Monastery Icons

“Feed your faith and your fear will starve.”—Rev. Max Lucado

In these difficult times, we can use all the inspiration we can get. Iconographer Brother Simeon Davis has created this new nine-minute video as a Holy Week offering.

9 Things You Might Not Know About the Holy Cross

How do we know the true location of the Crucifixion?

What happened to the Cross on which Christ was crucified?

And what about the thousands of relics identified as pieces of the True Cross?

Find the answers to these questions in this video:

Deluxe Easter Egg Set

Perennial Easter favorites with our customers, these hand painted wooden egg sets are charming and inspiring reminders of the renewal of life that Christ’s Resurrection brings us.

To get $1.00 shipping on orders for these sets, just use the promo code EASTER100 in your shopping cart when you order $50.00 or more.

NEW ICON – From Robber to Saint

Moses, born in the fourth century in Ethiopia, began life amid violence and lawlessness as a former slave who led a band of robbers. After a dramatic conversion, he left that life behind and joined the monks of the Egyptian desert. There, through prayer, fasting, and obedience, he battled his passions and acquired the spirit of humility under the guidance of the Desert Fathers.

Through repentance, Saint Moses the Black (known also as "the Ethiopian") became a respected monk and spiritual elder, known for his wisdom and gentle spirit. When raiders later attacked his monastery, he chose martyrdom rather than return to violence. This classic icon of Saint Moses the Black honors him as a powerful example of transformation and repentance, and as a patron for those seeking freedom from anger, addiction, and a troubled past.

Get his icon here:

A Christmas Icon montage video from Monastery Icons.

The first Europeans to arrive in the New World brought St. Nicholas. Vikings dedicated their cathedral to him in Greenland. On his first voyage, Columbus named a Haitian port for St. Nicholas on December 6, 1492. In Florida, Spaniards named an early settlement St. Nicholas Ferry, now known as Jacksonville.

However, St. Nicholas had a difficult time during the 16th century Protestant Reformation which took a dim view of saints. Even though both reformers and counter-reformers tried to stamp out St. Nicholas-related customs, they had very little long-term success except in England where the religious folk traditions were permanently altered.

Because the common people so loved St. Nicholas, he survived on the European continent as people continued to place nuts, apples, and sweets in shoes left beside beds, on windowsills, or before the hearth. 

Saint Nicholas in the Colonies

After the American Revolution, John Pintard, the influential patriot and antiquarian who founded the New York Historical Society in 1804, promoted St. Nicholas as patron saint of both society and city. In January 1809, Washington Irving joined the society and on St. Nicholas Day that same year, he published the satirical fiction, Knickerbocker's History of New York, with numerous references to a jolly St. Nicholas character. This was not the saintly bishop, rather an elfin Dutch burgher with a clay pipe.

These flights of imagination are the source of the New Amsterdam St. Nicholas legends: that the first Dutch emigrant ship had a figurehead of St. Nicholas; that St. Nicholas Day was observed in the colony; that the first church was dedicated to him; and that St. Nicholas comes down chimneys to bring gifts. Irving's work was regarded as the "first notable work of imagination in the New World."

The New York Historical Society held its first St. Nicholas anniversary dinner on December 6, 1810. John Pintard commissioned artist Alexander Anderson to create the first American image of Nicholas for the occasion. Nicholas was shown in a gift-giving role with children's treats in stockings hanging at a fireplace. 

The Poem That Introduced Santa Claus

1821 brought some new elements with publication of the first lithographed book in America, The Children's Friend. This "Sante Claus" arrived from the North in a sleigh with a flying reindeer. The anonymous poem and illustrations proved pivotal in shifting imagery away from a saintly bishop. Sante Claus rewarded good behavior with gifts and punished bad conduct by leaving a "long, black birchen rod . . . direct(ing) a Parent's hand to use when virtue's path his sons refuse."

The book also notably marked S. Claus' first appearance on Christmas Eve, rather than December 6th.The jolly elf image received another big boost in 1823, from a poem destined to become immensely popular, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," now better known as "The Night Before Christmas." 

