Sacred Heart Icons?

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But you can understand how this is strange if carried logically to dismembered christ devotion

**This is basically the Orthodox viewpoint (and objection).

It was expressed by one Orthodox hierarch to Abp. Andrew Sheptytsky.**
A viewpoint shared (quietly) by a number of Catholics.
 
But you can understand how this is strange if carried logically to dismembered christ devotion:

Adore his brain - adore his divine wisdom

Adore his right arm - adore his strength

Adore his bile bladder - adore his just wrath

Why not just adore christ who has love, wisdom, wrath and strength??
It wasn’t His wisdom that saved us, it wasn’t His right arm that saved us, it wasn’t His justice that saved us; it was His love that saved us. God is Love.

“Behold this heart which has so loved human beings and which has spared itself nothing even to exhausting and spending itself to give witness to this love; and in recompense for the most part I have received only ingratitude.”

catholicexchange.com/2007/04/05/97529/
 
But you can understand how this is strange if carried logically to dismembered christ devotion:

Adore his brain - adore his divine wisdom

Adore his right arm - adore his strength

Adore his bile bladder - adore his just wrath

Why not just adore christ who has love, wisdom, wrath and strength??
Sounds kind of foolish to break it up that way. Everyone knows that nobody is suggesting this type of breakup. The heart is talked about NUMEROUS times in the bible and it has more meaning than those things you suggested.

Exodus 9
7 And Pharao sent to see: and there was not any thing dead of that which Israel possessed. And Pharao’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the people go.

**Volodymyr **, why wasn’t Pharao, bile bladder hardered instead?

quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=simple&format=Long&q1=heart&restrict=All&size=All

Heart: 1018 matches

Matthew 11:29
29 Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls.

Is there a real reason why *Maran Ysho’ Mshyha *had to specifcy He is humble of heart here?
 
Personally, I have never been a fan of Eastern variations of devotions to the Sacred Heart. I certainly do not deny St. Margaret Mary Alaquoque’s testament, which is accepted by the Church, so my position has nothing to do with the devotion itself. It derives simply and solely because it’s an “import” from the Roman Church.

I have no idea of Slavic (or Malayalam, etc) linguistic usage, but I can say that in the Eastern Mediterranean, at least, the word “heart” is often used to represent love. To me, that is exactly the testament of St. Margaret Mary Alaquoque. That last also seems to be the essence of what Chaldean Rite says in post #24.

All of that said, though, if one is considering representations of the Sacred Heart, I suppose there is some merit to what Volodymyr said in post #18
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Volodymyr:
But you can understand how this is strange if carried logically to dismembered christ devotion:
and consequently I cannot argue with that, nor with the Orthodox position that bpbasilphx noted in post #20 (and which Aramis expounded on in post #22).
 
Speaking as one with an undergraduate minor in organ, I can assure you that musical instruments just would not fit with the Byzantine Divine Liturgy.
Now if you could just come to my city and explain that to the otherwise amazing parishoners at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral who reverently sing along with organ accompaniment every week…

Ah well.
 
Now if you could just come to my city and explain that to the otherwise amazing parishoners at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral who reverently sing along with organ accompaniment every week…

I don’t know why. I was Chrismated in the Greek Archdiocese, and since Byzantine music is microtonal (notes between F and F#, for example), it’s odd that they would use organs.
 
Not to argue with you (Your Excellency or Father, I’m not sure how to address you) but blues songs frequently use micro tones and they have full accompaniment.

I was struck the first time I heard Greek Orthodox Vespers and the similarity of the music to “Middle Eastern” music.
 
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bpbasilphx:
Now if you could just come to my city and explain that to the otherwise amazing parishoners at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral who reverently sing along with organ accompaniment every week…

I don’t know why. I was Chrismated in the Greek Archdiocese, and since Byzantine music is microtonal (notes between F and F#, for example), it’s odd that they would use organs.
Syriac chant is even more so. In Maronite churches, at least, there is generally an organ, or a harmonium, or (more recently) an electronic keyboard. Whatever variant of the keyboard it may be, it’s usually played somewhat sparingly. And even though organ solos are a little unusual in a Maronite church, (the exception being if (a) there is a grand organ in the first place (very rare) and/or (b) the organist is filling time with Bach or something) it does work (see below).
Volodymyr 988:
Not to argue with you (Your Excellency or Father, I’m not sure how to address you) but blues songs frequently use micro tones and they have full accompaniment.

