Changes

Unlike the mask, the Christian icon is not part of a mummy or sarcophagus, it does not need to connect to a saint's body. No matter where on earth the saint's remains are, and no matter the physical condition, his resurrected and deified body lives in eternity, and the icon that shows him forth does not merely depict the holy witness but is the very witness. It is not the icon, as art, that tells us anything, it is the saint, through the icon that is teaching. This window, to the resurrected, breaks when the icon itself is separated by the observer, from the saint it depicts. At that moment the icon just becomes another thing of this world. The vital connection between haven heaven and earth disintegrates.