Advent is God’s invitation to be a witness. We are invited to the manger to await the most tender miracle of all: to see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears, and marvel with all that we are at the mystery of incarnation. But what does it mean to witness God the Creator, everlasting and all-powerful, as a tiny and vulnerable baby? And what can we do with the restlessness it leaves in us? Where are we meant to pour all this love?
When I started making the religious illustrations I am now known for, I never intended to share them. I still have a plethora of unpublished works that will probably never be seen by another human being. But because of the prayerful love that went into each stroke, they have already served their purpose. Art is the place where I pour the love of contemplative witness.
The practice of praying through art is as ancient as art itself, but art is not special due to any inherent characteristic. It is not a rare item or limited resource or even a particularly pure pursuit; it is a tool—a tool you can learn to wield for goodness through the Holy Spirit’s breath of creativity that already dwells in your soul.
Tradition states that Luke, the disciple and evangelist, was the first icon painter. The story of St. Luke as iconographer describes a man with a God-led paintbrush and the ability to mock time and space as he sat before the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, painting them (or rather, writing them as icons), long after their time on Earth was past. A handful of icons still survive that St. Luke is said to have painted. Some are revered icons: Our Lady of Częstochowa in Poland, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Rome, and Our Lady of Vladimir in Russia.
Iconography is a gift from God that comes with a rich history. I am not yet entirely familiar with all its guidelines, let alone trained to put them into practice in my pieces. For this reason, I hesitate to call myself an iconographer.
But you do not need to be an iconographer to contemplate any icon’s implications. Think about the hours, days, weeks, even months that went into it through the process of making the tempera, arduously breaking down the pigments and harvesting the eggs for the yolk. Every moment in the making of an icon is worship, and the making is what allows us to use these icons to commune with God. The art makes the prayer, and prayer makes the art.
Genesis tells us we are made in the image and likeness of God—and what is God but the Creator of all creators? The sole prototype of creativity, of beauty, and of making? Thus, we as creation are not only called to create alongside God; creativity is essential to our very substance and nature.
I believe that every person is called to create—and that art and creation do not need to be useful. They do not need to be profitable. They merely need to be, especially at times when those who hold power devalue the arts, stripping them of funding.
In Genesis, Adam’s very first task is to be creative: He must name the animals. Nowadays, if we want to name someone or something, we are likely to seek a baby name website. Adam, however, connected with the infinite source of creativity that is God.
To do the work of a creator, imitating the ultimate Creator, you do not need to search outside yourself; instead, go inward—to the source, which is God. You do not need to be perfect, either. Creativity doesn’t spring into life full-blown; it is something you must nurture. Yes, this requires effort, but time spent imagining and creating will not be time wasted. Creativity is our spiritual call from God and an essential need of our humanity.
I recently revisited one of the fundamental texts of my own belief and practice—Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (Yale University Press) by Makoto Fujimura—a book I have carried with me since first reading it years ago. Fujimura argues that Jesus, as the New Adam, invites us to be cocreators with God—to build a better world, a more just creation, not as gods but as God’s beloved creatures. Jesus, when he calls us each by our names, asserts our autonomy and creativity.
Our society relies on systems that pressure us to be efficient, maximize our time and profits, and see laziness as the worst sin of all sins. The arts and the humanities pose a threat to these systems, which only value efficiency that can be quantified and optimized. The creative process—in all its diversity, from the arts and crafts to the pursuit of “useless” knowledge and the hours spent nurturing our imagination—is not meant to be productive. It is meant to serve as a careful reflection of God’s eternal creation, and there lies its revolutionary beauty. To make anything is to witness God, the Creator.
Advent is a season of preparation and anticipation, a road that leads us to the incarnation. We are not to rush through Advent; it is a process we must live through in the same way we live through the creative process. The creative life requires that we enjoy each passing moment, that we hope and love recklessly, and that we imagine a better world—and those same things are also required to truly live Advent.
And so, in this season of rest and awe, I encourage you to make use of your creativity to pray and grow closer to God. In my own practice, I tend to find contemplative prayer the most useful. I picture myself as a silent companion of the holy family on their journey to Bethlehem.
Discover what brings Advent alive for you. Be creative, witness the incarnation, and make anything at all. Make small and make big. Make watercolors, make food, make furniture, make journal entries, make jewelry, make scrapbooks, make clothes, make reviews, make poems, make music, make buildings, make memes, make jokes, make love. Make for an audience, make for your loved ones, make only to later destroy, make for your eyes only, make for God.
Now more than ever this Advent, amid this world that demands so much of you, be courageous enough to pause, rest, pray, and make.
This article also appears in the December 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 12, pages 45-46). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: By Dani Jimenez
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