Looking at the Holy Icon

Father Henri Nouwen said: "Just as we are responsible for what we eat, and we are also responsible for what we look at. It is not difficult to become the victim of many visual stimuli around us. Yet we can make choices. When we cannot pray, we can always look at icons that are so intimately associated with the experience of love. " Just by looking at an icon of the Mother of God, we are already in her presence, and through her and with her we enter into the presence of her Son who is the unique Source of grace that consoles, saves, protects, frees and transforms. Let us end with those words from Fr. Egon Sendler SJ: "The essential feature of the icon is a presence of the unutterable that flows out of a material form."