The Cartoonist That Created the Archetype

Other artists and writers continued the change to an elf-like St. Nicholas, "Sancte Claus," or "Santa Claus," unlike the stately bishop saint. In 1863, during the Civil War, political cartoonist Thomas Nast began a series of annual black-and-white drawings in Harper's Weekly, based on the descriptions found in the poem and Washington Irving's work. These drawings established a rotund Santa with flowing beard, fur garments, and an omnipresent clay pipe.

Nast's Santa supported the Union and President Lincoln believed this contributed to the Union troops' success by demoralizing Confederate soldiers. As Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in forming the American Santa Claus. Along with appearance changes, the saint's name shifted to Santa Claus—a natural phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus.

It's been a long journey from the fourth-century Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas, who showed his devotion to God in extraordinary kindness and generosity to those in need, to America's jolly Santa Claus, whose largesse often supplies luxuries to the affluent. However, if you peel back the accretions, he is still Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, whose caring surprises continue to model true giving and faithfulness.

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"You Become What You Contemplate"

In these confusing and troubled times, we need to reflect on where we are putting our minds. What are our “faith solutions” for preserving our faith and our peace of mind? One of the winners in our recent “What Icons Mean to Me” contest, Scot shares his answer to this question and describes his journey towards the veneration of icons and the role these holy images play in his life:

“Growing up as a Pentecostal and later an Evangelical Protestant, I had absorbed a distrust of religious images. Yet my first conscious encounter with icons was one of those watershed moments that happen occasionally in one's life.

It occurred in a Pier 1 Imports, of all places. I was either in my late teens or early twenties, but there was something magnetic, heroic, and masculine about those holy images of Saint George and one of the archangels. I was transfixed--even if I was in an aisle of a retail store.

Fast forward to my early forties. I had taken Evangelicalism about as far as it could go spiritually. I explored Catholicism and Orthodoxy, trying to figure out where God wanted me. My first time in an Orthodox church was almost visually overstimulating (and that particular parish was still in the process of writing more icons on their walls). Veneration? Oh, that was a bit too much at the time.

Even though I landed in the Roman rite, I am still drawn to icons. They have a lively presence, as opposed to statues--they are "windows into Heaven" after all. Now, I get away to a nearby Byzantine rite church whenever I can. When I walk in and look around I know I'm surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." Six days a week I pray in my icon corner--I face a diptych of Jesus and the Theotokos, along with other icons of Saint Brendan the Navigator, Saint Kateri, and Saint Seraphim of Sarov–along with a seasonal one (currently the Ascension).

My favorite, however, is of the Lord, Christ Pantocrator--the earliest surviving icon. At times, I swear He smiles at me. There is a mercy in beholding an image of our Lord rather than just imagining Him. I pray with icons because ‘you become what you contemplate.’”

- Scot M., Michigan

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The story of the Four Chaplains

WHEN A TORPEDO from a German submarine struck the USAT Dorchester shortly after midnight on Feb. 3, 1943, panic ensued. At that moment, four chaplains emerged from the chaos: Methodist preacher George Fox, Jewish rabbi Alexander Goode, Presbyterian minister Clarke Poling, and Catholic priest John Washington.

The four had met at Chaplain School at Harvard University and became good friends. Together they boarded the Dorchester in January 1943. They had been at sea for less than 10 days when the torpedo struck. In the aftermath of the attack, the four chaplains calmed the men, organized an evacuation, and distributed life jackets. When the life jackets ran out, they gave up their own.

Life jackets, however, weren’t the only thing in short supply. The Dorchester had only enough lifeboat space to accommodate one quarter of its men. The officers offered spots to the chaplains, but they refused to go.

As the survivors rowed away from the ship, they could see the four chaplains – linked arm in arm, praying for the souls and safety of their men. Before the sun rose, the Dorchester was done. So were her four chaplains and nearly 700 others. Only 230 men survived.

