The symbolic language of the icon is “incomprehensible to the sated flesh, to the heart full of longings for material things. But it becomes the very fabric of life when these longings collapse and an abyss opens at our feet. Then we need a firm foothold at the edge of the abyss, we need to feel the motionless calm of the icon above our tribulations. And the joyous vision of a sobor, a church of all creation above the bloody chaos of our existence becomes as necessary as our daily bread. We need to be sure that the beast is not all in all; that above the beast’s kingdom there is another law of life and that it will prevail.

“Biologism is consciously elevated into the principle that must rule the world. Any suggestion that the right to kill could be limited by some higher principle is swept aside as sentimental and false. Here we have something worse than living like beasts. We have conscious veneration of the image of the beast, suppression in principle of all human charity and compassion. We have here an enslavement of the spirit unparalleled since the beginning of time, bestiality elevated into a principle and a system, renunciation of all human values that have until now existed in culture. A victory of this evil principle may lead to the total extermination of entire peoples.