriarch Germanus argue about the tradition of the C hurch and the efficacy of some images that were unanimously acclaimed to be miraculous.

The emperor became even more firm in applying his plan of 'restoration' which included the elimination of icons. When on January 7, 730, Germanus openly took a stand during a public meeting against the cult of images, he did not wish to yield to the emperor in any way on questions that he felt were determinative for the orthodox practice of the faith which, he said, included the cult and love of sacred images.

As a consequence, Germanus was forced to give up being Patriarch, condemning himself to exile in a monastery where he died forgotten by virtually everyone. His name re-emerged at the aforementioned Second Council of Nicaea (787), when the orthodox Fathers decided in favor of icons and recognized the merits of Germanus. ....................

In the end, the question remains: What does this saint have to tell us today, who is chronologically - and even culturally - distant from us?

I can think of three things, substantially.

The first: God has a certain visibility in the world, in the Church, which we must learn to perceive. God created man in his image, but this image has been covered so much by the filth of sin, as a result of which God can no longer be seen. And so, the Son of God became man, a perfect image of God - and so, in Christ we can contemplate the face of God and learn to be true men ourselves, true images of God. Christ invites us to imitate him, to become like him, so that in every man, the face of God may show again, the image of God.

True, God in the Ten Commandments forbade graven images, but this was because of the temptation to idolatry to which the believer could be exposed in the context of paganism. But when God became visible in Christ through the Incarnation, it became legitimate to reproduce the Face of Christ. Sacred images teach us to see God in the representations of the Face of Christ. Thus, after the incarnation of the Son of God, it became possible to see God in the Face of Christ and even in the face of saints, and in the faces of all men in which the holiness of God shines through.