Tuesday in Third Week in Lent

GOD MADE VISIBLE
IN THE FLESH

By St John of Damascus 3
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God, the best physician of souls, prohibits from making images those who are still infants and ill with a diseased inclination to idolatry, those who are apt to venerate idols as gods. For it is impossible to make an image of God who is incorporeal, invisible, and with neither shape nor circumscription; how can what cannot be seen be depicted? That they did venerate idols as gods, listen to what Scripture says in Exodus, when Moses went up on to Mount Sinai and was there for some time, waiting to receive the Law from God, the senseless people rose up against the servant of God, Aaron, saying, Make us gods to go before us; as for this man, Moses, we do not know what has become of him.

I know what the One who cannot lie said: The Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall not make any carved likeness, of anything in heaven or on the earth, and all who venerate carved images shall be put to shame. I venerate one God, one divinity but also I worship a trinity of persons, God the Father and God the Son incarnate and God the Holy Spirit. I do not offer three venerations, but one, not to each of the persons separately, but I offer one veneration to the three persons together as one God. I do not venerate the creation instead of the creator, but I venerate the Creator, created for my sake, who came down to his creation that he might glorify my nature and bring about communion with the divine nature.

I venerate together with the King and God the purple robe of his body, not as a garment, nor as a fourth person (God forbid!), but as unchangeably equal to God and the source of anointing. For the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was… Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as he became visible for our sake, by participation in flesh and blood. I do not depict the invisible divinity, I depict God made visible in the flesh…

We, who, passing beyond childhood to reach maturity, are no longer under a custodian, have received the habit of discrimination from God and know what can be depicted and what cannot be delineated in an image. For it is now clear that you cannot depict the invisible God. When you see the bodiless become human for your sake, then you may accomplish the figure of a human form; then you may depict him on a board and set up to view the One who has accepted to be seen.

Depict his ineffable descent, his birth from the Virgin, his being baptized in the Jordan, his transfiguration on Tabor, what he endured to secure our freedom from passion, the miracles which are symbols of his divine nature and activity accomplished through the activity of the flesh, the saving tomb of the Saviour, the resurrection, the ascent into heaven. Depict all these in words and in colors, in books and on tablets.

3
St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images III. 4, 6, 8; (1996) tr. Andrew Louth.