Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech–unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. Paul presents the gospel of Christ as a transforming, face-to-face relationship with Christ. In an extended use of the story of Moses’ encounter with God after which he veiled his face, St. I think it more likely that it was their faces they most wanted to cover. Readers have always assumed that it is the nakedness of their intimate parts that drive the first couple to hide. “We were naked and we hid…” is their explanation. Hiding is the instinctive response of Adam and Eve. It is part of the unbearable quality of shame. Even infants, confronted by embarrassment or mild shame, will cover their faces with their hands or quickly tuck their face into the chest of the one holding them. The feeling of shame brings an immediate and deep instinct to hide or cover the face. In human behavior, the emotion most associated with hiding the face is shame. It is a manifestation of our turning away from God. It is our sin that turns us away from the face of another – our effort to make ourselves somehow other than or less than personal. For it is in the vision of the face that we encounter someone as person. In the icons, no person is ever depicted in profile – with two exceptions – Judas Iscariot and the demons. Every saint, from the least to the greatest, shares the same attribute as Christ in their icons. The holy icons are doubtless the most abundant expression of the “theology of the face,” and perhaps among the most profound contributions of Orthodoxy to the world and the proclamation of what it truly means to be human. Paul uses the language of the face to describe our transformation into the image of Christ. In the Old Testament, it is the common expression for how we rightly meet one another – and rarely – God Himself – “face to face.” The importance of the face is emphasized repeatedly in the Scriptures. It is the face we seek to watch in order to see what others are thinking, or even who they are. We generally think of other aspects of our bodies when we say “intimate,” but it is our face that reveals the most about us. Nothing about the human body is as intimate as the face. These are some thoughts from some years back. We find many ways to hide our face – our true face. I also think, however, of how many masks we have all worn in our lives. But I lament our common experience even as I pray for this time to pass. I respect the science (and certainly would not want a surgeon operating on me without a mask). I can think of nothing that is more de-personalizing that the hiding of our face. During this season of mask-wearing, we have become weary of a “faceless” existence.
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