Witness the throngs of British mourners who propped flowers and momentous against the railings of a London palace at the death of Princess Diana. Consider the Vietnam veterans who can finally grieve by touching a name chiseled in the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. Driving the highways, I see flower wreaths and crosses marking the site of fatal car crashes. At one marker, the silk flowers are carefully changed to reflect the seasons, year in and year out. Though long reviled as idolatry by non-Catholics, the practice of praying to God, Mary, and the angels and saints in the presence of their images fulfills a fundamental human need to communicate with the incorporeal divine.
Devotional images go back to the earliest church.
Pragmatic stonemasons carved sarcophagi with both pagan and Christian motifs for their customers. And the Vatican has a third-century statue of the Good Shepherd in the guise of a beardless youth. Significant images also abounded in the lives of the saints. Saint Th r se of Lisieux, the Little Flower, attributed miraculous healing from a childhood illness to a statue of Mary. At that instant, all my pain disappeared.