Venerating Icons

Anyone who has kissed a photograph of an absent parent, or a soldier's picture of his family, already understands the instinct: the kiss is not for paper and ink but for the person. The Church's veneration of icons runs on the same grammar, raised to prayer. St. Basil the Great supplied the classic sentence — "the honour paid to the image passes on to the prototype" — and the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) made it the charter of icon veneration, drawing a firm line between the veneration (proskynesis) given to icons and the worship (latreia) given to God alone.

Beneath the practice lies the Incarnation itself: "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:14), and what has been truly seen can be truly depicted. God, who forbade idols, nevertheless commanded the images of the cherubim over the ark (Exodus 25:18-20); the icon is matter put to the service of the God who took matter to Himself. That is why the kiss is bold and unembarrassed — and why it is aimed, always, through the image at the person.

Orthodox Christians arriving at church typically venerate the icons before the service begins — first the icon on the stand in the center of the nave (usually the feast or the parish's patron), then, as space and custom allow, the principal icons of Christ and the Theotokos. The custom most widely taught runs like this: make the sign of the cross and bow twice, kiss the icon, then cross and bow once more. (Practice varies — some make a single cross and kiss, and no one stands by with a checklist.) Lighting a candle usually accompanies the greeting.

Custom also guides where the kiss lands: the hand of Christ or of the Theotokos, the feet, the Gospel book or scroll a saint holds, or simply the border of the icon — by common custom one does not kiss the face. Two practical courtesies: lipstick is removed or blotted first, and small children are lifted up so they too can kiss. If you arrive after the service has begun, many parishes prefer that you venerate quietly at a suitable moment rather than crossing the nave mid-Gospel; watch what the parish does.

The same greeting continues at home. Most Orthodox households keep an icon corner — icons of Christ and the Theotokos with a vigil lamp or candle — and morning and evening prayers are said standing before it, often beginning and ending with a kiss. In many families the icons are venerated when leaving the house and on returning, and children learn to kiss the icons before they can read a word of the Creed: in Orthodoxy the faith reaches the mind through the body as often as the other way around.

An icon is venerated for whom it shows, not for what it is worth — a paper print taped to a hospital wall is venerated exactly as a jeweled masterpiece is. For what icons are and why the Church paints them at all, see the theology of the icon and keeping icons at home.