REAL PRESENCE - IN SEARCH OF THE EARLIEST ICONS

Real Presence - In Search of the Earliest Icons Author: Sister Wendy Beckett Sister Wendy's ongoing "pilgrimage of desire" to view the earliest surviving icons and show their spiritual power for our time. "Contemplating the icon, with faith and love, draws us out of our material world and into that divine world to which we will only have full access after death. On this earth, we live in His kingdom, but in hope and faith, not in experience. These early icons with their pure desire to praise God draw us very strongly into this unseen reality." In her earlier Encounters with God Sister Wendy Beckett, a contemplative nun and beloved art commentator, traveled to remote churches and monasteries to view the earliest icons of Mary. In Real Presence she resumes this journey to find icons of Jesus and the saints—icons that are among the few to survive the wholesale destruction of icons in the early eighth century.