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What is God teaching us? First and foremost, we are to worship Him alone. Second, because we are both body and soul, physical and spiritual, He draws us to Himself and teaches us about His glorious Kingdom by using both visible (physical) and invisible (spiritual) means. As the Psalmist and St. Paul teach us, both created and graven images can guide us to know and follow God better.
In addition, by visibly becoming man, “the Son of God introduced a whole new ‘economy’ of images” (Catechism, no. 2131). Jesus is the image of the invisible God, so making images of God is no longer problematic. Unlike the manmade gods of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity made flesh, is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15-23), not made by human hands. When Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, Jesus replied, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). The Father is invisible (Jn 1:18, 6:46, etc.), but He is visible through His Son’s Incarnation (Heb 1:1-3a). With the coming of Christ, we not only have an image of God to be reflected and venerated in sacred art, we can also partake of His nature as His children and glorify Him in a new and more powerful way (2 Pt 1:2-4; cf. Rom 8:14-17; 1 Jn 3:2). Thus, with the coming of Christ, God’s works become even more wondrous via the lives of the saints whom we venerate through statues and other sacred art.
Some Christians argue that believers may make only those images that God specifically prescribed in the Bible. By that strict criteria, though, reproducing any image mentioned in the Bible would be inadmissible, because the Bible never explicitly mentions that future believers may reproduce these statues or images. The Church, following God’s use of sacred graven images in ancient Israel, celebrates His wondrous works, both past and ongoing, in the appropriate appointment of Church buildings. Any Catholic who has ever been to St. Peter’s Basilica or another majestic church can testify how beautiful sacred art can dispose a believer toward prayer and worship of God Himself.
Other Christians will persist that this is precisely the problem, because Catholics often bow down before and kiss these statues and images in their churches. Bowing down and worshipping anything or anyone but God is indeed idolatrous and wrong (cf. Acts 10:26; Rv 19:10). But explain that the appearance of worship is not necessarily worship, providing your listener with the context and purpose of legitimate veneration expressed herein. In addition, explain that bowing (or kissing) need not exclusively be an expression of worship, as Jacob bowed before Esau out of respect (Gn 33:3) and Queen Bathsheba did the same relative to King Solomon (1 Kgs 1:16; 2:19). Catholics similarly respect the saints in heaven, and ultimately pay tribute to God Himself, when they kneel or prostrate themselves in front of sacred images. Their minds are directed to members of the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-26; Col 1: 24; Rom 8:38-39) and Christ Himself (cf. Col 3:17), not to images made of paint and plaster.
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Dear Catholic Exchange:
An Anglican friend asked me why we pray to statues.
Beverly
Dear Beverly,
Peace in Christ! We don’t really pray to statues. We pray to real persons represented by the statues.
Your friend said “pray” not “worship,” but let’s begin with the worship of statues, which is idolatry. Your friend might not be surprised that the Church prohibits the worship of statues and idols, as the Second Council of Nicea reaffirmed in 787 A.D. As noted in the book of Exodus (20:2-5), the First Commandment says we are to worship God alone and not anyone or anything else: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God….” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2112, is clear on this matter:The First Commandment condemns polytheism [i.e., the worship of gods other than the one, true God]. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one, true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of “idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.” These empty idols make their worshippers empty: “Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them” [Ps 115:4-5, 8]. God however, is the “living God” [Jos 3:10].
One of the basic distinctions between offering worship to and the veneration of (showing respect for) someone or something is the offering of sacrifice. We offer sacrifice only to God, something Catholics do every day at Mass with the sacramental re-presentation of Christ’s one sacrifice made on Calvary (Catechism, no. 1366-67). To offer sacrifice to a demon or an idol, as some Israelites did with the golden calf (Ex 32:8), is the classic expression of idolatry. However, as the Catechism makes clear, there are other expressions of idolatry. The Catechism notes “idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God.” Idolatry refers not only to false pagan worship, but also any honoring and revering of a creature or thing in place of God, whether “gods or demons (for example, Satanism), pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money etc.” (Catechism, no. 2114; cf. Mt 6:24; 1 Tm 6:10). “Idolatry rejects the unique lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God” (ibid.).
The Bible prohibits the worshipping of idols, such as the serpent God had instructed Moses to make (2 Kgs 18:4). The Bible does not prohibit showing respect for or venerating the great works of God, i.e., the persons and things that personify or reflect His wondrous glory. As Psalm 19:1 conveys, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.” St. Paul affirms the Psalmist in Romans 1:20: “Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse….”
If someone or something shows forth God’s glory, there is nothing wrong with paying respect to or honoring that person. Because, in doing so, we worship not the creature but pay tribute to the Creator. “The honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype,” the Church teaches, and “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it” (Catechism, no. 2132). “Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate,” adds St. Thomas Aquinas. “The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is” (ibid.).
Contrary to what some Christians think, God prohibits neither honoring persons in themselves, nor honoring them or other things via the manufacture and veneration of sacred statues and images. Consider that the Bible records that God sanctioned the making of images that pointed toward the salvation which His Son Jesus would bring about (Catechism, no. 2131). For example, five chapters after providing the aforementioned First Commandment, God decreed that the Israelites should build the ark of the covenant, in which God would dwell and which would include graven images of cherubim on each end (Ex 25:17-19). God said that this ark was to be placed in the Temple (1 Kgs 6:12-13), a structure which would include other graven images, more cherubim, palm trees and open flowers (cf. 1 Kgs 6:23, 27a, 29, 31-32). Significantly, the cherubim were not only positioned on the ark but located elsewhere in the “inner house” or Holy of Holies of the Temple, the most sacred place in all of Israel. So God commanded not only that the graven images be made, but He also expressed His approval by consecrating the Temple in which these graven images reside (1 Kgs 9:3).
Consider again the “fiery serpent” that God told Moses to make and mount on a pole, promising that any of the sick Israelites who looked at the serpent would live (Nm 21:8-9). Based on a strict reading of the First Commandment, God seems to be contradicting Himself. He not only orders the construction of a graven image but, instead of healing the Israelites directly, promises good health for those who look upon the serpent. But, like statues and images today, the serpent had no power in and of itself; God used the serpent not to encourage polytheism, but rather to show forth His glory and prefigure the salvation that His Son would bring. Indeed, as St. John teaches us, the serpent is a type of Christ (Jn 3:14). Only when the Israelites begin to worship the graven serpent, about 800 years after its construction, did God order them to destroy it (2 Kgs 18:4).