St. Paul would say, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the
world” (Gal. 6:14). Thus, we see the value of the Catholic practice of
placing an image of Our Lord upon crosses to form the image of the
Crucifix. It is a means by which we “preach Christ crucified” and show
forth “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23).
The Fathers
St. Basil the Great, The Holy Spirit 18, 45 (375 AD)
“It does not follow that there are two kings because we speak of a king and
a king’s image. The authority is not split nor is the glory divided. The
sovereignty and power to the authority which we are subject is one, just as
the glory we ascribe thereto is not plural but one; for the honor paid to the
image passes to the prototype.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Psalms On Ps. 113B
(115), 16 (ante 429 AD)
“Even if we make images of pious men it is not so that we might adore
them as gods but that when we see them we might be prompted to imitate
them; and if we make images of Christ, it is so that our minds might wing
aloft in yearning for Him.”
St. John Damascene, Apologetical Sermons Against Those Who
Reject Sacred Images 2, 5 (inter 725-749 AD)
“We would certainly be in error if we were making an image of the
invisible God; for what is incorporeal and invisible and uncircumscribable
and without defined figure is not able to be depicted. And again, if we were
making images of men and thought them gods, certainly we would be
impious. But we do not do any of these things.”
The Second Council of Nicaea, Letter of the Synod to the Byzantine
Emperor and Empress (787 AD)
“The things which we have decreed, being thus well supported, it is
confessedly and beyond all question acceptable and well-pleasing before
God, that the images of our Lord Jesus Christ as man, and those of the
undefiled Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, and of the honorable
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