My latest face of Jesus is a strikingly unconventional variation on the “Behold the Man” motif we looked at last week. This portrait of the humiliated Christ, posed against a police line-up wall, is the work of Pennsylvania Icon-maker Jack Pachuta, who illustrates prayer cards for distribution among prisoners. A devout Roman Catholic, Pachuta wanted to do volunteer work after he retired from the chemical business in 1998 and spent six months with the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, giving the Eucharist to inmates in the worst cell blocks of the Philadelphia Prison System. It was a horrific, life-changing experience for him. Pachuta always had an interest in art but no formal training. He had been raised in a Byzantine-rite Catholic Church, where icons are venerated, and took a course in icon-making at an Antiochian Orthodox monastery. He found his true calling, creating holy images for cards printed wiith prayers and messages of encouragment for prison inmates, altered in ways that would speak to the kind of people he had encountered in his volunteer work. In addition to this Man of Sorrows mug shot, based on an Eastern Orthodox iconographic prototype, The Bridegroom, Pachuta has also created the iconic image, Crucifix on a Cyclone Fence, showing Christ on the Cross in a prison yard, and a Mary Mother of Captives series, where the Virgin Mary can be seen holding handcuffs or raising her arms in prayer in a prison cell. These unique prayer cards have been distributed by organizations like Adeodatus Prison Ministry in Philadelphia and the Thrive for Life Prison Project in New York City, reaching inmates from Sing Sing in New York to San Quentin in California. Pachuta can be contacted through his Fine Art America page, where a full gallery of his contemporary icons is on view: https://fineartamerica.com/