“In using the word icon or iconic, the Western ear is likely to think exclusively of the painted, two-dimensional images on board and gold leaf common to the Eastern Churches. But to speak of something as ‘iconic’ includes a much broader category, as evident in the word’s origin. The word icon comes from the Greek eikōn, from the verb eikenai, meaning ‘to resemble.’ But other types of icons or images exist. The Bible is an image in words, for example. Christ, of course, is the most perfect icon of the Father, like him in all things except that he is begotten. The primary consideration here is that the image be sacramental, a participation in and revealer of otherwise invisible divine realities… No matter what form the liturgical image takes, any proper iconic image shows certain characteristics. Most importantly, an iconic image is not an earthly portrait, but one that represents a being restored with divine life. No longer is the earthly person shown as a fallen human being subject to the effects of original sin, but instead is divinized and glorified… By definition, then, a saintly person represented in an icon cannot be a living being still in the process of divinization. Rather, an iconic image shows a completed process of divinization, the glory that things will have after Christ comes again. Therefore, iconic representations always embody an eschatological perfection, a divinization which is not based on earthly notions of faddish attractiveness, but on the theological notion of restoration as foreshadowed in the ‘Taboric light’ of the Transfiguration” (Denis McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy, 143-144).
This “iconic” quality in sacred images can sometimes seem incongruous or “unrealistic” to us, especially in an age of instant photos and advanced communication; but while the photo shows us what the eye sees, the sacred image is trying to show us something that the “eye has not seen”: “The historical Peter, for instance, did not walk around Palestine with hair always in place, a perfectly wavy beard, and keys in his hand. Nor did he wear a wrinkle-free toga of yellow and blue and stand in a landscape of gold leaf. An iconic representation distorts these facts for increased legibility and clarity of meaning. The keys give the viewer information on the identity of the saint, and the perfection of his outward appearance and radiance of golden background speak of Peter’s current spiritual and bodily wholeness and heavenly ‘location’ or state” (McNamara, 147-148).