Bringing St Cuthbert home...."
This was how Russian Orthodox scholar and iconographer Dr Elena Narinskaya described her experience of painting an icon of St Cuthbert at her Essex home, and then bringing it to the North East to be received at the annual service commemorating the saint held at the St Cuthbert Centre..
Just a few days short of St Cuthbert's Day (time and tides inevitably make this a variable feast) some thirty people gathered in the Centre for a Communion Service led by Centre Director Barry Hutchinson. Elena had come know about the work of the Centre as a resource for spirituality within our own Church and beyond through her participation in our Northern Synod Sinai Pilgrimage last November.
Her generous offer to paint an icon of St Cuthbert for the Centre was eagerly accepted, and the results keenly awaited. In her talk that followed the presentation, Elena thoughtfully sketched out the distinctions between painting an icon and making an idol, and encouraged the congregation to understand icons as through Orthodox eyes, as a means by which the saints exercise their beneficent powers within our earthly lives.
The Convenor of the Management Team, Sheila Flett, accepted the icon on behalf of the Centre, and recalled a student trip to Soviet Russia in which she was moved by the devotion of faithful worshippers expressed through their love of the icons in their churches. This icon of St Cuthbert's would be given a prominent place within the Centre, she promised, close to the embroidered Cuthbert's Cross, and as a further focus for people's prayers.
After the sharing of communion and the final hymn and blessing, the congregation stayed on for refreshments prepared by Barry and Hazel before returning to their homes - happy and content that St Cuthbert now seemed truly at home in his.
Sheila (R) receiving the icon from Elena