When I sit down to prepare to write these meditations, the first thing I do is pray the collect for that Sunday. When I read the collect for the third Sunday after the Epiphany (BCP, p.215), I was surprised to see how perfectly last week’s mediation was for this Sunday’s collect. I should have read ahead. But that was then, and this is now.

As I read today’s lessons, I see I must talk about icons. Three weeks ago, on New Year’s Day, the day we celebrated Holy Name Day, our priest blessed an icon depicting Jesus’ calling of Peter and Andrew to be his disciples, the story in our gospel today. That lovely icon was given to Trinity Church in honor of and in thanksgiving for Serena Mirabella by the iconographer, who is her sister. It hangs in a place of honor in the foyer of our new office building, calling all who enter to come and follow Jesus, as did Andrew and Simon Peter.

Praying with icons is a rich spiritual practice for me. Some years ago, a dear Greek friend brought me a small icon from Greece. It hangs in the foyer of our house to welcome and bless all who enter. In my library, directly across from the chair on which I am sitting, is a copy of Kristin Anderson’s Christ Jesus as Pantocrater from Sinai. To the left of me is The Virgin of the Sign depicting a classically praying Mary containing Christ Emanuel within. To the right of me is an icon of the Beloved Disciple showing Jesus embracing and feeding the disciple that I choose to be me. I am surrounded by images reminding me that I am in the presence of God.

One of the books I have about icons is entitled Sacred Doorways, another is Windows to Heaven; icons are both as we take time to sit before them in contemplation and let them speak to our hearts. They serve as a means through which we can communicate with God and through which God can reveal Godself to us, a relationship, in other words, a communion if we are open to the experience. Since Epiphany is the season in which we celebrate the manifestation of God to the world in Christ Jesus, I urge you to pay attention to the images of Love in your life. As Thomas Merton says, “God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything, in people and in things, and in nature and in events.”