30/08/2018 Revering an Image of the Holy Trinity: the Moldovita Fresco

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The icon reproduced on this page, painted by an anonymous artist in the 15th century, is in fact a News
mural depiction to be found at Moldovița monastery, Romania. This icon of the Holy Trinity
People
offers glimpses of numerous mysteries, recapitulating the whole divine economy for our sake,
for the restitution of our wholeness (one of the meanings of the word ‘salvation’ in the Classical Short Courses

Greek). I what follows, I share a few thoughts that come to mind when gazing upon its beauty.
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30/08/2018 Revering an Image of the Holy Trinity: the Moldovita Fresco
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The Holy Trinity, whose revelation is the content of the feasts of Theophany (Epiphany) and
Pentecost, is uniquely represented here in a colloquial posture. The Father, represented as the
Ancient of Days, and the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, face one another as if talking, and both bless
the holy cross in concord – a summary of the entire economy, accomplished not without the
sacri ce of the Lamb. On top of the cross rests the Dove, in a clear suggestion of the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, the nal outcome of the cruci xion. On many occasions, Fr Dumitru Stăniloae
has insisted on the idea behind this tremendous image of the divine council to which the whole
of creation is called, with or without mentioning the famous fresco. Not without reason an
exegete of his work, namely, Maciej Bielawski, OSB, penetratingly remarked that Fr Stăniloae’s
legacy can be summarised along these lines: “in the beginning there was a dialogue, and at the
endless end there will be another dialogue”…

Every time I contemplate this icon, it looks to me like a pointer to the divine plan of creation,
which begins with the pretemporal moment when the Son of God and true God turned his face
toward the Father as Christ and Logos of creation (John 1:1), saying: “let us make the human
being according to our image and according to likeness” (Genesis 1:26 LXX). This is the moment
when the Son of God as Logos of creation put on the “form of God” (Philippians 2:6), becoming
the Prototype of our fashioning (for we are called to become in the image of God’s Son; Romans
8:29) and thus anticipating his profound kenosis in the “form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7).

The mystery of the cross features at the very centre, as an encryption of the entire plan, like in St
Maximus’ vision of the whole creation established on the Lord’s sacri ce, which in turn
‘exegetes’ the meaning and purpose of creation… τὰ φαινόμενα πάντα δεῖται σταυροῦ (“all
visible beings are in need of the cross”)… And thus, the divine epiphany announces at once the
origins of everything and the climax of the whole plan, opening the window towards the purest
and universally demiurgic act of cruci xion, this whole-burnt offering of the Lord. Furthermore,
this icon shows that far from being an accident in history Christ’s cruci xion reiterates “in the
fullness of time” his original and foundational sacri ce, of the Lamb upon whose life the life of
the world is built (Revelation 13:8). Indeed, nothing can be without being founded on a sacri cial
bedrock…

I take this opportunity to add that I am worried about the new wave of iconoclastic denial of the
iconographical representation of the Father as an old man. According to the promoters of this
new iconoclastic trend, any icon of the Father is illegitimate, given that the Father never took
esh… How silly this is. The Holy Spirit never took esh and we still represent him/her/it as a
dove and as tongues of re; and we do this given his/her/its epiphany in such forms. In fact, the
epiphany/revelation/manifestation is a signi cant presupposition of icon-making – if not the
ultimate one (the incarnation of the Logos being the culmination of all revelations). And if the
revelation of a person is what makes an icon possible, then the representation of the Father as
an old man is legitimate. I am thinking here of that canonical epiphany of the Father as the
Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:9-10,13-4, toward whom walks the Son of Man, a prophetic
revelation which might have very well served as a pretext for the Moldovița fresco. In addition,
unlike other, more celebrated representations of the Holy Trinity, our icon makes an important
differentiation between the unincarnated Father, depicted in a white, translucid attire unstained
by matter, and the incarnated Son, clothed not only in the esh but also in the heavier colours of
creation.

Last, but not least, this icon speaks to me of a different yet not unrelated level of reality. It seems
to recast upon the mystery of the Trinity the light of another mystery, that of spiritual guidance.
The persons in the icon, the Father and the Son, in the love of the Spirit, re ect the spiritual elder
and the spiritual child whose rapport is founded on the Spirit. The elder teaching the disciple
under the wings of divine inspiration – thus forwarding the legacy, signi ed by the identical
scrolls held by both Father and Son in the icon – is pre gured by this archetypal image of the
eternal council, where the Father entrusts the Son the accomplishment of salvi c economy.
Considered from a different angle, this icon reveals the trinitarian archetype of spiritual
guidance. In so doing, it illustrates the divine and human mystery of colloquiality.
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30/08/2018 Revering an Image of the Holy Trinity: the Moldovita Fresco

Acknowledgment. In it original form, the text was published in The Greek Australian Vema, July
2011, p. 9. Slightly revised.

30 May 2018 © AIOCS

Talk at the University of Notre Dame Australia Web and Book Design: Ion Nedelcu

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