This icon of Jesus' face was painted by Father Gregory Krug (1908-1969). There's an excellent article about Father Krug's life that can be accessed at the bottom of the page here.
There are only a handful of Father Krug's icons still in existence. Many were lost, given away to friends or visitors. Painted on and with poor materials, even cardboard, the icons that remain are deteriorating. Living through the awful deprivation of the Second World War, suffering famine, poverty, stomach cancer, depression and mental instability, having been committed to an asylum and left to starve by the Nazis who deemed him useless, Father Krug's icons convey a tremendous sensitivity to suffering persons.
But what a grace that Father Krug discovered icon painting as a way to healing. His icon faces convey a deep interior life, marked by tenderness and sadness without sentimentality. He painted the icons of a small chapel for Russian children who were orphaned during the Second World War. In one of those orphanage icons, Jesus is seen holding a rolled up scroll. This is significant as he wanted the children to meet Jesus who asked nothing from them, who only wanted to bless them.
How easily we're side tracked as adults - believing that Jesus asks monumental things of us. "Love one another," (Jn13:34), "I call you friends," (Jn15:15), Jesus said. Christians often make Jesus into a tiresome lawyer. In my boyhood catechism, Jesus looked disappointed, as if my six-year-old sins weighed him down. In this icon, Father Krug has shown us only the face and shoulders of Christ. He wants us to be totally focused and undistracted. But notice while Jesus looks out at us full-face, his eyes are diverted to his left. He is looking for us in the margins — where where we lose joy, optimism, confidence and hope.
One news commentator said recently, speaking metaphorically about the present state of things in our nation, "We need aloe for our burns."
Not sure of what we are to do, aware of the the sickness, the poison, the anxiety, the burns? Might I suggest something new? Mark this blog-page, and each morning (if even for ten minutes) sit in silence before this icon of Jesus Christ. You might even place yourself before the icon, a little off center, where Christ's gaze can fall on you. Perhaps bring to mind that inner place you might identify as off in the margins. Divorced and remarried people, gay people, people of color, the poor, often feel themselves to be off and ignored in the margins. What about you? Me? You might imagine that you are, in your own way, one with them. Feel the solidarity, if you can or care to. Lastly, don't run away if you start to feel uncomfortable. Many of us (maybe all of us) need to be healed inwardly if we are ever to become full human persons.
The healing of the country's current sickness, our national chaos, the deep malaise, hatred and division that have overtaken us of late, will not be healed by a candidate's promises and our vote, however important that is, but by our own personal restoration and renewal. Gregory Krug found his inner healing by painting icons. We might find our own healing in gazing at them.
Read more about Fr. Gregory Kroug. Click here.
