Article by David Hawkins
This icon ‘Christ and Abbot Mena’ is one of the oldest of the Coptic church and was painted in the sixth century in the monastery of St Apollo in Bawit, Egypt. It’s more commonly known as ‘The Icon of Friendship’. Christ bears a cruciform halo under the inscription ‘Saviour’ and stands next to the early Coptic saint, Abbot Mena with the inscription, ‘Father Mena’. He was born in 285AD and was martyred for his refusal to renounce his faith during a pagan festival during the persecutions under Emperors Diocletion and Maximus. Mena’s saint’s day is easy to remember as it falls on our Remembrance Day, 11th November. The rare feature of the icon is that Christ is depicted with his arm around his friend, the Abbot. It reminds us that our Lord offers friendship to everyone who is willing to believe in him. The apostle John in ch15 v 15 records Jesus as saying ‘I no longer call you servants…I have called you, my friends’. The Abbot looks tired, pale and worn out with the pressures and responsibilities of being-in-charge of the monastery. By contrast, Jesus looks bright eyed, alert and caring. He conveys both strength and tenderness. It’s as if he’s saying, as St Luke records, ‘Come to me, Mena, you who are burdened, and I will give you rest’.
The original icon now resides in the Louvre in Paris, and it’s the image which has been adopted by Taize, the international ecumenical community, in Burgandy, France.
Egyptian icons have a humble childlike quality in contrast to the often severe and solemn Greek and Russian traditions of iconographers. I hope you’ll enjoy the intimacy of this depiction of being a friend of the Lord as did his first disciples when Christ was with them in Galilee. Also, you may wish to associate with the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Taize, of all ages and nationalities, who have come to identify with ‘The Icon of Friendship’.
