Icon shows Mary holding veil as protection for the faithful.
Sentinel photo by Ed Langlois

A team of advanced iconography students have given the people of St. Rita Parish in Portland a window to sanctity.

Through an Iconographic Arts Institute practicum that aims to bring the ancient prayer tradition of icons before more faithful, a five-foot-tall image of Mary is hanging in the Northeast Portland church. Modeled on an ancient Byzantine apparition, it shows Mary holding her veil as protection over the people.

While the institute’s new practicum trains students, it also will get icons into parishes.

“It is just really a beautiful depiction of Mary and her grace,” says longtime parishioner Pat Shanahan, who has never seen an image of the Blessed Virgin like it.

Parishioner Lovell Bossuyt was once not so sure she would like an icon. But several years ago, she went on a parish trip to Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and learned their meaning. She is thrilled with the new image.

Olivia Lucas, a parishioner since 1955, has a long-standing devotion to Mary. But the icon may take that to a new level, she says, calling it an honor to have it in her house of worship.

The three women, who have long tended liturgical art at St. Rita’s, have a friendship with one of the iconographers, Father Jon Buffington. A chaplain at Providence Portland Medical Center, the priest at one time often said Mass at the church.

This year, Father Buffington and three other students from the Mount Angel-based iconography institute signed on for a project to team up on an icon that will go to a parish. The students are to decide on a church and then work together in prayer with the parishioners to bring an icon into being, guided, they say, by the Holy Spirit.

“It’s nice to know that something that is the work of my hands is going to be an article of devotion for them,” says the priest, who specializes in gilding icons. “An icon is really a conversation with the person depicted. It gives people a road into the mystery that is represented.”

He and the other students met with parishioners as the work was beginning and explained the rigorous conventions and traditions iconographers follow.
To some, icons may look primitive or odd in perspective. It’s all intentional and it all has a spiritual meaning. Perspectives are often meant to make the onlooker a part of the icon.

“The real point is that it is God who looks at us, not we who look at God,” says Mary Katsilometes, founder of the institute, who also spoke to parishioners before the piece arrived. “We are truly God’s icons. God prays us into being, not the other way around.”

The story of the protection of Mary depicted in the new icon is one of the most important in Russian Christianity. In the 10th century, during a time of instability and conflict, Mary appeared in a palace church in Constantinople, prayed for the people and spread her cloak over them as a sign of relief from troubles.

Western Christian art also often depicts Mary guarding people with her clothing, something Father Pat Brennan noticed when serving as a seminary chaplain in Rome. He says Masses at St. Rita.

“I am very fond of the image of the protecting veil,” says the priest, whose full-time job is vicar for clergy for the Archdiocese of Portland. He likes the idea of Mary being a guarding mother for parishioners.

Chris Kresek, pastoral administrator at St. Rita, calls the new icon “absolutely breathtaking.”

“When you sit and gaze at it you are drawn into it,” Kresek says. “It is a very prayerful experience.”

Mary’s head inclines to the left, toward the church’s altar. That is because Mary is always depicted as pointing toward Christ.

The icon institute is based at Shalom Prayer Center, a ministry of the Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel. For three weeks each summer, people come from all over the continent to learn the ancient spiritual practice of writing icons — that’s the verb to use because icons are seen not as art but as an extension of the word of God.

“It takes a lot of prayer and humility,” says student iconographer Sue Graves, a member of St. Monica Parish in Coos Bay. She worked on a vital part of the icon — the hands.

“The community at St. Rita’s was so receptive,” Graves says. “It was so wonderful.”
In addition to meeting, the four students corresponded by email over the project. That included Mercy Sister Anne Sekul, a former educator who now lives in Sacramento, Calif.

When she was 10, Sister Anne’s Yugoslavian father took her to a collection of icons, telling her she would never see anything more beautiful. She says he was right. After years as a teacher and principal and psychologist, she pursued that old passion and enrolled in the institute. Master iconographer Kathy Sievers, who has studied in France along with Katsilometes, was Sister Anne’s mentor.

“If you come before an icon with an open heart and mind, it is like a window opens into another dimension and reality,” says Sister Anne, 55. “The prototype comes right up to the window and meets you.”

The four students felt pressure drop because they were working in a team. But they also had to work out different visions for the image. In the end, they surrendered to the teachers and to the directives that seemed to come from the emerging icon itself.

“It was a constant conversation among us trying to make coversation with Our Lady,” Father Buffington says.

Katsilometes and Sievers were demanding on their promising students. They had the four re-do much of the work. “There is a place to push the image,” Katsilometes says. “You have to allow it to become beautiful, not just good enough.”
There will be more icons from students in the future.

For more information about the Iconographic Arts Institute, go to iconinstitute.org.