Picture in Focus: Love Your Neighbor by Ulyana Tomkevych

February 16, 2025

Picture in Focus: Love Your Neighbor by Ulyana Tomkevych

The final new artwork I have to display from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, interpreting Christ's story about the Last Judgment in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, is the work of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Artist Ulyana Tomkevych who belongs to the new school of iconography in the West Ukrainian cultural center of Lviv. The title of Tomkevych's beautifully composed icon, taken from what Christ calls the "second greatest commandment" after love for God, shifts our perspective away from the separation of the sheep from the goats motif in the Gospel narrative. There is nothing, in fact to distinguish the row of faces on the right side of the central image of the enthroned Christ from those on the left. The main focus is on carrying out acts of mercy. Three of the four panels show help for the sick, the imprisoned, and the naked. The square on the lower right brings together the giving of food, drink, and shelter to the stranger in a single image of hospitality. In our age of increasing global interconnection, we would do well to remember that in ending aid to people in need in the wider global village--as the Trump administration seems hell-bent on doing--we are rejecting Christ's commandment to love "the least of these brothers and sisters of mine"--and denying him. (John Kohan)