Praying With Icons

This twentieth anniversary edition (more than 111,000 copies sold) brings Henri J.M. Nouwen's writings on Eastern Orthodox icons to a new generation and adds to the Nouwen collection published by Ave Maria Press. With a foreword by Br. Robert Lentz, a well-known painter of contemporary icons, this classic Nouwen book invites readers to pray with four Russian icons with their eyes open by emphasizing seeing or gazing, which are at the heart of Eastern spirituality. Nouwen's meditations reveal his viewing of the icons not as decorations, but holy places. The book includes four full-color icons for private contemplation or meditation.

A close look at three classic icons of the Virgin and Child reveals profound truths about discovering God in our World. “Icons, says Archbishop Rowan, show us the way.... They help us to cross borders, to enter into a new and transfigured world. And that is exactly what I experienced as I read....This is a book to be read not once only, but many times.”—Kallistos Ware, from the Foreword What we call holy in the world—a person, a place, words, or a work of art—is so because the foreign is brought together with the familiar and the everyday. No one embodies this holiness more than Mary, who makes a home for the Creator of all things in her own body and in her own house. Ideal for all Christians—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—Ponder These Things invites you to explore and reflect on the depths of meaning in three classic icons from the Eastern Christian tradition. Icons have been described as “theology in line and color.” Tracing the movement within them, the Archbishop of Canterbury discovers the pattern of love that they reveal. This love invites and embraces us so that we find ourselves caught up in the drama of the love of God. Rowan Williams is a poet, theologian, and the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury. In 2013, he will become Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

Drawing on a rich source of devotional theology, Archbishop Rowan Williams shows readers of all Christian traditions how to understand and interact with four classical icons depicting Jesus.

In order to become a healing presence for others, we must first be healed ourselves--through an active relationship with the great Healer, Christ. Drawing on the teachings of the Fathers and saints of the Church, Dr. Rossi gently points the way toward deepening our love for God and for each other so that others may experience Christ through us.

From the same Irish monastery that gave us the best-selling The Glenstal Book of Prayer, with over 150, -000 copies sold worldwide! The Glenstal Book of Icons presents meditations and prayers on a selection of icons from the Glenstal Abbey Icon Chapel. The process is that of lectio divina, where the icon itself is the text to be read and considered, leading to a meditation on the text - or icon - which in turn leads to prayer. Each icon is reproduced in full color. A substantial introduction places the icon in its context in Eastern Christianity, looks at the theology of icons and then at the Eastern approach to praying with icons. Special emphasis is given to The Jesus Prayer which is then used in various forms throughout the meditations which follow. Gregory Collins, OSB, is a monk of Glenstal Abbey, Ireland.

In this beautifully illustrated book Jim Forest explains the use of icons in prayer to the uninitiated. Icons are not just "art" but a powerful aid to prayer and contemplation.

Icon and Devotion offers the first extensive presentation in English of the making and meaning of Russian icons. The craft of icon-making is set into the context of forms of worship that emerged in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century. Oleg Tarasov shows how icons have held a special place in Russian consciousness because they represented idealized images of Holy Russia. He also looks closely at how and why icons were made. Wonder-working saints and the leaders of such religious schisms as the Old Believers appear in these pages, which are illustrated with miniature paintings, lithographs and engravings never before published in the English-speaking world. By tracing the artistic vocabulary, techniques and working methods of icon painters, Tarasov shows how icons have been integral to the history of Russian art, influenced by folk and mainstream currents alike. As well as articulating the specifically Russian piety they invoke, he analyzes the significance of icons in the cultural life of modern Russia in the context of popular prints and poster design.