Alvin iconography guild pairs prayer with brushstrokes

A group of icons are seen in various stages of painting by the iconography guild at St. John the Baptist Parish in Alvin during a recent iconography workshop in the parish hall. (Photo and video by Marcus Norwood/Office of Communications)ALVIN — On a few Wednesdays of the month, Sherry Cavallo makes the trip to her home parish of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Alvin. Joining more than a dozen others, she donned an apron and lined up her paint and brushes as the parish’s Icon Guild met for its annual summer iconography workshop in the parish hall.

“Iconography is a ministry that is just a beautiful art, a sacred art,” Cavallo said. “It allows us to enter into holy places of our faith. When we paint, we pray, and we enter into the subject that we’re painting.”

Cavallo started the guild in 2016, which now has grown to include dozens of members who meet several Wednesdays in the month.

“It’s a wonderful way to build community and to live life,” Cavallo said.

The summer workshop features Father Elias Rafaj, pastor of St. Basil the Great Byzantine Catholic Church in Irving, near Dallas.

“Iconography is an art form that is intimately tied to the early Church, specifically to the experience of Christians living in the Middle East as well as in Rome and Constantinople,” Father Rafaj said. “Iconography is the theology of the Church in painted colors.

Father Rafaj, who previously served as pastor of St. John Chrysostom in Houston, has been teaching iconography for about 20 years.

“It teaches us about the encounter with God through the incarnation, through the fact that God became one of one of us, so that we can see Him and interact with Him in the person of Jesus Christ,” he said. “Iconography is an ancient art that continues to influence the life of the Church because its primary goal is the teaching of faith and the sharing of faith through this art form.”

Father Rafaj said there’s a difference between iconography and painting: “It’s not about the interpretation of the artist, but rather we follow forms and designs that have been canonically established by the Church for centuries and indeed for millennia.”

Icons often reflect depictions of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Mother and various saints and angels.

Another unique aspect of iconography is that its reflective of the “growth and spirituality of the iconographer, the person who was painting the icon,” he said. Through prayer, study and fasting, participants encounter the divine “through the painted color on the board.”

Each color used in an icon has its own meaning, he said.

For example, gold expresses a divine light, “that illumination that we hear about in the Transfiguration. We participate in that through the use of bright colors and gold, and then provide in the icon a means of prayer and encounter with the face of God.”

Through the years, the iconography guild gatherings at St. John have inspired Cavallo.

“I feel very blessed to have been introduced to iconography, and I just feel like it’s a ministry that I hopefully can keep working on ‘til I die.”
She said she hopes the guild’s efforts spread the message of the Good Word of Jesus Christ.

To learn more about the iconography guild at St. John in Alvin, visit www.stjohnalvin.org/icon-guild.