Mary Katsilometes

The Ecumenical Work of the Icon

Discipleship & Christian Education

“It was in 1998, following an intensive month of study with the master iconographer and internationally recognized author on the icon Fr. Egon Sendler, S.J., that I waited on a bench with the good priest for a train that would take me from the French Alps to Geneva, and then on to the United States. It was there, waiting for the train, that I asked Le Pere a question, ‘Why is the icon reemerging now in the twentieth century?’ His reply has directed my own teaching, and, I hope, the teaching of my students. His response to me was that the icon, by its very nature, expresses the Divine Economy of God, and that its purpose is ecumenical. In her book, The Ecumenical Work of the Icon, Dr. Hilda Kleiman elegantly and purposefully situates the reemergent icon within these two poles. By firmly establishing the icon within the communion of the church, she establishes it in its rightful place within the communion of Christianity. In this, she gives voice to the prophetic words of Egon Sendler, S.J.”