Free Shipping This Weekend at Monastery Icons

Monastery Icons is offering Free Shipping from now through midnight on Monday, November 28th. Order today and save on your Christmas Shopping! See our email flyer here.

See our new Chrismas Glass Suncatcher, our most popular Christmas icon in a 7″ X 9″ suncatcher, with a stand for desk display and a chain for window hanging.

To get your FREE SHIPPING use coupon code 3202 when checking out on the web, or when phoning in orders at 800-729-4952. Free shipping in USA only.

Get $10 off every web order — this week only!

Get $10 off every web order — this week only! A perfect way to aquaint yourselves with our new products, such as this beautiful ceramic icon tile. Use Coupon Code 3106 at checkout to get your discount. Offer ends midnight on Friday.

New items include Queen of Angels Wall Hangings, our Holy Spirit Dove Wall Hanging, Handpainted Wooden Ball Christmas Ornaments, Christ and the Children Embossed Icon, Saint Francis Ceramic Tile, and much more. Visit our new products page to see them all.

Saint Maria Goretti, Icon of Purity

The latest addition to the Monastery Icons collection of saints’ portraits is this new icon of Saint Maria Goretti, created at the suggestion and request of a subscriber to our monthly e-letter. She carries the palm of martyrdom and lilies, the symbol of purity in sacred art.

Born in Italy in 1890, Maria grew up in a family of poor sharecroppers. The family’s search for work led them to the western coast of Italy, where shortly after her father died of malaria.

Her 19-year-old neighbor Allesandro became infatuated with the young girl and propositioned her several times, to no avail. On July 5, 1902 he could control himself no longer and made sexual advances to the young girl, who struggled as he strangled her and rebuffed him shouting “No! It is sin! God does not want it!” Allesandro’s lust transformed to violent anger and he stabbed Maria fourteen times with a long knife.

Doctors struggled in vain to save her life. She underwent surgery without anesthesia, and halfway through the surgery woke up. She insisted it stay that way. The hospital pharmacist asked Maria “Think of me in Paradise.” “Who knows which of us is going to be there first,” she said, looking at the old man. “You, Maria,” he replied. “Then I will gladly think of you,” she said. After twenty painful hours of suffering during which she forgave and prayed for her attacker, Maria passed to heavenly life fortified by the Last Sacraments, her last earthly gaze resting upon a picture of the Blessed Virgin.

One of the youngest canonized saints of the Catholic Church, Maria was pronounced a saint by Pope Pius XII fifty years later in 1950. Saint Maria’s mother and her murderer attended the canonization ceremony together. Calling her a “Saint Agnes of the 20th century,” the pope proposed her as a patroness of modern youth, and since then she has been venerated as icon of purity and the patron of young women and victims of rape. Half a million people attended the ceremony outside of Saint Peter’s Basilica, When the pope asked them, “Young people, are you determined to resist any attack on your chastity with the help of the grace of God?” the resounding answer was “YES!”

After thirty years of hard labor, Allesandro was released and visited Maria’s mother, asking her pardon and accompanying her to Christmas Mass in the parish church where before the hushed congregation he acknowledged his sin and asked God’s forgiveness and the pardon of the community. He became a laybrother at a Capuchin monastery, working as its receptionist and gardener until his death in 1970.

This new Monastery Icons is available in our full range of icon sizes and formats, from 4 inches to 5 feet tall at MonasteryIcons.com.

We have mailed our new Fall 2011 Monastery Icons Catalogs, which should arrive in your mailbox soon, featuring over 80 new items: ceramic tiles, enamel icons, statues, Christmas ornaments, wall hangings, and MORE. If you haven’t yet received it, you can see it online in our “virtual catalog” version at MonasteryIcons.com.

80 New items from Monastery Icons

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Inspirational Plaque

The new catalog from Monastery Icons has been mailed containing 80 new items. Pictured is the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Inspirational Plaque, part of a new collection of sacred art from Monastery Icons featuring some of our most beloved icons, with quotes from the saint or the scriptures, set in ornamental border designs patterned after stained glass. Also included in the new catalog are icon jewelry, statues, stained glass, and much more, in addition to our many favorites carried over from previous catalogs. You can view our virtual version of our catalog, or see all of our new items at MonasteryIcons.com.

On another note, we are working on creating a Monastery Icons Facebook page, where you can connect with us, and where we hope to provide new and interesting content.

The Icon “Made Without Hands”

Best known as “the Holy Face,” the image of Jesus’s face appears in two accounts of early Christianity, and in both cases the images were created without any human involvement.

Probably the best-known story in the West is that of Veronica’s veil. Tradition teaches that on the way to Golgotha Christ pressed His face, bloodied by the crown of thorns, on the head cloth given to Him by Saint Veronica. The imprint of His face remained on the cloth, preceding the Shroud of Turin, and thus being a vera icon (“true image”), from which the name Veronica is derived. This event is commemorated in the Sixth Station of the Cross.

The account popularly known East is that of King Agbar of Syria, who lived at the time of Christ and wrote to Him asking to be healed of leprosy. Christ sent the reply that He would later send one of His disciples, Thaddeus with a letter, along with a cloth that Christ had pressed to His face, miraculously producing an imprint “made without hands.” After the Ascension Saint Thomas the Apostle sent St, Thaddeus, one of the Seventy, to the King with this letter and cloth.

This story is supported by Saint John of Damascus, the great apologist for the veneration of icons, when he wrote in his book “On the Divine Images” that Jesus “is said to have taken a piece of cloth and pressed it to his face, impressing on it the image of his face, which it keeps to this day.”

Other accounts of King Agbar say that he sent an artist to Israel to paint Jesus’ face. Noticing the artist’s inability to capture His image, Christ pressed a towel to His face and His image miraculously appeared on the cloth.

When the king received the cloth with the holy image he was miraculously cured of leprosy. This is commemorated in a tenth century icon from Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. The cloth (mandylion, the Greek for “hand towel”) was preserved and treasured, and became the source of many other miracles of heavenly protection, as depicted in the small icons surrounding the center portrait in our new Holy Face Story Icon.