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The Black Madonna loved me into Eastern Catholicism

The Black Madonna loved me into Eastern Catholicism

Last updated on: July 28, 2016 at 1:07 pm by Justin Tse

The Black Madonna loved me into Eastern Catholicism 2016-07-28T13:07:22-07:00 Justin Tse

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Black Madonna of Częstochowa - by Derzsi Elekes Andor (Fekete_Madonna.jpg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons

Black Madonna of Częstochowa – by Derzsi Elekes Andor (Fekete_Madonna.jpg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons

Some people have asked me to craft some of my reflections about why I joined an Eastern Catholic Church. Before my chrismation, I tried to write them without much success. Part of my writer’s block had to do with my needing to make a ‘general confession’ before being received. It’s tempting in a personal reflection to confess my sins to everyone (which also seems to be a modus operandi among Protestants attempting to be ‘authentic’), but entertaining as my sins would have been for everyone to hear, I’m trying to get away from confessing my sins to everyone. Because of this, I’ve found it very difficult to write about my ‘journey,’ ‘story,’ ‘reflections,’ or whatever you want to call it. I am such a sinner that such a piece would inevitably turn into my general confession. Instead, since a major part of our theology is done through icons, I thought it might be better to share about my favourite icon. This is based on a reflection that I wrote for my friends attending my chrismation, some of whom were Protestants, others of whom were Latin Catholics, and very few of whom had any familiarity with Byzantine Christianity. I thought I’d post it here now because the icon with which I fell in love is especially close to my friends attending World Youth Day in Poland right now. This icon is not in our temple, unfortunately, and neither am I on site in Kraków for the festivities. But she is my favourite all the same.

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