Giorgos Kordis, together with his team of collaborators, paints the Orthodox Church of the Three Hierarchs in Budapest and records a Scaffolding Diary: from the most practical issues to theology, he composes an artistic result and shares with the reader reflections, dialoguing with the past and the present.

How is a temple in Central Europe depicted today? What reasoning shapes the iconographic program, and with what aesthetics are the figures and themes of the Divine Economy rendered? Is it enough to simply replicate what was done in the past? Do these function today?

And if we are to move away from the well-trodden and safe path, according to what criteria will we make new choices, following which signposts, with what guiding lights will we navigate through the darkness of unknown waters so as not to get lost in an insularity that leads to non-functional art and aesthetic uselessness or to a museum-like representation that also lacks real function in a contemporary world?

The church is, according to Saint Germanus of Constantinople, an earthly Paradise in which Christ Himself dwells and walks. This faith must be served by all the arts that come to serve Christian worship. This must be kept in mind by the architect and the painter, as well as the sculptors and those who deal even with the light and sound of the sacred temple. They must be able to create a structure, a visual installation that will aesthetically express, that is as a sensory experience, that the space they enter is an image of Paradise, a foretaste of the qualities of Paradise.

Practically speaking, this means that the space and the manner in which the church is completed in or by painting must have qualities that elevate those who enter and participate in the Church’s sacred Mysteries and Services into an experience regarded as a foretaste of Paradise.

And these qualities are known by the Church; Christians know them through the person of Christ. The person of Christ Himself and the way He lived in history describe – indicative, of course – Paradise.