I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. (Isaiah 50:6, KJV)
This week's featured image by a painter from the new school of iconography in the West Ukrainian city of Lviv belongs to a genre of Passion portraiture known as the Mocking of Christ. In the lower part of this icon of Christ with Crown of Thorns, Ulyana Tomkevych has inscribed the Ukrainian text from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27:27-30, where we read how the Roman guard ridiculed and spat on Jesus, dressing him as a comic king in a scarlet robe and crown of thorns. The Jesus of Tomkevych is determined to see his ordeal through to the end, his face, seemingly, crafted from plates of steel, forged from the pain and suffering he has already endured. This painted profile in courage takes on special meaning in a week when Tomkevych and her compatriots have entered the second year of the brutal war Russia began on February 24, 2022. Pray for the Peace of Ukraine. (John Kohan)