Do we pray to Statues?
Mathew was getting ready for his first communion in the Church and he, along with his mom knelt before the statue of the Blessed Mother and said the prayer ‘Hail Mary’ before they joined the procession with other children. His uncle and baptismal godparent, who was participating in the first communion Mass, thought it weird to kneel before a statue and pray. At the reception that followed in Mathew’s homehis uncle made his displeasure at it clear; it naturally gave rise to a lot of discussion.
Is kneeling before a statue, idolatry? Is the use of statues against the commandments of Moses? In the Book of Deuteronomy we read, “Be strictly on your guard, therefore, not to degrade yourselves by fashioning an idol to represent any figure, whether it be the form of a man or of a woman, of any animal on the earth or of any bird that flies in the sky” (Dt 4:15-17). Unlike our customs now, these statues and images were almost always made as objects of worship. Moses continued to say, “. . . do not be led astray into adoring them and serving them” (Dt 4:19). The condemnation was against deviating from the first commandment and statues provided that danger. What is forbidden by the commandment is creation of images with the intention of worshiping them. The Lord God did not ban the creation of all religious images. On the contrary, He instructed the Hebrew people to preserve the tablet of commandments within an ‘ark’decorated with golden images of angelic beings called ‘cherubim’ (Ex 25:10-22). King Solomon when he built the temple, furnished its inside with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, open flowers, lions and oxen in accordance with the directions of the Lord (1Kings6:14-7:51)
Today, statues and other images are made with a view to honoring the persons represented by them, not to worship them. We make statues of heroes and celebrities of the day; we display photographs of our loved ones in our homes. Occasionally we may show respect for the statue of a great person or kiss the picture of a loved one. We’re not worshiping them. The respect and affection are directed to the persons represented. In the Church we have saints and great heroes of faith whom we need to remember, honor and imitate. The images of these “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12.1)are very helpful to those of us who struggle on our pilgrimage to the heavenly kingdom. Their statues are not objects of worship.
When Mathew and his mom knelt before the statue of Mary, they were not worshiping that statue made of wood; they were seeking the intercessory powers of the Blessed Mother represented by the statue, for a successful first communion celebration for Mathew. Do such reverence and veneration given to the Blessed Mother, saints and angels take away the honor due to God alone? Never. The saints and angels are the creatures of God and through them we honor their creator, God the almighty.
The issue of images in the Church known as the ‘iconoclastic dispute’ is not something new. It was resolved once and for all at the seventh ecumenical council of Nicaea in 787, in which the veneration of icons of Christ, the Mother of God, the angels and saints was justified against the iconoclasts. St Basil of the 4th century in his treatise On the Holy Spirit said: “Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the images does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.”
Mathew and his mom follow a tradition of many centuries in the Church, of using the aid of statues and images for worship.
Fr Xavier Thelakkatt