I-YOUniverse

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2008 

The Savior of Zvenigorod, ca. 1384 by Andrei Rublev, greatest of the medieval Russian Orthodox icon painters.

Henri Nouwen, the gay Catholic writer, discusses this icon in Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons.

In Orthodox belief icons are windows of heaven and the subject is looking at you. In this icon the eyes are powerful; their calm gaze reminds you that Christ sees you with a heart of love.

Each detail is infused with meaning. Zvenigorod, where the icon was found under a barn floor, is a town near Moscow; its name means “town where they ring bells.”

The part of Nouwen’s meditation which makes this icon so meaningful to me, however, has to do with the destructive impact of time and neglect on a masterpiece. Originally the center panel of three in a deesis, a triptych with the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, this is all that remains, badly damaged.

Nouwen points out that, just as the art work was neglected and abused, so Jesus was neglected, tortured, and murdered. Thus, the icon symbolizes the suffering of Christ and of people through the ages.

I don’t believe that your assent to certain dogma makes you one of God’s own. Your character, a life of love and action on behalf of others and in service of truth, is what counts.

I’m writing this essay with a friend in mind. (I’ve avoided any information that could identify him.) I spent a few precious minutes on the phone with him today. He lives with pain and illness that would disable most people, yet he continues to love and serve, often past the point of exhaustion.

Like me he’s subject to periods of depression, those emotional black holes you just have to live through. He told me that he felt he was unable to serve in his state of mind. I recalled Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Christ felt cut off from the Father, perhaps for the frst and only time of his life. Yet at that very moment, he embodied the redemption of the creation.

The theories of the atonement that you can read many volumes about do not speak to me. I can’t understand why God the Father doesn’t simply forgive sins. Why does God need a sacrifice? I’m no theologian, so I leave that debate to others.

What the cross means to me is simply this: God enters into the suffering of the world. On the cross God shares it, endures it; God faces brutality and violence of the worst sort, and overcomes it.

In John 9 is the story of the man born blind. The disciples saw the man at the side of the road as an excuse for a theological debate. “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” they asked. Jesus said, “Neither! This man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” And Jesus restored his sight.

I don’t want to trivialize the mystery of suffering. I don’t know why the universe has tornadoes and other destructive forces in it, or why the human spirit is capable of unimaginable horrors. But I know that suffering gives us an opportunioty to respond with compassion and courage.

In a book called Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future I read of Janusz Korczak, distinguished Polish educator, director of an orphanage for Jewish street children; he refused safe passage when the Nazis took over Poland. He wrote and hid Ghetto Diary, found by friends after World War II. He taught the children in his care to face death proudly. He said, “I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and to act.” His is the only name at the site of Treblinka, where one million died.

How do we respond to the suffering of neighbors, whether next door or on the other side of the world? Some of us can act with love and courage to change and to serve. Some of us, suffering ourselves, endure.

Putting the issue in Buber’s I-You language: our relation to the You of suffering defines the kind of I we are, person or thing. When we take on suffering, say You in response to the You of others and to the eternal You, whether by bearing our own pain courageously or by sharing others’ pain, then we become a living icon, embodiment of the Presence, a flame of overcoming love.