About Holy Icons
Icons are not meant to be realistic—they are not supposed to show an accurate portrait as a photograph does, or to present a naturalistic perspective in scenery or architecture. Rather, they are meant to show a “transfigured” person, the “essence” of that person. Similarly, the perspective is meant to symbolize how God views the world: above, below, inside, and outside all at once. Most important, though, the perspective makes the viewer part of the image: you as the viewer are the vanishing point, and the image expands infinitely upward and outward from that point. These differences from what we are accustomed to in Western art can put us off-balance. But that can be good, since it forces us to look at reality with fresh eyes and not take anything for granted. The whole article
A parishioner at St. Mary’s Times Square, Zachary Roesemann is a professional full-time iconographer. You can see Zachary’s work at www.sacredicons.net.
Praying with icons
Because icons make present that which they represent, the way we use them in prayer is significant. Icons are meant to be gazed upon as you would gaze upon one whom you love: with openness, expectation, affection and anticipation. When you gaze upon the one whom you love you do so in the expectation and anticipation that your loving gaze will be returned with equal affection. - Br. James Koesterm SSJE, “Praying with Icons”
Holy icons are vehicles for prayer, doors to divine things. A good way to start is in silence. It is prayer just to look attentively at an icon and let God speak to you. Remember, when we approach an icon we are approaching God. An icon is a real presence; the holy person depicted is truly here with you. You may want to talk to that presence; confess to that presence; venerate that presence; or take comfort in that presence. - From the website of St. Michael’s Church, Brattleboro, VT The webpage
Saying the Daily Office has been part of my spiritual practice for over 50 years. The icons - The Anglo Catholics – are beside me as I say the Prayers of the Church. It was during Evening Prayer that Jon Daniels knew he must go to Selma. Bernard Mizeki “prayed the Anglican hours each day.” During plagues of yellow fever and cholera sisters offered the Prayers as they cared for the sick and dying. I pray the Office alongside them. Robert A. Gallagher, OA
Your icons don’t have to be suitable for a fine art book. It’s the faith of the praying person that matters most—a lesson I learned from Dorothy Day. In her early 60s at the time, she was having increasing trouble climbing the five flights to her apartment in Manhattan’s Little Italy. We found another not far away and only one flight up, but in appalling condition. A friend and I went down to clean and paint it. We dragged box after box of debris down to the street, including what seemed to us an awful painting of the Holy Family rendered in bright colors against a gray background on a piece of plywood. We shook our heads, deposited it in the trash along the curb, and went back to our labor.
Not long after that, Dorothy arrived, the painting in hand, “Look what I found! The Holy Family! It’s a providential sign, a blessing.” She put it on the mantel of the apartment’s bricked-up fireplace. Looking at it again, this time I saw it was a work of love. – Jim Forest, “A guide to praying with an icon” Also by Jim Forest “Praying with Icons”
The pictures are not there just to be looked at as though the worshipers were in an art museum; they are designed to be doors between this world and another world, between people and the Incarnate God, his Mother, or his friends, the saints. - Linette Martin, From “Praying with Icons” on the website of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church
Praying with icons, then, we no longer remain the same as we were before, but we are ‘transformed into this same image from one degree of glory to another.’ As we gaze in our worship upon the transfigured cosmos of the icon, we actually enter within that new world, becoming one with that which we behold, filled with his grace and changed by its power. The purpose of the icon is thus not only contemplation but transforming union. In TS Eliot words, ‘You are the music while the music lasts,’ -From “Praying with Icons” by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia