Book Description

To present the life of Jesus with ancient byzantine icons, is a great blessing for me and also, a new way to introduce the Orthodoxy in the Chinese world. I made this book from my experience as, Orthodox teacher, by the blessing of our Metropolitan of Hong Kong & SE Asia Nektarios, and with the help of my spiritual father , archimandrite Jonah. Chinese language is pictorial, the Chinese characters are pictures, Chinese communicate using pictures. So I started to do the catechism , presenting to my people icons. The result was marvelous. The beginners could understand the life of Jesus much more better, than reading a text. But it is also something deeper. Because the icons have very deep spiritual meaning, and express the theology with colors and shapes, teaching by icons the life of Jesus, in parallel we teach the subconscious mind of the people the spirituality and the “ethos” of the Orthodox Church. According to professor G. Kordis, icons lead to communion, (Icons as communion, by Holy cross orthodox press ) so the Chinese people, gazing at the icons they have a deep taste of the Church life, or better they are immersed in her. The icons have also healing effect to the soul of the reader. They bring close to the grace of God which emerges from the icons, to the the feast of love, and so the result is healing the wounds of the soul. Our Church is decorated with many icons . We printed them very big. I asked the workers from the printing company -not Christians, and did not know anything about christianity- what is their feeling, gazing this (printed) icon. They told me they feel inner peace and inner comfort. They wanted to know who are the persons, Jesus, Holy mother etc… I want to point out that we choose in purpose, very famous and also ancient icons. The one reason is that they are almost about 1.000 years old so they do not violate copy-write (and we try to keep the fair use, lowering the resolution and the dpi (to 70) of the icons. They are all in Mount Athos, the unique monastic community of christianity which has history of about 1600 years (!). The holy fathers of this holy mountain (which spiritually belongs to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople) blessed our priest, Fr. Jonah Mourtos to come here, and he founded the Orthodox Church in Taiwan. we thank the holy Abbots and the Fathers of the monasteries, who allowed us to use the icons, to give the witness of the Orthodoxy in the east. By these holy icons, we want to show that the historical tradition and continuation of the Orthodoxy, too. In the Chinese world, from one point of view is the very sad thing the fact, the many people buy a Bible and create a church, their own Church from nowhere. But from the other point of view, the Chinese people appreciate the spiritual lineage and the originality of ideas, the one catholic and apostolic church as expressed by our church, without political, national or other non christian ideas. We present to our beloved readers, this originality of the byzantine holy art, so to feel the sweet comfort and blessing. And finally we present the icons as they “work” as their natural place is in the church, which is the icon of the universe. So our readers, who had not the opportunity to be in an Orthodox Church building, can see the icons dynamically serving the Church, which is the place where everything takes its real existence and purpose, in the Divine Liturgy. We did not write too much text to explain every icon, but we wrote only the passages from the bible, so the person who wants to learn, he can think first, then open the bible see the details, the holy text, see the icon again and gradually start to enter to the grace of the christian life and start to have a taste of the orthodoxy. All the credits to the fathers of Mt Athos who allowed as the bless us for this ebook, and the friends who helped and they do not want their names to be in public, but I know they will be reviled to all in the kingdom of God. My gratitude to Michael Kampuridis, Olga and Anna Stetsko, Spyros Gourvelos and their families. Pelagia Yu Chuan