Nun Gabriela
All Articles by Nun Gabriela
Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, Essex, England
An iconographer Saint; Searching for the True Likeness
St Sophrony (Sakharov), recently included in the catalogue of saints,1 is best known for his theological writings. However, during the first years of his adult life, he dedicated himself to a career as a painter. Unable to find fulfillment in this profession, he left the world for Mt Athos at the age of 29. He spent the next sixty-year period as a monk, a hermit, a priest, and a spiritual father. He founded a monastery and wrote several books about his elder, St Silouan, and about his own experiences, mainly as a hesychast. In his later years during the building of his monastery, of necessity, he returned to painting, more particularly to iconography, and expressed his spiritual wisdom with colour and brushes.2
St Sophrony’s journey to the icon
‘The act of the creation of all things is a mystery drawing us to Him.’3
St Sophrony’s early life was dedicated to painting. Through his art he tried to fathom and solve the questions that tormented him about life, about Being, about death and eternity. While this brought him through the path of abstraction, he ultimately realised that the solution to all his quests was the Creator of the universe not the creation. During ardent prayer of repentance for having arrogantly turned away from his childhood beliefs in search of something he deemed higher and loftier, Christ came to him.
1. St Sophrony was added to the list of saints by the Ecumenical Patriarch in November of 2019.
2. Due to failing eyesight and physical strength, toward the end of his life, St Sophrony was unable to paint and climbed the scaffolding for the last time at the age of ninety to touch up a work.
3. A. Sophrony, We Shall See Him, (Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1988), 150.
St Sophrony’s image of Christ in a Liturgical perspective
The Person of Christ was the undisputable centre of St Sophrony’s life. During long years of intense repentance, he expressed his devotion in thought, in prayer, in writing and in painting.1 From his meeting with Christ in his youth until his eyesight began to fade in old age, it was his burning desire to portray the Face of his Creator in a worthy manner. Although he realised that painting the perfect icon was an impossible task, he continued to portray his Saviour in various forms of expression through his long life.
St Sophrony’s image of Christ is inseparable from his understanding of the hypostatic principle.2
The soul comes to know herself first and foremost face to Face with God. And the fact that such prayer is the gift of God praying in us shows that the hypostasis3 is born from on High and so is not subject to the laws of Nature… It is singular and unique.4
God, the Absolute Being, is Hypostatic by nature, and man, who is created in the image of God, has the full potential to become hypostatic in so far that he strives to
Nun Gabriela is a member of the monastic Community of St John the Baptist and she has been one of the closest apprentices of St Sophrony in the iconographic projects of the Community for the last 10 years of his life.
St Sophrony was a painter in his youth, something he gave up at his meeting with Christ, but a er many years of kenosis this art was taken up in the form of icon painting. For further information, see the introduction by R. Edmonds to A Sophrony, His Life is Mine (New York: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988); the first chapter in, A. Zacharias, Man the Target of God (Essex, UK: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2015), 25–53; Seeking Perfection in the World of Art and BEING, both published by Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2014 and 2016.
For a full explanation of his theology on this point, see A. Zacharias, Christ, Our Way and Our Life (PA: St Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2003), 17–29.
In the original text the word persona is used instead of hypostasis.
A. Sophrony, His Life is mine, 43.