In Praise of Holy Women

'LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS' –
THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION OF
NUN-ICONOGRAPHER SISTER JOANNA REITLINGER
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HER WALL PAINTINGS
'THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH'
CHRISTOPHER MARK
“Often, when doubts assail me while I am working – how
much longer shall I be able to continue? – I take comfort (at any
rate, I try to take comfort), in your words…that there remains work
on the most important Icon – one’s soul – and I try to switch over to that
work.…. [But] the mist hinders me. Only by God’s help!” (Sr Joanna, age 84,
to her spiritual director, Protopriest Alexander Men, 6 June, 1982) 1
On 31 May 1988, the 90-year old, deaf and blind, Russian woman who six
years earlier penned the above lines, died full of days and joie-de-vivre in a
wattle and daub hut in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A great number of folk of all
ages and from all walks of life flocked to her funeral. All spoke warmly of
this almost legendary nun-iconographer who had brought faith, light and joy
into their lives with the small, personal icons she had painted in earnest and
had given away in abundance – ‘little candles,’ they were called – radiant,
iconographic glimpses of heaven that had brought them no little wonder,
and had sustained them in prayer over many difficult years.
Meanwhile, several thousand kilometres away, chief government
representatives of the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), who had
maintained (along with their predecessors) that religion was the ‘opiate
of the people,’ ironically, since Pascha (Russian Easter), had been ‘funding,
promoting, endorsing’ 2 and even actively participating in the millennial
celebrations of the conversion of the Rus to Christianity in 988 – a seminal
event for the Russian people. This principally religious memorial, unfolding
1
Sister Joanna [Reitlinger]/Fr Alexander Men/Fr Sergii Bulgakov, The Wise Sky: Sr Joanna
[Reitlinger]’s correspondence with Fr Alexander Men and Fr Sergii Bulgakov; quoted in
Yudina, Tatiana, Bearers of Unfading Light, (hereafter, BOUL), tr. Mike Whitton, Bluestone
Books, 2009, p 448; special thanks to Hélène Arjakovsky who rounded up all the Reitlinger
articles from RSCM Messenger for me; I gave them to Mike Whitton for translation; he
gave the translations to Tatiana Yudina who collated and significantly supplemented them
with additional texts and commentary. This article is heavily indebted to her book and his
translations for resource material.
2
cf. http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-18/soviet-union-celebrates-1000-years-ofchristianity.html
accessed 1 July 2017.
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