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When the Loretto Chapel of the Sisters of Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder – completely impractical for the sisters – as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.

To find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, placing the construction under his care. On the completion of the novena an old, gray-haired, gray-bearded man appeared, leading his donkey and carrying a simple tool collection of a saw, a carpenter’s square, and a hammer. Months later the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was Saint Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers.

The stairway is not only magnificent, it is also miraculous. The design was innovative for the time, and even today experts cannot explain the miraculous strength of its construction. The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. It is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. In 1996 a wood technologist completed a study of the wood used for the staircase and reported it was a species of spruce heretofore unknown, with unique square-shaped structure cells.

Most of us are familiar with the idea that after His death Christ "descended into Hell," as it states in the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed. It is this event, rather than Christ's resurrection at the tomb, that is the most popular and traditional representation of the Resurrection in the Eastern Church and classic iconography.

Early Christian writers like Origen and Saint Ambrose wrote about this event as "the harrowing of Hell." This otherworldly event is alluded to in an ancient homily read in the Catholic Church on Holy Saturday and in Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal homily read in many Orthodox churches on Easter morning. Detailed accounts of it can be found in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and in the transcribed visions of the German nun and stigmatist Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich.

Both of these accounts tell how when the soul of Christ left His body on the Cross, He entered Hades – that is, the underworld or the world of departed spirits – where He came to those departed souls who were awaiting the Christ and had not yet ascended into Paradise, many of them righteous and holy people.

In this paschal icon these holy ones stand on either side of the radiant and dynamic risen Christ, looking on in worshipful joy: King David, Solomon, Saint John the Baptist, Abel the Righteous, and the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Raising them up the Savior brings them into Paradise and sets them free.

He also raises Adam and Eve by the hands from their tombs, symbolizing the freeing of mankind from its imprisonment in fallen nature that was accomplished by the Resurrection. As the Holy Saturday homily relates: "The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in awe and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: 'And with your spirit.' And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: 'Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

The Blessed Virgin’s Smile

"I was at Cauterets at the time when there was so much talk of the Lourdes apparitions. I no more believed in them than in the existence of God; I was a lost sheep, and what is worse, an atheist. Having seen in the local paper that Bernadette had had an apparition on July 16, and that the Virgin smiled upon her, I resolved out of curiosity to go to Lourdes and catch the little one red-handed in her lies.

I went to the Soubirous' home and found Bernadette on the doorstep busy darning stockings. After long questioning about the apparitions I said to her; 'Lastly, how did she smile, this beautiful Lady?' The little shepherdess stared at me with wonder; then after a moment's silence: 'Oh, sir, you would have to come from Heaven itself to reproduce that smile.'

Saint Bernadette 'Could you not repeat it for me? I am an unbeliever and I don't believe in your apparitions.'

The child's face clouded over. 'Then, sir, you think I am a liar.'

I felt disarmed. No, Bernadette was no liar, and I was on the point of going down on my knees to beg her pardon. Then she went on: 'As you are a sinner, I shall repeat the Blessed Virgin's smile for you.' The child got up very slowly, joined her hands and gave a heavenly smile such as I have never seen on any mortal lips. Her face lit up with a dazzling brilliance of light. She smiled again with her eyes raised heavenwards. I remained motionless before her, convinced that I had seen the Virgin's smile on the face of the visionary.

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St. Agnes was Roman girl who was only thirteen years old when she suffered martyrdom for her faith because she refused to marry. She was martyred in 304 during the reign of Diocletian. St. Agnes is the patron saint of virgins. Her feast day is January 21st.

"As we prepared to reopen our chapel, we elected to line the walls with icons of the Saints both as inspirations and as a reminder of our journey homeward to be part of the great Communion of Saints. In making that decision, we chose Monastery Icons as a company that is reliable and dedicated to supplying a quality product that we would be proud to display! They were exactly what we hoped for.

Thank you, Monastery Icons!"

Father Tom B.,

St. Gregory Thaumaturgus Church, Pennsylvania