Day 158: Holy Images in the Liturgy (2026)
episode
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
12 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sure goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward a heavenly home. This is day 158. We're reading paragraphs 1159 to 1162. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y.
And you know what that stands for. That stands for Catechism in a Year. You can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. This is day 158. We are reading paragraphs. As I said, 1159 to 1162. Yesterday, we talked about music and we talked about singing. We talked about words and actions. Today, we're talking about images and just it's basically a four, four short paragraphs. But these four short paragraphs are incredibly important. because they talk about the sacred image. So recognizing that Christians use images to help them pray. And this is an ancient, ancient tradition that is only made possible because of the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the word made flesh.
Realize that before this, there could be no images made to represent God, except with the incarnation. The reality, of course, is the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And so now there is the possibility that to have a new, what they call, economy of images.
What passages and paragraphs are we reading today (Catechism 1159–1162)?
So we're going to talk about that today. So holy images, not only of our Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, but also the saints, our lady, angels, and what's not. So as we launch into today, let's say a prayer as we take this next step, talking about holy images in our prayer. Father in heaven, we know that you hear our prayers. We know that you have sent your son into this world. You revealed your glory. You have revealed your heart as you revealed to us your son. We ask you to please continue to reveal your heart to us. Continue to unpack the love that you've placed in our hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit. lord god help us to see you in all things all things that you have created help us to see your artistic hand and in all things that artists have created in every beautiful thing lord let us see a trace a shadow a a sign of your goodness of your reality and of your beauty help us to see you in all things today we make this prayer in the mighty name of jesus christ our lord amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit
Amen. As I said, I'm thinking three times now. It's day 158. We're reading paragraphs 1159 to 1162. Holy Images The sacred image, the liturgical icon, principally represents Christ. It cannot represent the invisible and incomprehensible God, but the incarnation of the Son of God has ushered in a new economy of images. As St. John Damascene wrote, "...previously, God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image." but now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled. Christian iconography expresses in images the same gospel message that the scripture communicates by words.
image and word illuminate each other. As the Second Council of Nicaea stated, We declare that we preserve intact all the written and unwritten traditions of the Church which have been entrusted to us. One of these traditions consists in the production of representational artwork, which accords with the history of the preaching of the Gospel, for it confirms that the incarnation of the Word of God was real and not imaginary, and to our benefit as well, for realities that illustrate each other undoubtedly reflect each other's meaning."
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