At the 2025 SIGNIS Africa Conference and Regina Cultura Art Exhibition held at the majestic Holy Ghost Cathedral, Enugu, Bishop Gerald M. Musa delivered a keynote address that did not merely inform but captivated, provoked, inspired, and ignited a yearning for beauty and truth in the hearts of all present. With the poetic elegance of a sage and the clarity of a teacher, he drew back the veil on one of the Church’s oldest treasures—sacred images—and revealed their power as instruments of evangelisation, catechesis, and cultural transfiguration.

He began not with a definition, but with a story—a seemingly simple tale set in a rural Nigerian village, yet one that carried the theological weight of centuries. A missionary had arrived bearing a framed image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He placed it reverently in the local church. An elderly man, having gazed long at the image, asked with sincere curiosity, “This white man, is he the chief of your clan?” The missionary chuckled and explained, “That is Jesus, our Saviour.” The old man nodded slowly and responded with a wisdom that pierced deeper than many sermons: “Ah, he must be very important. But next time, let him wear our wrapper, so my grandchildren will know he is for us too.” This humorous but deeply telling episode, Bishop Musa explained, discloses a profound truth—images are never neutral. They carry messages, evoke responses, and function as silent yet eloquent preachers in our spaces of worship and life.

Religious iconography, he explained, opens up what the Eastern Churches have always known—images are windows into the mystery of God. He walked the audience through the meanings of terms we often take for granted. An icon is not simply a portrait; it is a sacred threshold through which the divine peers at us as we gaze upon it. Religious images, from stained glass to sculpture, from wood carvings to digital art, serve to illustrate, illuminate, and incarnate the sacred narratives of our faith. Religious communication, he elaborated, is more than speech; it is embodied in movement, colour, design, silence, architecture, music, and even the unspoken language of the gaze. Inculturation, then, is the dynamic process by which the timeless message of Christ is planted deep into the soil of a local culture, bearing fruit that is both authentically native and truly Catholic.

The Nigerian context, Bishop Musa noted, presents particular challenges. He mourned the dominance of Western aesthetic forms in our churches—blue-eyed Madonnas, white-skinned Jesus, European church structures—elements that subconsciously convey that holiness and divinity are foreign, imported, alien. Such imagery can create a psychological rift between faith and identity, especially among the young who struggle to see the relevance of Christianity to their lived experience. He highlighted also the wave of suspicion surrounding religious images, particularly among Pentecostal and evangelical groups, where icons are often dismissed as idols. Even within Catholic circles, he observed, the lack of proper catechesis sometimes leads either to superstitious use or outright rejection of religious imagery. Another lament he voiced was the tragic disconnect between theology and art. In a land teeming with brilliant sculptors, painters, and craftsmen, there remains a lack of collaboration between artists and theologians. The result is often art that is either theologically shallow or culturally dissonant.

But the address was not all critique. It surged with hope and vision. Bishop Musa quoted St. John of Damascus, who once called icons “theology in colour,” and drew on David Morgan’s seminal work The Sacred Gaze to demonstrate how images shape the imagination and devotion of believers. He referenced the work of Justin Ukpong, whose cultural hermeneutics call for a faith that is not only preached but seen in ways that resonate deeply with the local soul. Drawing from both the ancient and the digital, he acknowledged the transformational power of media and online platforms, noting that today, many people’s first encounter with religion is not a verse of Scripture but an image on a screen. In the digital age, images arrive before sermons, and sometimes linger longer than words.

Bishop Musa invites the Church in Nigeria to take seriously the formation of visual literacy. Catechism classes must go beyond rote doctrine to include how to interpret and pray with images. The faithful must understand that religious images do not compete with God; they point to Him. Artists must be given not just recognition but formation—grounded in theology and fluent in the idioms of African art. He issued a gentle rebuke to seminaries and pastoral institutes that neglect aesthetics, calling instead for a renewal in which theology and art walk hand in hand. He envisioned sacred spaces adorned with local motifs: tabernacles carved from native wood, crucifixes fashioned in bronze, altar clothes woven in the colours of the land, stations of the cross reflecting African faces, joys, and sorrows.

His call extended beyond physical art to the digital continent. There is no reason, he insisted, why the Church cannot flood the internet with beautiful, culturally resonant religious content—images that both arrest the eye and convert the heart. In this, the collaboration between artists, theologians, pastors, and digital missionaries becomes essential. A new school of Nigerian sacred art can arise, not as imitation of European models, but as authentic incarnations of Christ in the cultural and visual idiom of our people.

As he brought the lecture to its powerful conclusion, Bishop Musa offered a proverb that shimmered with wit and wisdom: “If you want to hide something from a man, put it in a book,” he said, echoing a common Nigerian saying. “But in the digital age,” he added, “if you want to reveal something to a man, paint it well and post it on WhatsApp.” The audience responded with laughter, applause, and knowing nods. Beneath the humour was a call to action. God, after all, used a visual icon when He took flesh in Jesus Christ. The Word did not remain invisible. He became an image. He became flesh. He became colour, shape, and sound. And our task is to make that visible Word shine anew in our parishes, homes, streets, and screens—through images that speak without speaking, that teach without lecturing, that convert without coercing.

In Bishop Musa’s vision, icons are not relics of the past but heralds of the future. They are windows flung wide open, offering glimpses of heaven. And through those windows, if we dare to look carefully enough, we just might see the face of Christ—brown-skinned, robed in a wrapper, smiling in welcome, and utterly, unmistakably, ours.