www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Iconic Monstrance?

This is rather interesting.
http://amothersplea.org/

If you click on the center, it shows the why for the design.
http://www.amillionsouls.com/

EEEK!

Fr. Serge

Dear Father;

"EEEK" gives us an idea of what you feel about this, but I (and probably some others) would like to have your theological persepective on this.

There was also a vigorous debate on the propriety of this monstrance over there at New Liturgical Movement, so much so that the combox was yanked offline.

It reminds me of an Icon which Jesus is portrayed in a medalion held by the Most Holy Theotokos.
Personally for my tastes I dont like it and have never liked that Icon either.
Now dont go calling me an antidicemarionite.
Stephanos I

Oh I hate to be a critic of this for I am sure that this is being made with profound love for Our Lord and his Holy Mother. That being said this is a very strange looking statue/icon. (I am not quite sure)

Maybe the picture needs to be zoomed out to see a bigger view of the Tabernacle. The way the image on website looks, there's a Hindu feel to it, because the Blessed Mother looks as though she is sitting cross-legged in Buddhist/Hindu-Guru fashion; the moon implies some kind of goddess or something.. it doesn't "feel" right to me. Not that I'm questioning the motives or intent of the people involved in building it.. just a gut feeling.

The thing frightens me. I would be hard put to it to grasp any serious theological point that it is attempting to make.

An often-violated rule of the present Roman Rite is that "Benediction", with or without a monstrance, may not be done as an independent service, but only as a supplement to another service: Vespers, the Te Deum, or something similar. It must be more than ten years since I last experienced it at all.

Fr. Serge

What came to mind for me was that it was an adaptation of Our Lady of the Sign [en.wikipedia.org]:
[Linked Image]

You mean the "Queen Mother"... weird.

And I'm generally a pretty huge fan of St. Stanislaus Kostka.

The Icon (called the Platytera in Greek and the Sign in the Slav languages) is magnificent and joyful. I've already expressed my opinion of the monstrance.

Fr. Serge

Having only now read to the end of the link I provided, I find in fact that:


This raises a separate question: How appropriate is the traditional form of the icon itself for the use as a monstrance?

That is, accepting the Latin devotion and usage, is not this icon in a sense made for such a use: a glass pix to accept the consecrated host placed over the circle having the image of Christ? This is not the traditional Latin practice -- using an icon -- but is there anything essentially incorrect or inappropriate?

Would not the this Icon in fact prove a distraction during Eucharistic Adoration ?

I thought that one wa supposed to look on the Consecrated Host and focus your thoughts on Christ that way - wouldn't this huge Icon be rather a stumbling block ?

I have to say that this is not something I would appreciate - the Iconic Monstrance I mean

Reverend Fathers, sisters and brethren
C^BA ICYCY XPUCTY!

Yes Father, thank you for your council. You seam to know how to hit the nail on the heads in very few �words�.

Could this be how Westerners saw it when Easterners stole their customs refashioning them, making them our own? Could this be any worse then a Rafael Madonna on a pre-1960 iconostas? Did not the Pope tell them to look to the East? No wonder their chaplet of DIVINE MERCY chants �Holy God� with an insertion �and on the whole world� like the Fileoque to the Creed. (Unless I am mistaken and that is how it is sung in their Good Friday Presanctified.)

Does not the �monstrance� (tabernacle / arc) part on our icon of the Sign reads the Word in an embryo state inside the Mother of God? If so their interpretation may not be our perspective but speaks true. We must remember before the Renascence the Gothic cathedrals were covered with stone statuary, most in Byzantine costuming and iconic staging. The moon is a Western interpretation from Revelation. No worse then when we put crescents at the foot of our crosses when the Turks were controlled in Rus� Minor.

People who pray in stained glass houses shouldn�t throw prosphora.

Well, the prosphora will just bounce off the glass, anyway.

This whole thing has a complicated mixed set of theological points.

Some of which are disturbing.

Michael