The book Encounters With God (2009) by Sister Wendy Beckett is based on her quest for the last eight surviving ancient icons of the Virgin Mary, which are often little known, inaccessible and in poor physical condition. Travelling to Rome, the Sinai Peninsular in Egypt and Kiev, in Ukraine, she placed these seldom discussed images in the wider context of early Christian art, such as wall paintings in Roman catacombs and carvings on sarcophagi. Like her, I was struck by an icon, probably Egyptian, from the 6th or 7th century, discovered by the Temple Gallery in London.
Sister Wendy wrote with grace and immediacy, dealing with ideas of some complexity in ways that surely disarm even those who would otherwise be resistant to her religious views. She was passionate about sharing the “encounters with God” that she experienced through the “profundity of spiritual power” within these icons of Mary. Her faith was, she said, “irradiated with the light that we see in the faith of the early Christians”.
