SIX new icons will soon watch over the Blessed Sacrament inside Holy Spirit Provincial Seminary’s oratory as part of a new installation this year.
The icons depict Mary, Mother of God, St John the Baptist, Sts Peter and Paul, St Mary Magdalene and St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
The iconographer behind the brush is Sister of Mary Morning Star Josephine Marie, who has been working on this set since mid-October and is now living as an artist-in-residence on campus for the next six months as she completes the icons.
She will also hold training seminars for the seminarians on the basics of iconography.
Seminary rector Fr Neil Muir commissioned the icons after a discussion between seminary spiritual director Carmelite Father Paul Chandler and Sr Josephine Marie.
Fr Muir said many, if not most, of the seminarians grew up in parishes without icons.
By having icons at the seminary, just like they had Gregorian chant and Taizé, the seminary staff were equipping the seminarians to meet the needs of different Catholic communities and broaden their understanding of prayer, he said.
“We have a beautiful icon already in the (seminary) oratory of the Annunciation, and I’ll often spend time looking at that,” he said.
“You get drawn into the scene, but then you get drawn into prayer with Mary.”
He said the newly-commissioned icons would add to the sense of the Communion of Saints “with us in prayer”.
Fr Muir thanked the benefactors who made the icons possible and the Sisters of Mary Morning Star, and said there were ways for more people to contribute to the artworks and their installation in the oratory.
Sr Josephine Marie is helping to prepare the way of the Lord
Aside from the humming of an air conditioner, stepping into Sr Josephine Marie’s studio is like stepping back in time.
Dozens of Byzantine faces stare back at me from sketches and print-outs, which hang from the studio walls and lay flat on work tables.
Sr Josephine Marie mixes her pigment and egg-yolk tempura, preparing a brushstroke to the face of an unfinished icon of St John the Baptist.
She always starts with their faces because she loves bringing up the person represented.
On the opposite wall of the studio are St John’s saintly companions – Mary, Mother of God, Sts Peter and Paul, St Mary Magdalene and St Mary of the Cross MacKillop – who together will compose the walls of the seminary oratory that face the Blessed Sacrament.
I cannot stop looking at the eyes of St John the Baptist who sits quietly on his easel.
I say as much and Sr Josephine Marie smiles.
“You can’t take your eyes off them… because it’s a personal gaze and we are interested to see what they’re seeing,” she says.
In the case of saints, they see God.
“If we too desire to see God, whether we see him or not, that thirst – just like Jesus’ cry of thirst on the Cross, is what needs to grow in us more than any sort of success,” Sr Josephine Marie says.
I ask if it affects her too, but she says being the artist, she has a different relationship with the icons.
She does pray with the saints in the icon and reads about them when she is writing them.
St Mary of the Cross MacKillop presents a unique artistic challenge too because with modern saints who have been photographed, there is a desire to present them like they might appear in a photograph.
“For icons, you’re wanting to give the essence rather than the photographic appearance of a person,” Sr Josephine Marie says.
So even small things like the lighting often does not represent what a person sees in the natural world because there is an iconographical tradition for the light to well up through the skin of the saint, representing them alive with the light of Christ inside them.
There is a long and storied theology behind icons, and their history is as bloody as a small nation.
The iconoclasms of history centred on concerns over idolatry because of confusion around why Catholics and Orthodox Christians would reverence icons.
Sr Josephine Marie says to call it idolatry is a misconception.
Instead the practices around icons come from “a beautiful truth about the incarnation of Jesus”.
“The heart of the icon is the incarnation,” she says.
“If Christ came as man, took on flesh, He became visible, then it can be represented, and we must represent Him in order to proclaim the incarnation.
“The honour that we show to an icon rises to its prototype and we are not at all venerating the wood or the gold.”
She says the icon is only significant in that it has been spiritualised to “help draw us to the one whom it depicts and through that to Christ”.
Sr Josephine Marie is excited for the future of iconography because there is a real sense of rediscovery of the practice within the Church today.
“In the daily life of many people, they get imagery hurled at them through so many forms of media, and it’s fast and it’s colourful and it’s furious and it’s a bit violent in some sense.
“So beauty, the beauty found in an icon is still.
“It slows us down and it helps us, as sacred music does, to take us into the life of faith.”
But there is a drawback: icons are resource intensive.
The painting materials all must be naturally sourced.
Even the timber surface of the icon is put through extensive treatment and smoothing to the point it feels like marble to the touch.
Then there is the time required to train an iconographer and commission them to write the icons.
Sr Josephine Marie says she loves her time writing the icons and hopes the finished works draw the men discerning priestly life more deeply into the incarnational mystery of Christ and His priesthood.
She also hopes her time guiding the seminarians through iconography helps them when it comes time to make decisions about sacred art in the parishes they will serve.
If you feel called to help make the icons at Holy Spirit Seminary a reality, you can contribute to the costs of Sr Josephine Marie’s stay for six months, as well as the installation, lighting, and security of the icons.
To find out more, head to Catholicfoundation.org.au/seminary
