Category: emoji

“They have no wine.” Mary’s first words in John’s Gospel sound like a caterer’s emergency, in the middle of a wedding at Cana. Jesus turns water into wine, and John notes that this was the first of his signs. There is something delightful in that choice: Christ’s public life opens at a wedding feast. On…

Twice a year, the priest may bring out rose-colored vestments: on the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete, and the fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare. In the middle of a penitential season, the purple lightens to say that joy is on its way. That one detail sums up the liturgy rather well: a language in which…

Who would dare to sing before their first coffee? Monks, every morning, along with everyone who prays the Liturgy of the Hours. Their day opens with a line from the psalms: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.” A Lauds emoji ought to have that energy, a mouth opening just…

Long before smartphones, the first Christians had their own pictograms. In the Roman catacombs you can find a fish sketched in a few lines. The Greek word for fish is ichthus, and its five letters spell out the acrostic “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” A Jesus Christ emoji ahead of its time, then: clear…

How do you draw, in a few pixels, a face no one ever photographed, and that every culture has painted in its own way? That is the challenge of a Jesus emoji. Byzantine icons, the stained glass of Chartres, Ethiopian paintings and the plaster statues in our parish churches do not show quite the same…