Saint John of Damascus, Doctor of the Church

Continuing with my reading on the Doctors of the Church, in Pope Benedict's sermons about them, I have arrived at Saint John the Damascene, an Eastern Father of the Church, probably the last of the line of the ancient Fathers. John lived during the period of the Arab invasions that destroyed the Christian cultures of such places as Egypt and Libya, and also large parts of Syria and Palestine. John inherited the job of treasurer to the caliphate in Syria, but later abandoned it for the monastic life, entering the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem in about AD 700, spending the rest of his life there, a scholar and a priest. He was a great defender of religious iconography, at a time when the new Islamic ascendancy led even Christians down the road of iconoclasm. Although his defence was rejected and even condemned by some Catholics, it was redeemed and he vindicated at the second Council of Nicaea in AD 787, which was also the seventh ecumenical council. John distinguished true worship (latria) due only to God Almighty from the veneration given to images (proskinesis), paid to the representations of the Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the others Saints of the Church. Think of a photograph of a loved one and you get the idea of separating the material of the image (paper, in this case) from the person that image represents. Saint John even defended images of God Himself (in images of Christ), by asserting that in the Incarnation of Christ, God had made Himself visible. The Christian therefore venerates not the created material, but the God Who created it and deemed it worthy enough for He Himself to enter into Creation. If we cannot venerate sacred items, he thought, we must suppress the sacred nature of such items. When that means the Blessed Sacrament itself, we counter the wishes of God Himself. The Incarnation gives matter a dignity it may not have enjoyed before, creating a sacramental economy (visible signs of invisible grace) in the relationship between God and mankind. Similarly, Saint John defended the veneration of relics of the Saints, who have joined in the Resurrection of Christ. Pope Benedict speaks of the wonder at Creation in Saint John's writing, John's optimism in the contemplation of nature, praising the beauty, the true, all of which is to be renewed in the Incarnation of Christ, drawn from corruption on account of our sinfulness to eternal life.