I was struck the first time I heard Greek Orthodox Vespers and the similarity of the music to “Middle Eastern” music.
In Middle Eastern “pop” music (whether Lebanese, Iraqi, Israeli (mizrachi), Egyptian, etc) the electronic keyboard has become rather a staple, and as Volodymyr suggests, it does work. Actually, it works quite well.
 
👍

Just because something is not part of the Eastern or Latin heritage does not mean that it’s inherantly bad.
Of course neither of the Icons above or the Moleben to the Sacred Heart do this. Byzantine Chistians could be accused of the same thing with the Holy Cross. If adoring Christ’s Sacred Heart is wrong how much more so an inanimate object? The accusation of Nestorianism and adoration of an organ is a gross misrepresentation of the devotion to the Sacred Heart just as accusing Eastern Christians of idolatry due to their adoration of the Holy Cross would be.

Fr. Deacon Lance
 
And what is so wrong with borrowing and adapting traditions between East and West?

Some people seem to think that the various traditions were hermetically sealed at around 100 A.D.

Historical new flash: They weren’t. East and West influenced each other quite a bit during the first 1000 years.

What is wrong with that continuing?
 
And what is so wrong with borrowing and adapting traditions between East and West?

Some people seem to think that the various traditions were hermetically sealed at around 100 A.D.

Historical new flash: They weren’t. East and West influenced each other quite a bit during the first 1000 years.

What is wrong with that continuing?
BRAVO:D
 
And what is so wrong with borrowing and adapting traditions between East and West?

Some people seem to think that the various traditions were hermetically sealed at around 100 A.D.

Historical new flash: They weren’t. East and West influenced each other quite a bit during the first 1000 years.

What is wrong with that continuing?
Because 90+% of the time, it’s been used to impose roman traditions on the east without respect for the Eastern traditions.
 
I stopped by at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles the other week and almost fell on my … when I heard a (digital:banghead: ) organ being played. But it was after the service as people were leaving. Puzzling. :confused:
 
this is purely personal opinion, and my knowledge iconography is slight at best and of course have only nodding aquaintance with Eastern Christianity due to living and worshipping in close proximity to a variety of Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches. I react on an emotional level to icons, thought I do take time to research the meanings of the colors, postures, symbols, words etc. when I aquire one I like. I have several, most modern reproductions on inexpensive media of classic (Eastern) icons, which aid tremendously in prayer and contemplation.

I do have to say, in support of Pani, that I simply do not have the same visceral reaction to modern icons produced by modern artists (writers?) whose biographies place them squarely in western tradition. There are some in fact I find distinctly off putting. As I say I have no real theological basis for that reaction, simply emotion. I would consider them at best an attempt by a western artist to use techniques borrowed from the East to convey something personal to him or her, and as that I respect them, but very rarely like them. I do have some of them, most received as gifts, but they are of western saints and images–like the one in OP, that would not normally, I believe, be found in Eastern iconography.

there is a parish near us with a relatively new church (70s) which has recently been refurbished, and since originally it had few statues or religious images at all, very stark, there was an attempt to add more and better art. They acquired a set of at least a dozen of the large size icons from a popular distirbutor, all “modern” and “western” including OL Guadalupe for instance, pretty, but clearly not from the Eastern tradition. Their placement, which should evoke the icon “wall” (can’t remember the term) I am familiar with in the old Eastern rite and Orthodox churches I know in Cleveland and Detroit, is quite frankly, quite disturbing to me, and I find that church more unsettling now than I did when it was bare. I simply can’t say why, it is just emotional. tain’t fittin’ just tain’t fittin’. The images themselves just do not evoke a response to the saint or reality they are meant to convey.

I have no opinion on the secondary direction this thread has taken, mingling of Eastern and Western traditions, since have little or no knowledge of the issue. I am responding to OP, not the side debate
 
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