A friend does icons and he is currently creating one for me. He did an electronic version to go by and sent it to me. It the one in my avatar: He just sent a question: It would look like this: What do you think? Leave it like the above image, or spell out “Jesus”?
Just my opinion For the sake of following tradition in this matter, I would like Jesus spelled out. Just my personal feeling
Its very beautiful but Jesus asked for it to be spelled out beneath his feet if I recall. Just sayin'.
Fortunately I already have a traditional Divine Mercy statue on my desk, and traditional image on my front door. I spent three years as a Byzantine Catholic, and a year volunteering at the National Divine Mercy Shrine. So this icon is my effort at “east meets west” ecumenism (though no one but me will ever see it), and as such I feel it can deviate a little from “tradition.”
Since there is a connection the Divine Mercy Image and the eastern church, it seems fitting. It is Fr. Seraphim, the world's leading Divine Mercy expert, who makes a fascinating connection between the mission of St. Faustina and the larger role of icons and sacred artwork. He notes that St. Faustina was given her mission to the Church and to the world on Feb. 22, 1931, when Jesus appeared before her and instructed her to have an image painted of Him according to the pattern He presented (see Diary, 47). It just so happens that Feb. 22, 1931, was the first Sunday of Lent, the designated Feast of Orthodoxy, celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine Rite to commemorate the return of icons to the churches and an end to the heresy of iconoclasm, the destruction of sacred images. So in other words, on the feast day devoted to sacred icons, Christ came to St. Faustina instructing her to have an image of Himself painted and "venerated, first in your chapel, and [then] throughout the world" to underscore the graces He makes available to us through the veneration of sacred images. An Icon Finds a Home | The Divine Mercy
The image has a beautiful sense of balance, Brian, and IC XC is a Christogram abbreviation for Jesus Christ. I like it.
I’ve always had the intuition that the Divine Mercy and it’s image had a role to play in east-west relations and reunification. So when my friend volunteered to write a Divine Mercy icon for me, I jumped on it. My most uttered prayer is my own fusion of the Eastern “Jesus prayer” and the Divine Mercy prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Have Mercy on me, a sinner, and on the whole world. This is a prayer I repeat constantly throughout my day. So even my favorite personal prayer has a hybrid east - west flavor. I was blessed to have crossed paths with Fr. Seraphim regularly during my year at Stockbridge, and my best friend Tim knew him quite well. Father was truly a Saint.
Thanks Terry. I’ve worked closely with my friend designing this icon. The Christogram as abbreviation and in place of “Jesus” was something he texted me about today as well as the Byzantine font for “I trust in You” and frankly I’m more at peace with it the more I look at it. It’s a small icon. Finished it will be 9”x12” which is good for my little home.
